Most previous scholarship about the civil service examination system in imperial China has emphasized the degree of social mobility such examinations permitted in a premodern society. In the same vein, historians have evaluated the examination process in late imperial China from the perspective of the modernization process in modern Europe and the United States. They have thereby successfully exposed the failure of the Confucian system to advance the specialization and training in science that are deemed essential for nation-states to progress beyond their premodern institutions and autocratic political traditions. In this article, I caution against such contemporary, ahistorical standards for political, cultural, and social formation. These a priori judgments are often expressed teleologically when tied to the “modernization narrative” that still pervades our historiography of Ming (1368–1644) and Ch'ing (1644–1911) dynasty China.
Between April 1985 and January 1989, 135 consecutive patients underwent construction of a Kock pouch (to the skin in 72 patients, a urethral pouch in 45, an ileorectal pouch in 10 and a hemi-Kock pouch augmentation cystoplasty in 8). The operative mortality (30 days) rate was 4.4%. There were 16 early complications (12.4%) leading to 14 reoperations (11%), with a followup of 6 to 60 months. After Kock pouch to the skin, the late complication rate was 26.1% in the Kock-Skinner technique group and 7.4% in the simplified technique group, and 94.2% of the patients were continent. After a urethral Kock pouch daytime continence was achieved in 93% of the patients within 2 months and nighttime dryness was noted in 65% within 3 months. After an ileorectal Kock pouch all patients were continent day and night, as were those after hemi-Kock pouch augmentation, although 5 of the latter patients required intermittent catheterization.
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