Preventive Measures against Contagious Diseases and the Health Administration of the Beiping Municipality in the 1930s

This paper examines preventive measures against contagious diseases undertaken by the Beiping Municipality in China in the 1930s. It focuses on the state control of acute and chronic contagious diseases. When the Health Stations received information about the breakout of epidemics of classified diseases such as smallpox and cholera, they reported it to the Department of Health in the Beiping Municipality. Compulsory vaccination was carried out with quarantine in Beiping. As the case of smallpox vaccination demonstrated, it was in the Health Districts of the Health Station that the omnipresent vaccination could be practiced in various sites. But the omnipresent vaccination was limited to certain Health Districts. That is, smallpox vaccination was regionalized. Other classified contagious diseases took on similar aspects with smallpox vaccination. Those patients were sequestered in isolation hospitals or his/her home. Other citizens received vaccination on the street, school, and workplace. Beiping Municipality used multiple means and methods on the targets and patterns of health control. Therefore, students and citizens in the Health Districts could not avoid the municipality's control of space. It was not easy to control chronic contagious diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis and venereal disease with the same methods as the acute contagious diseases. But it was difficult to detect the presence of chronic diseases in patients based on appearance alone, and the Health Stations had no equipment to diagnosis disease. The Beiping Municipality tried to reinforce the control of chronic contagious disease. As a result, the range of the reach of state medicine in Beiping Municipality was gradually magnified. Isolation wards increased, and entertaining girls and pregnant women were designated as objects for diagnosis at Health Stations. The Beiping Municipality practiced multiple forms of control patterns and targets of acute contagious diseases. They adopted a bifurcated policy on the chronic contagious disease. The targets of diagnosis were divided into special patients and normal citizens. Nevertheless, on the whole, the systemic management and preventive measures against epidemics and contagious diseases improved health conditions in Beiping.ope