Pinpricks: Needling, numbness, and temporalities of pain.

Acupuncture analgesia appeared relatively straightforward. A patient laid awake as the practitioner needled selected sites on the body to induce numbness for surgery. Numerous reports emerging from China in the 1970s featured men and women resting on operating tables, smiling into the camera, surrounded by doctors who attended to the excised region-the esophagus, brain, gut, heart, or lungs.

The edge of expertise: Representing barefoot doctors in Cultural Revolution China.

‘Barefoot doctors’ were designed as an innovative task force during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) to provide health care to rural villages in China. Without formal training that would identify the group professionally, barefoot doctors were at once amateur medical practitioners and expert revolutionary actors in Communist Party propaganda. At stake in legitimating revolutionary medicine was allowing revolutionary spirit to supplement for minimal medical training.