Abstract: The journal of the Chinese Society for the History of Medicine, Journal of Medical History, and its predecessor, the column Special Issue on the History of Medicine in Chinese Medical Journal, were important centers for the study of the history of medicine during the Republic of China period. However, the differences between the two are not only reflected in the fact that the Preface to the Special Issue points to reality and emphasizes the medical functions of the history of medicine, while the Inaugural Address of the Journal focuses on history and emphasizes the disciplinary system of the history of medicine. There are also significant differences in terms of language, themes, and content. The Special Issue contains many English articles, constructing a global dialogue through comparative historiography, scientific evidence, and international cooperation, and attempting to strive for disciplinary legitimacy within the framework of "the scientification of traditional Chinese medicine". In contrast, the Journal has almost no English articles, turning to textual research of documents and cultural narration, often excavating the uniqueness of traditional Chinese medicine from the perspective of cultural history, and then reconstructing cultural narration and local knowledge. The reasons for this lie not only in the intertwined influence of Yu Yunxiu and Wang Jimin, who held different academic views, but more importantly, because the Special Issue, under the promotion of political changes and the pursuit of saving the nation through science, emphasized that research on the history of medicine should effectively promote the progress of practical medicine. On the other hand, against the backdrop of post-war reconstruction and cultural self-reliance, the Journal focused on the cultural inheritance and system construction of the history of medicine. This shift is a microcosm of the search for identity by the study of the history of medicine in modern China within the tension between globalization and localization.