Public Health Consciousness Under The Influence Of Epidemics During The Period Of The Republic Of China

In this paper, the object is public health consciousness under the influence of epidemics during the period of the republic of China. The promotion of public health consciousness belongs to the construction of the Public Health. The construction of the Public Health needs guidance of the government, public participation and the consciousness of the intellectuals. So the paper elaborates the public health consciousness of the republican period from this three aspects:government’s immunization system, ordinary people’s immunization practices and intellectuals’ immunization thought.Nanjing Provisional National Government introduced a number of regulations on epidemic prevention. But epidemic prevention system had not been implemented because of a very short time of regime existing. Beijing National Government emphasised more on prevention work and issued a series of prevention regulations of epidemic. But epidemic prevention system had not been really implemented at the grassroots level and society against epidemic capacity remained weak because of war often happened, government frequently changed and the rural society disordered. The prevention system of epidemic improved during the period of the Nanjing National Government to new country founded. But there were still drawbacks in the Implementation of epidemic prevention system because there were strong enemies outside and there were civil war. For exzample, the country lacked of funds and had uneven geographical distribution of epidemic prevention strength such as eastern strong, central and western weak and big cities strong, small and medium-sized cities and rural areas weak.Some areas still existed some superstition immunization practices during the period of the republic of China. Because of the influence of western medicine, there were immunization practices in line with modern scientific. They were the true sense of the immunization. People started to pay attention to environmental health, food hygiene, water sanitation, street cleaning, toilets cleaning and urban sewage.Immunization thought also improved during the period of the republic of China. Intellectuals had a new scientific understanding on the source of infection, route of transmission of epidemic diseases and susceptible populations at that time. Affected by the epidemic prevention ideas, people were generally concerned about self-worth and self-existence. Many people began to take the initiative to follow the scientific way of life and quality of life had been markedly improved.