Gynaecology in Chinese Medicine

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine
2. Source (URL): http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/chinesemedicine/
3. Type of files: .xml
4. Date of data extraction: 2020-07
5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: the Dr. Richard Charles & Esther Yewpick Lee Charitable Foundation financially supported the original project to transcribe, digitize and make these texts available as a digital collection.

DATASET/COLLECTION DESCRIPTION

Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine consists of XML files from the digitization of a small collection of Chinese gynaecological works held by McGill University Library Rare Books and Special Collections. One of these texts is unique, others are well known works that exercised considerable influence in the practice of gynecology in late imperial China and were reprinted many times. The original digital collection project was carried out in the early 2000s and is accessible at Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Selected Texts.

Gynaecology was a medical specialty that developed in China in the Tang (618-907) and Song dynasties (960-1278). It is a subject that was little studied by modern scholars until recently, even though at least 349 individual works were devoted to the topic by medical doctors over the centuries. It has great potential for throwing light on the issues of the changing nature of gender relations and the understanding of the body in traditional China.

SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION

1. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: Public domain
2. Usage statement: We are making these files available on the condition that user credit the McGill University Library and Archives using the recommended citation below when using or reproducing them in any context. Giving credit promotes good scholarship, and helps others find the original source material.
3. Recommended citation for this dataset: McGill University Library (2020). Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine. V1. [Derivative dataset for Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Selected Texts]. Physical collection held in McGill Rare Books and Special Collections. https://github.com/mcgill-digital/gynaecology_in_chinese_medicine

DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

1. File List: xml-files contains 1587 xml files which contain the full-text of the digitized works. The files are presented as they are used on the web site and have not been further processed.

Each xml file contains the full text for one page of text.

Definitions for the structure of the XML used for display purposes is available in china-dtd.txt

The entire set of files is also available in gcm-docs.zip

Note: Additional XML elements beyond those described in china-dtd.txt are also used, but documentation on their usage has been lost. Characters are separated by spaces in order to render them separately indexable by the search engine which was originally used (dtSearch).

2. File naming conventions: Files are named according to the following conventions:

Pinyin transliteration of title or part thereof, an indication of the physical volume, indication of section of work if applicable (e.g. table_of_contents, text2, etc.), page number, indication of recto/verso as ‘a’ or ‘b’.

bao_sheng_sui_shi_9b.xml 
Fu_Text(4)_5a.xml 
jiyingkangmu_v.1_table_of_contents_42b.xml

METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION

1. Describe any quality-assurance procedures performed on the data: The files are presented as they are used on the digital collection web site and have not been further processed.
2. People involved with sample collection, processing, analysis and/or submission: Credits for the original digital collection website are available here: http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/chinesemedicine/english/credits.htm.