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Placing meanings of health and disease at the center of modern Chinese consciousness- Ruth Rogaski reveals how hygiene became a crucial element in the formulation of Chinese modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rogaski focuses on multiple manifestations across time of a single Chinese concept- weisheng - which has been rendered into English as hygiene- sanitary- health- or public health - as it emerged in the complex treaty-port environment of Tianjin. Before the late nineteenth century- weisheng was associated with diverse regimens of diet- meditation- and self-medication. Hygienic Modernity reveals how meanings of weisheng- with the arrival of violent imperialism- shifted from Chinese cosmology to encompass such ideas as national sovereignty- laboratory knowledge- the cleanliness of bodies- and the fitness of races: categories in which the Chinese were often deemed lacking by foreign observers and Chinese elites alike....