Legal justice, medical authority, and madness in Qing China

Pu, Yujie

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132729 Copy

Description

Title

Legal justice, medical authority, and madness in Qing China

Author(s)

Pu, Yujie

Issue Date

2025-08-12

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Chow, Kai-Wing

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Chow, Kai-Wing

Committee Member(s)

• Wu, YI-Li
• Rabin, Dana
• Tierney, Robert
• Chettiar, Teri

Department of Study

E. Asian Languages & Cultures

Discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• legal-medical interface
• madness and criminal responsibility
• Qing China

Abstract

This dissertation examines how the Qing state governed madness at the intersection of law and medicine. It maps the trajectory of the interface of law and medicine in the judicial practice involving homicides and madness. Between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, this legal-medical interface became central to assessing criminal responsibility in cases that defied normative classification. Drawing on over 2,000 homicide cases from the First Historical Archives of Beijing, along with medical texts, this study investigates how madness claims in homicide cases were evaluated through both judicial reasoning and medical testimony. It argues that medical knowledge became legally actionable in the eighteenth century through a historically contingent process, shaped by bureaucratic demands, evidentiary norms, and the adjudicative framework known as qing-li-fa—a legal logic that balanced public sentiment (qing), moral reasoning (li), and statutory law (fa). In the eighteenth century, medical testimony formed a crucial part of how madness was evaluated in homicide cases. County magistrates regularly consulted local physicians to determine whether a defendant’s violent behavior could be attributed to madness. These physicians, often familiar with the accused, based their assessments on symptoms, pulse readings, emotional triggers, and prior treatment. Their testimony helped magistrates evaluate not only illness but also whether the defendant had lost awareness or control—crucial factors in determining intent to kill and legal culpability. Yet such testimony was accepted as valid only when it aligned with accepted emotional narratives and prevailing moral expectations. In this context, medical knowledge became legally actionable through its conformity with qing-li-fa. Case records frequently cited bereavement, poverty, or examination failure as triggers for madness—conditions consistent with late imperial Chinese medical ideas, which viewed madness as a treatable disorder caused by emotional and physiological imbalance. By the early nineteenth century, the medical and legal relationship was highly regulated. An 1802 provision limited the right to diagnose madness to officially appointed physicians and redefined madness as a chronic, incurable condition. Legal recognition now required persistent symptoms observable during interrogation, and testimony from local practitioners was excluded. Medical assessments became brief and formulaic. This framework persisted into the early twentieth century, when the 1907 Draft Criminal Code replaced the legal term fengbing (madness) with jingshenbing (mental illness), drawn from the emerging vocabulary of Western psychiatry. Yet this shift in terminology did not reflect a fully institutionalized medico-legal regime. Psychiatric education was still nascent in China, and diagnostic infrastructure remained minimal. The adoption of the new term revealed the late Qing state’s uncertainty over both indigenous and imported medical knowledge. Officials were left to negotiate unfamiliar categories of diagnosis and responsibility with little practical guidance. This study contributes to the history of medicine by showing that medical knowledge became legally meaningful only when made legible within Qing judicial practice. Its authority depended on alignment with bureaucratic concerns, evidentiary norms, and the reasoning structure of qing-li-fa. It contributes to legal history by showing how eighteenth-century state officials used medical testimony to assess intent to kill in madness cases. Local physicians helped determine whether a violent act reflected deliberate intention or was triggered by emotional disturbance. But their opinions held legal weight only when they fit the expectations of qing-li-fa. More broadly, this dissertation shows how the governance of madness offers a lens for understanding how states define the legitimacy of knowledge—determining which ways of knowing are recognized, authorized, and enforced through law. The unique path of the interplay between law and medicine in the governance of madness stands in great contrast with its management in the West and other East Asian states.

Graduation Semester

2025-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132729

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2025 Yujie Pu

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