Bolatu's pharmacy theriac in early Modern China

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 14, Issue 6, 2009, Pages 737-764

  Nappi, Carla ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

China; Materia medica; Poison; Recipes; Theriac; Translation

Indexed keywords

ANTIDOTE; MATERIA MEDICA;

ARTICLE; CHINA; CHINESE MEDICINE; EUROPE; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; HUMAN;

ANTIDOTES; CHINA; EUROPE; HISTORY, 16TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, MEDIEVAL; HUMANS; MATERIA MEDICA; MEDICINE, ARABIC; MEDICINE, CHINESE TRADITIONAL;

EID: 72549097088     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/138374209X12542104914000     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Li's major model was Tang Shenwei's (fl. 1086-1093) Jingshi zhenglei beiji bencao [Bencao based on classics and histories, organized and classified for speedy use], often abbreviated to Zhenglei bencao. It was the subject of several imperially sponsored and independent revisions through the early modern period. On the Zhenglei bencao, see Asaf Goldschmidt, The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960-1200 (London, 2009), 116-121
2. and Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (Berkeley, 1986), 70-82.
3. The term "bencao has variously been translated into English as "pharmacopoeia," "materia medical "pandect of natural history," "pharmaceutical literature," and "encyclopedia, " all of which approximate the nature of this textual genre, which accommodated a great deal of variation within the tradition itself. This class of medical text focused on the drugs used in Chinese (and other) medical prescriptions. For a discussion of Li Shizhen and his work, see Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and its Transformations in Early Modern China (Cambridge, 2009).
4. See Bencao gangmu, juan 52, ren hu [People], munaiyi [Mummy], 1940.
5. Though the account in Tao Zongyi's text identified the place of origin of munaiyi as huihui tiandi it was changed in Li Shizhen's text to Tianfang guo Citations from the Bencao gangmu include the following elements: 1. BC (Bencao gangmu); 1. juan (1-52)
6. Entry name (I have used pinyin Romanization and provided a translation where appropriate)
7. Subheading in pinyin with English translation, with recurring subheading categories indicated according to the following code: ff (fufang [Appended Prescriptions]), fl (fulu [Appended Notes]), fm (faming [Explication]), jj (jijie [Collected Interpretations]), sm (shiming [Explanation of Names]), qw (qiwei [Qi and Flavor]), xz (xiuzhi [Preparation of the Drug]), zw (zhengwu [Correction of Errors]), zz (zhuzhi [Main Indications]). For page numbers of citations I relied on Li Shizhen, Bencao gangmu, edited by Liu Hengru and Liu Shanyong (Beijing, 2002), 2 vols.
8. For the purposes of this paper, I use the term "early modern" as shorthand to refer to imperial China from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. I intend this as a comparative gesture to situate this period in Chinese history within a broader global discourse, and not as a qualitative judgment on the incipient modernity or industrialization of the society I describe. For two usefully contrasting arguments regarding the use of the term "early modern" to describe to Ming and Qing history see Evelyn S. Rawski, "The Qing Formation and the Early Modern Period," in Lynn A. Struve, ed., The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 207-241.
9. Jack A. Goldstone, "Neither Late Imperial nor Early Modern: Efflorescences and the Qing Formation in World History," on 242-302 of the same volume. I use "Islamic" in this paper to translate the Chinese term huihui in the titles of Yuan and Ming texts. In the Huihui guan zazi, the term huihui is given as a translation of the Persian "Musulman" or Muslim. Strictly speaking, the Islamic Formulary cannot be completely characterized as "Islamic" according to modern definitions of the term since some of the contents arguably include drugs translated from Syriac texts by Nestorian Christians.
10. Su Jing, Xinxiu bencao [Newly revised bencao] (Shanghai, 1995), 619-709.
11. An extended discussion of the work can be found in Unschuld, Medicine in China: Pharmaceutics, 44-50.
12. The term hu was often used to refer broadly to foreign peoples, or to the people of Central Asia that came into contact with, or resided in the western or northwestern borders of China. For a lengthy description of the history of the appellation hu in Chinese drug and place names, see Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (Chicago, 1919), 194-202.
13. On hu and fan in the context of medieval Buddhist texts in China, see Daniel Boucher, "On Hu and Fan Again: the Transmission of "Barbarian" Manuscripts to China," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23.1 (2000), 7-28.
14. Boucher's article is a response to Yang Jidong, Replacing hu with fan: A Change in the Chinese Perception of Buddhism During the Medieval Period," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 21.1 (1998), 157-170
15. Li Xun, Haiyao bencao; [Compendium of Overseas Drugs] (ZJ Shang, comp.) (Beijing, 1999). .ast;In Zhongguo bencao quanshu, vol.7, 1-40.
16. See also Chen Ming, "The Transmission of Foreign Medicine via the Silk Roads in Medieval China: A Case Study of Haiyao Bencao? Asian Medicine 3 (2007), 241-264
17. Li Xun's focus was probably related to his Persian ancestry and to his family business selling aromatic drugs. See Song Xian Huihui yaofang kaoshi (Beijing, 1999), vol.1, 3.
18. Many of the texts cited in the extant portions of the Haiyao bencao were regional accounts like the Linhai zhi Guangzhou ji Guangzhi Yiyuji and Jiaozhou ji among others.
19. Wang Gungwu, The Nanhai Trade: The Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea (Singapore, 1998).
20. These items included gold and silver articles, cowrie shell ornaments, peacock-feathers, tortoise-shells, and re-exports such as rubies and emeralds, corals, opaque glass, cotton cloth, turmeric, and storax.
21. See Reiko Shinno, "Promoting Medicine in the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368): An Aspect of Mongol Rule in China" (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2002), 62.
22. See also Reiko Shinno, "Medical Schools and the Temples of the Three Progenitors in Yuan China: A Case of Cross-Cultural Interactions," Harvard Journal of Asian Studies 67.1 (2007). 89-134.
23. See SongXian, Gudai Bosiyixue yu Zhongguo (Beijing, 2001), 89-92
24. and Shinno, "Promoting Medicine," 62-64.
25. The Guanghui si was headed by the Syrian Christian scholar Aixie, or Isa. See Paul D. Buell, "How Did Persian and Other Western Medical Knowledge Move East, and Chinese West? A Look at the Role of Rashid al-Din and Others," Asian Medicine 3 (2007), 279-295, 289.
26. The Huihui yaofang will be treated in more detail below. Modern scholars disagree over whether it was a Yuan or early Ming text. On the Yinshan zhengyao see Paul D. Buell and Eugene N. Anderson, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-Hui's Yin-shan cheng-yao (New York, 2000).
27. On the resonances between Mongol and Islamic pharmacy, see Leigh Chipman, "Islamic Pharmacy in the Mamluk and Mongol Realms: Theory and Practice," Asian Medicine 3 (2007), 265-278
28. One fascinating area of the history of science and medicine that resulted from post-Yuan exchange between Islamic and Chinese medical traditions is the development of Uighur medicine. For a brief introduction to Uighur medicine, see Song, Gudai Bosi yixueyu Zhongguo, 156-168
29. and Da Liya and Su Beihai, "Sichou daoshang Weiwu'erzu deyiyao xue," Kashi Shifan xueyuan xuebao 19.2.71 (1998): 32-41.
30. James A. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (New York, 2007) is an excellent introduction to the context of Xinjiang in silk road history.
31. For an example of a primary text on Uighur medical drugs in Huihui script, see Jiamaliding Akesalayi, Baise gongdian in Zhongguo bencao quanshu (Beijing, 1999), vol.398, 385-429.
32. The authorship of he Huihui yaofang is unclear, but a number of historians have proposed that it was commissioned by the court and composed in one of the imperial offices responsible for Chinese-Huihui translation. While Huihui writing in the Tang and Song referred primarily to Arabic, by the Yuan and Ming Huihui more commonly referred to Persian instead. (Persian is written in a slightly modified form of the Arabic alphabet.) This was largely a result of Persian being more widely used as a language of trade and administration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For a brief account of this change see Hu, "Zhengui de huizu wenxian," 87.
33. Over the course of the early modern period, and the Ming in particular, the phrase was used in different ways, often used as a descriptor of Muslim things, people, texts, etc., to describe Arabic or Persian scripts, or to discuss "western" peoples of Central and South Asia. On usage of the term "huihui" in the Ming, see Hu Yunsheng, "Lun mingdai huihui de chaoshi maoyin," Huizu yanjiu 26.2 (1997), 37-38.
34. See Song, Huihui yaofang kaoshi, 6
35. and Buell, "How Did Persian," 284.
36. See Song, Huihui yaofang kaoshi, 31.
37. At least three different scriptural hands can be identified in the Huihui yaofang text. On the probability that the Huihui yaofang dates from the early Ming see Song, Huihui yaofang kaoshi, 31-33.
38. and Buell, "How did Persian," 283-291.
39. Song cites the fact that Beijing is called "Beiping" in these notes as one major source of evidence for dating the text to the early Ming. It is also possible, however, that the notes were made in a Ming edition of what was originally a Yuan text commissioned by the Guanghui si. On the latter (more widely accepted) theory that the text was a Yuan product see, for example, Buell, "How Did Persian," 283, fn 24.
40. Su, Xinxiu bencao, 663.
41. For a brief account of the introduction of theriac into China via a Byzantine embassy, see Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics (Berkeley, 1985), 184.
42. Paul of Aegina stands as an early link between Greek and Islamic medicine, as his work was used by al Razi (865-930), an extremely influential physician of the early Islamic world. See G. Watson, Theriac and Mithridatium: A Study in Therapeutics (London, 1966), 96. Though this work is somewhat problematic, it remains the only extended study of its kind to date and much of my chronology of Greek theriac is indebted to Watson's work.
43. Works on poison that have been attributed to Galen include De antidotes, De theriaca ad Pisonem, and De theriaca ad Pamphilianum (the latter inauthentic) The Greek texts of the two latter works can be found in Karl Gottlob Kuhn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, vol.14 (Leipzig, 1827), 10-294 (De theriaca ad Pisonem)
44. and 295-310 (De theriaca ad Pamphilianum)
45. On Galen's treatment of theriac, see Vivian Nutton, "Galen on Theriac: Problems of Authenticity," in Armelle Debru, ed., Galen on Pharmacology (Leiden, 1997), 133-151
46. and Michael Stein, "La theriaque chez Galien: sa preparation et son usage therapeutique," ibidem., 199-209.
47. On toxicology in Galen, see Alain Touwaide, "Galien et la toxicologic," in Wolfgang Haase, ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, vol.37.2 (Berlin, 1994), 1887-1986. My sincere thanks to Alain Touwaide for guiding me to this literature.
48. From Galen onward the noun thêriakê indicated a general antidote to animal venom, and the proper name Thêriakê, or the Latinized theriaca came to refer to specific types of the drug. See Watson, Theriac and Mithridatium for a detailed description. " Thêriakê ," a Greek adjective denoting antidote-like properties, has its roots in the noun therion and denotes a wild or savage beast (like a stag, dog, or pig) as opposed to men, birds, or fish.
49. For an introduction to the kinds of snakes and spiders mentioned in an early theriac-describing text (Nicander, 2nd cent. B.C.E.), see Peter K. Knoefel and Madeline C. Covi, A Hellenistic Treatise on Poisonous Animals (The "Theriaca" of Nicander of Colophon): A Contribution to the History of Toxicology (Lewiston, NY, 1991).
50. Mithridates VI Eupator (b. 132 B.C. E.) was King of Pontus in Asia Minor from c. 120 to 63 B.C.E. The exact number of ingredients in original Mithridatium is unknown, and opinions differ in modern literature. On Mithridates and his poisonous history, see Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithridates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton, 2009). Chapter 11 focuses on the Mithridatium.
51. Pliny the Elder, Natural History (H. Rackham, tr.) (Cambridge, MA, 1938-1963), vol.21,70.
52. For an interesting study of this text that places it in the context of classical Greek and Latin medicine and poetry, see Knoefel and Covi, A Hellenistic Treatise.
53. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, vol.8, 24.
54. On the use of theriac in Arabic agricultural calendars, see J. Barbaud, "Hygiène, diététique et médecine dans les calendriers agricoles Arabes," Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 46.317 (1998), 41-48, 46.
55. On specific treatises on theriac, see J. Ricordel. "Ibn Djuldjul: and J. Ricordel,"Lé Traite sur la Thériaque d'Ibn Rushd (Averroes),", -90.and J. Ricordel, "Lé Traite sur la Thériaque d'Ibn Rushd (Averroes)," ibid, 81-90.
56. Translation from H.M. Said, Al-Biruni's Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica (Pakistan, 1973).
57. Some of these texts are held in the National Library of Medicine collection of Islamic medical manuscripts. Examples include Dhikr al-tiryaq al-faruq [Memoir on Antidotes for Poisons] by thirteenth century scholar 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-'Azim al-Anzari and Sifat al-tiryaq al-akbar [Recipe for the Great Theriac], an anonymous text copied in the fifteenth century. The collection also includes shorter works on theriac in manuscripts made through the nineteenth century. For a translated example of a medieval Islamic medical dispensatory that included theriacs among its recipes, see Oliver Kahl, Sabur ibn Sahl: The Small Dispensatory (Leiden, 2003), 33.
58. See Christiane Nockels Fabbri, "Treating Medieval Plague: The Wonderful Virtues of Theriac," Early Science and Medicine 12 (2007), 247-83, at 261-262
59. On the use of theriac in medieval plague medicine, see Fabbri, "Treating Medieval Plague," which describes many medieval prescriptions for theriacs, and focuses on those that may have contained opium.
60. See F. Granel, "La Thériaque de Montpellier," Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 23 (1976), 75-83, 81.
61. See N.A. Pereira et al., "Triaga Brasilica: Renewed Interest in a Seventeenth-Century Panacea," Toxicon 34 (1996), 511-516
62. Granel, "La Thériaque de Montpellier," 75-83.
63. In Bologna, Ulisse Aldrovandi used the controversy over the preparation and regulation of Teriaca to criticize the government for its lack of control over local hygiene and medicine. On theriac production and debates in sixteenth century Italy, see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994), 241-245 and 266-287. Findlen emphasizes the role of vipers in early modern Italian theriacs.
64. J. Flahaut, "La Thériaque Diatessaron ou Theriaque des Pauvres," Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 46.318 (1998), 173-182 The composition of "la thériaque diatessaron" apparently remained constant for several centuries. Interestingly, some of the components were difficult to obtain in France, so this drug did not enter into pharmacopoeias for the lower-classes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, instead being replaced by alternative theriacs that used only French plants.
65. See Pereira et. al., "Triaga Brasilica," 511-516. This recipe was apparently fine-tuned over the course of two centuries, its precise composition remaining a closely guarded secret until its publication by a Portuguese priest in a 1766 manuscript. Nine of the plants recommended in the preparation of Triaga Brasilica are still reportedly used to make antidotes to snake venom in Brazil today.
66. On Tibetan theriac, see Christopher Beckwith, "Tibetan Treacle: A Note on Theriac in Tibet," The Tibet Society Bulletin 15 (1980), 49-51. The Waseda University Library in Japan holds a manuscript copy of the Teriaka shinpo yakuko a late eighteenth or early nineteenth-century text that chronicled the translation of theriac into Japanese via Dutch texts and included Chinese accounts from the Xinxiu bencao.
67. See Bencao gangmu, juan 50, shou bu [Beasts], diyejia [Theriac], 1838.
68. On the switch from "varied" to "pig," see T. Nakamura and J. Endo, "Introduction of Theriac into China," Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi [Journal of Japanese History of Medicine] 46 (2000), 358-359
69. The Bencao gangmu, Xinxiu bencao, and Haiyao bencao, were all members of this class of pharmaceutical text.
70. Diyejia was by far the most common Chinese transliteration for theriac or tiryaq, likely due to its use in the aforementioned widely cited bencao tradition. Several renderings of the term diyejia can be found in Ming and Qing texts, often with variations in the last element (rendering jia as).
71. Though the original recipes have since been lost, the extant Table of Contents lists several "fang" for theriacs, the ingredients of which would ostensibly have been included in chapters that are no longer extant. See the following instances from Song, Huihui yaofang kaoshi, vol.2: (1) From a section of recipes for curing animal and insect poisons: 100, line 5: "you tder yaji fang" and line 9: "xiao da'er yaji " 101, line 5: "ta'er yaji fan" 102, line 8 and 12 both: "ta'er yaji fang" and 103, line 1: "ta'er yaji fang (er fang)"- (2) From a section of recipes for curing myriad poisons: 104, line 8: "huang ni da'er yaji " 105, line 10: "ta'er yaji fang(3) From another section of recipes for curing animal and insect poisons: 108, line 1: "da'er yaji neiyou lingshezhe with further names for theriac recipes on line 4: "shuozhi jiu ta'er yaji" and "you ta'er yaji fang" line 5: "you ta'er yaji faluji fang" and "ta'er yaji fang" line 7: " ta'er yaji yaoli de xiao" line 9: "tderyaji a'er ba'a fang and line 10: "ta'er yaji sama niya fang". (4) From a discussion of drug qualities: 111, line 2: "shuo da da er yaji ".
72. Recent work that brings together computer science and medical theory has posited a series of modes of reasoning that operate at several levels of a medical system: diagnostic, anatomical, and causal modes of medical reasoning are among them. The reasoning involved in the clinical inference process, as well as the role of statistical reasoning in medicine, have also been widely studied. Indeed, the increasing use of the term "evidence-based medicine" to describe modern bio-medicine further supports the positing of a notion of "medical reasoning." Here, I am interested in the medical reasoning inherent in formulating and making sense of a medical recipe, especially when an alien element (a foreign drug, possibly with a foreign name) must be reconciled with the use of a host medical recipe.
73. R. J. Haack, "Recipes and Causes," Mind 76.301 (1967): 98-102.
74. Haack's article was written as a reply to Douglas Gasking, "Causation and Recipes," Mind 64 (1955), 479-487.
75. On the recipe as a literary form in German literary history, see Joachim Telle, "Das Rezept als literarische Form," Berkhte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 26 (2003), 251-274. Telle recounts the use of (often versified) recipes in the service of varied literary ends, including humor, satire, alchemy, astrology, and politics.
76. See Angela Ki Che Leung, "Medical Instruction and Popularization in Ming-Qing China," Late Imperial China 24 (2003), 130-152, 133.
77. On the general form of medieval Islamic medical recipes see Chipman, "Islamic Pharmacy," 265-266
78. For a translation of the formulary of a ninth century Nestorian physician, see Kahl, Sabur ibn Sahl.
79. For the dispensatory of a twelfth-century Nestorian physician, see Oliver Kahl, The Dispensatory of Ibn at-Tilmid (Leiden, 2007).
80. Buel, "How Did Persian," 286-287 provides an English translation for one of the Huihui yaofang recipes.
81. See Kahl, Sabur ibn Sahl and Kahl, The Dispensatory of Ibn at-Tilmid for many examples of what I mean, namely classification of the text at a macro-level. It is much more common to see named recipes for anti-poisons occupying a major categorical level in Islamic texts. In Chinese formularies, although poison is a common concern, it is rarely the case that a named, compound drug will be listed as its own entry. More commonly, recipes are given within the individual drug monographs. 00 For another take on the importance of modularity in generating innovation, see Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton, 2000).
82. Objects in the authoritative Shennong bencao jing, for example, fell into this class of well-established drugs. Among these are several tonics still widely used in China today: gouqi berries, ginseng, licorice root, etc.
83. The Zhongyao da cidian, an authoritative encyclopedic reference work on drugs used in Chinese medicine, lists "diyejid" simply as an alternate name for opium, or yapian. Zhongyao da cidian [Dictionary of Chinese drugs] (Shanghai, 2002), 2: 1640-1642
84. In reports on the Chinese National Institute of Drug Dependence (NIDD) website, diyejia is explicitly linked with opium and characterized as a product brought into China from foreign countries (waiguo See, for example, "Evolution of China's Drug Control Policy"http://nidd.bjmu.edu.cn/ publish/hr/hr3/3-00. htm (Accessed 15 August 2008), which characterizes diyejia as the first vehicle of opium use in China.
85. See Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," in Barbara Johnson (tr.), Dissemination (Chicago, 1981), 61-172.
86. This multiplicity makes sense also in evaluating the notion of "poison" itself in Chinese medicine. Du indicates both toxicity and efficacy, poison and potentially miraculous cure. For an introduction to the issue of du in (particularly Song period) Chinese medicine see Frederic Obringer, L'Aconit et L'orpiment: Drogues et poisons en Chine ancienne et médiévale (Paris, 1997).
87. Drugs in bencao works are generally categorized as having or lacking (wu) du. In general the state of having du indicates that a substance must be used with caution, that it is quite efficacious, and that it ought to be used in moderation. Substances with du were likely to be used to induce pronounced effects or for ritual purposes.
88. A note in the Huihui yaofang description of mummy noted that some variations were stewed with honey, again identifying a crucial ingredient in both descriptions. 00 The Huihui yaofang included mummy as muminayi likely a transliteration of Mumiya. See Song, Huihui yaofang kaoshi, 1: 177-180.
89. See, for example, the account of the Arabian honey-mummy of Chinese medical lore in Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (New York, 2003), 221-222.