Farewell to the God of Plague

Download or read book Farewell to the God of Plague written by Miriam Gross and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farewell to the God of Plague reassesses the celebrated Maoist health care model through the lens of MaoÕs famous campaign against snail fever. Using newly available archives, Miriam Gross documents how economic, political, and cultural realities led to grassroots resistance. Nonetheless, the campaign triumphed, but not because of its touted mass-prevention campaign. Instead, success came from its unacknowledged treatment arm, carried out jointly by banished urban doctors and rural educated youth. More broadly, the author reconsiders the relationship between science and political control during the ostensibly antiscientific Maoist era, discovering the important role of Ògrassroots scienceÓ in regime legitimation and Party control in rural areas.