生命统计与疾病史研究初探：以日据时期台湾为例

A Preliminary Study on Relationship between Vital Statistics and History of Disease:A Case Study of Japan-ruled Taiwan

本文由分析西方殖民医学史的研究趋势入手,渐及于台湾学者在此一领域中的发展;指出台湾现行的发展方向里,尚缺乏对于殖民统计的深入检讨与分析。受到1980年以来西方学说之影响,台湾学界逐渐意识到日本殖民医学在台湾,亦扮演着改善殖民地健康及维护殖民正当性的双重角色。然受到主客观条件的限制,台湾学者尚未能深究日据时期台湾生命统计里的许多问题与风险,而直接撷取原始数字或转引人口学家之推论以为论据。本文透过检讨现行台湾学界运用日据时期台湾生命统计的现况,配合简单之统计修正方法与个案讨论,强调日本殖民统计中存在着一些不合理的现象,指出其中潜在的风险与陷阱,认为学者在利用这批生命统计资料时,有分期、分项理解与再确认的必要。

This article starts from a brief review of the historiography development in the history of colonial medicine in the Western scholarship,following by the description of the new academic trends in contemporary Taiwan.Being influ- enced by the Western scholarship,Taiwan Residents scholars eventually realized the double roles of Japanese colonial medicine in Taiwan:the strategy to improve health condition and the legitimized tool of colonization,but they still have difficulties to discover same issues from the governmental statistics in colonial Taiwan.The lack of comparative data from governmen- tal sets and the delicate demographic analysis all make historians took the original governmental statistics for granted.The author thus takes the vital statistics in colonial Taiwan a target to explore the problems and possible way to compensation. He examines optimistic argumentts of colonial statistics by post-war historical demographers in Taiwan and provides cases to illuminate the flaws in governmental data along with the reporting and recording system;in the end,he suggests that scholars need to be very cautious while using the colonial vital statistics.