Qualla: Taiwan Blackfoot Disease Socio-Medical Service Memorial House

Taiwan Blackfoot Disease Socio-Medical Service Memorial House: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mk2010, CC BY-SA 3.0. Dr. Wang Jin-he did not have to stay. He had trained as a physician, and there were better-paying practices elsewhere. But the people along Beimen's coast were suffering in ways that demanded a response, and so he stayed for 25 years — running a free clinic out of a modest building in Yonglong Village, treating patients who had no other options. The disease they came with was called blackfoot disease. It began with numbness in the extremities. It ended, for many, in gangrene and amputation. The building where Dr. Wang worked still stands. It is a memorial now, and it holds the weight that such places carry.

Image: Mk2010 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Taiwan Blackfoot Disease Socio-Medical Service Memorial House: The Water That Poisoned a Coast

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 舟集 Boattoad, CC BY-SA 4.0. For much of the 20th century, residents of the southwestern Taiwan coastal plain — in areas around Tainan and Chiayi — drew their drinking water from artesian wells. The wells were deep, reliable, and heavily contaminated with arsenic. This was not widely understood at first. The...

Image: 舟集 Boattoad | CC BY-SA 4.0

Taiwan Blackfoot Disease Socio-Medical Service Memorial House: Twenty-Five Years of Free Care

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 舟集 Boattoad, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dr. Wang Jin-he set up his clinic in Beimen's Yonglong Village and committed himself to serving the patients blackfoot disease brought to his door. For 25 years, he provided free medical services to people from Beimen and the surrounding regions — communities where the cost of me...

Image: 舟集 Boattoad | CC BY-SA 4.0

Taiwan Blackfoot Disease Socio-Medical Service Memorial House: Preserving a Difficult History

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alton Thompson, CC BY-SA 4.0. After Dr. Wang's decades of service, the clinic where he worked fell into disuse. The question of what to do with it became a civic and cultural question. Tainan County Magistrate Su Huan-chih and Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Ye Tzer-shan proposed converting the bu...

Image: Alton Thompson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Taiwan Blackfoot Disease Socio-Medical Service Memorial House: What the Memorial Holds

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 舟集 Boattoad, CC BY-SA 4.0. Standing in a quiet village in Beimen District, the memorial house is not a grand monument. It is a modest building, and that modesty is part of what it means. The people who suffered from blackfoot disease were not famous. Most of them are not named in any official record. They ...

Image: 舟集 Boattoad | CC BY-SA 4.0