Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China, by He Bian, Princeton University Press, April 2020, 264pp
Medicine is a thing, each has a physical temperament. In the sutras, there are those who are similar in cause and form, those who are dependent on causes, those who seek cause and qi, and those who have the same cause and quality. The principles of nature can be understood.
- Wang Ang: "Materia Medica", 1683
Medicines are mostly taken from incomplete medicinal plants, and only a part of them that is effective is extracted for treatment, such as grass root bark and the like. Once you enter the pharmaceutical market, Wanhui miscellaneous, such as the blind people do not distinguish between black and white, want to add sorting, it is expected that the sense of sighing will be great. Therefore, the scientific research of medicinal materials is also the first problem of the most difficult.
——Zhao Yihuang: Qizhou Medicine Chronicle, 1936
What kind of "thing" is "medicine"? Some hints may be discerned from the above quotations. Wang Ang discussed the "medicinal properties" that explained the therapeutic efficacy, while Zhao Yihuang observed the "medicinal materials" in circulation. Can medicines be simply divided into therapeutic properties and substance (natural) properties? In what way can we understand the universal and special existence of "medicine"? The traditional scholar Wang Ang emphasized that the "principles of nature" can be applied to the deduction of medicinal properties, while Zhao Yihuang, who has received modern scientific training, hopes to construct a scientific pharmacognosy system by studying changeable and complex medicinal materials. Although the two men observe drugs from different perspectives, although they are closely related to the historical and cultural environment in which they live, what is similar is that both believe that the key to understanding "medicine as a thing" lies in a broader body of knowledge. If we adopt the traditional Confucian saying of "gewu zhizhi", what kind of "knowledge" can we bring by studying the "thing" of medicine?
Princeton University Associate Professor Bian He's new book, Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China, provides us with a perspective on the culture of medicine and knowledge. Once published, the book was widely praised in the fields of medical history, science history, and East Asian history at home and abroad. Recently, this book won the 2022 Honorable Mention Award for Chinese Studies of the American Society for Asian Studies, which shows its important contribution to the field of Chinese history. The author tentatively proposed the title of the Chinese as "Medicine as a Thing: Materia Medica and Knowledge Culture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties", which probably has two meanings. First of all, the core concept "pharmaceutical objecthood" proposed in this book refers to the form of existence of drugs as substances, which can be used as a translation of "medicine as things"; secondly, the emphasis on "knowledge culture" speaks to the author's broader vision. This book does not only discuss the history of pharmacy in the context of Ming and Qing medical culture, but attempts to observe the major changes in the field of knowledge and cognition of the Ming and Qing dynasties through Materia Medica and medicine, and its contribution is not only in the specialized research field of pharmaceutical history, but also in-depth depiction of the chinese knowledge map and cognitive world in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The main body of the book is divided into six chapters, bounded by the Ming, Qing, and Yi dynasties. Although the chapters are organized roughly in chronological order, they are mainly organized in specific topics. Of course, we can also look at the structure of the book in another way: the first two chapters describe the compilation of Materia Medica and the transfer of pharmaceutical knowledge from the central to the local level, the middle two chapters examine the reconstruction of drug knowledge by the literati in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and the last two chapters turn to the significance of the medicinal material market and rare drugs for the construction of pharmaceutical knowledge. Overall, the book's consistent theme is the decentralized and pluralistic process of knowledge production. In this short article, the author introduces the main views of "Medicine as a Thing" on Materia Medica and the knowledge culture of the Ming and Qing dynasties in three aspects, and finally discusses the inspiration of the book on the history of natural knowledge in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The Book of Medicine: The Publication and Circulation of Ming and Qing Materia Medica
In 1505, the medical officer who presided over the compilation of the "Essentials of Materia Medica" was convicted of the death of Emperor Hongzhi, and the last official xiu Materia Medica in ancient Chinese history was hidden in the deep palace and was not known to outsiders. However, in the booming publishing market of China in the sixteenth century, a variety of books called "Materia Medica" appeared, including of course the well-known Compendium of Materia Medica. "Medicine as a Thing" starts from this point and tells a story that is different from the mainstream narrative of traditional Materia Medica history. Writing about the history of Materia Medica or the history of pharmacy in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" is always a huge work that is difficult to avoid. Joseph Needham called Li Shizhen the "uncrowned king" of Chinese naturalism. Nowadays, it is probably difficult to imagine a history of Chinese pharmacy without Li Shizhen and the Compendium of Materia Medica. However, back to the historical scene, the publication of the "Compendium of Materia Medica" was not smooth, and Li Shizhen could not see the final publication of this painstaking work before his death.
The compilation of Materia Medica in Chinese history has always started from the Shennong Materia Medica, and has been added, expanded and revised many times in later generations, through Tao Hongjing's "Notes on the Materia Medica" and many official Materia Medica of the Tang and Song Dynasties, to Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" collection of Materia Medica of the past generations, zhao Xuemin's "Compendium of Materia Medica" is the rest. This is the so-called "orthodoxy" and "mainstream" in the history of Chinese Materia Medica. As far as I can see, this theory was found in the work of the Japanese scholar Kotaro Shirai in the early twentieth century, and was first translated into Chinese by the pharmacist Zhao Yihuang. The Japanese medical historian Okasai has a reference to the "mainstream Materia Medica system". The works of Joseph Needham and Paul U. Unschuld adopt the view of the "mainstream tradition of Materia Medica". Shang Zhijun and Zheng Jinsheng, representative scholars of Chinese Materia Medica history, also use the terms "mainstream of Materia Medica" and "side branches of Materia Medica", but the meaning of "mainstream" is richer, not only referring to the mainstream genealogy, but also containing the mainstream style of Materia Medica compilation of an era. The important position of this "mainstream" in the study of modern Materia Medica history can be seen from this. However, the emphasis under this research idea is often the growth of comprehensive Materia Medica and its content and the innovation of style, so the positioning of Ming and Qing Materia Medica books has become a thorny problem. The lineage of the Shirai clan directly lists most of the Ming and Qing Materia Medica books as "side branches" outside of orthodoxy. Needham lamented the decline of the Chinese naturalistic tradition after the Compendium of Materia Medica, which is in line with his general understanding of the history of Science in China, that is, after the sixteenth century, China's scientific development began to lag behind the West. Most of this type of view is based on modern science, viewing Materia Medica as a naturalistic or botanical work, so the knowledge of classification systems and basal elements based on natural attributes is the most critical, which is lacking in most Ming and Qing Materia Medica.
Since the sixteenth century, the tradition of official editing of comprehensive Materia Medica has declined, and the editing, publication and interpretation of Materia Medica have been transferred to the hands of literati and publishers. On the one hand, "Medicine as Things" examines the publication and reception history of Ming and Qing Materia Medica books from the perspective of book history, and on the other hand, it looks at the decentralized trend of Materia Medica compilation from the perspective of historical development in a longer period of time. First of all, the author believes that since the eleventh century, the control of the central government of the Song Dynasty over the knowledge of Materia Medica has been loosened, and the dissemination, reprinting and revision of official Materia Medica by various local officials and literati can be regarded as the precursor to the decentralization of the compilation of Ming and Qing Materia Medica, and the boundary between central and local text production is gradually dissolving. Secondly, Jin Yuan's interest in medicine shifted from extensive comprehensive knowledge to pharmacological exploration under the guidance of five luck and six qi, which also had a profound impact on Ming and Qing Materia Medica. Together, these two trends contributed to the transformation of Ming and Qing Materia Medica publishing and style.
In the first chapter, the author mainly examines the following types of Ming and Qing Materia Medica: festival herbs, dietary therapy herbs, and concocted herbs. These types of Materia Medica have been widely popular because of their success in commercial publishing. The festival class Materia Medica, represented by the "Materia Medica Collection" and "Materia Medica Mengquan", explores a middle way of writing Materia Medica between large-scale comprehensive Materia Medica and medicinal song books, which are both academic and practical. The latter two types of Materia Medica catered to the health regime that arose among the literati and scholars of the Ming Dynasty, and thus attracted a more diverse readership outside the medical field. Although Li Shizhen hoped that his works would be recognized by the imperial court and continue the integration of the Song Dynasty's comprehensive Materia Medica, the eventual popularity of the book benefited from commercial and local publishing.
Although the predecessors of the study of Materia Medica history mostly focused on the "mainstream" narrative, they also had some insight into the interpretation of Ming and Qing Materia Medica. Gangxi divided the Ming and Qing Materia Medica into three categories: practical Materia Medica, Medicinal Materia Medica, and Shennong Materia Medica. Zheng Jinsheng divided the Ming and Qing Materia Medica styles into clinical studies and the style of respecting the scriptures. These content-based categories, however, take into account the gradually expanding authors and readership of the Ming and Qing Materia Medica. "Medicine as a Thing" shows us an alternative way of looking at Ming and Qing Materia Medica books, no longer discussing the "mainstream" or "side branches" based on content, but instead problematizing the "Materia Medica" itself. Therefore, the question that needs to be solved is no longer the positioning and evaluation of Ming and Qing Materia Medica in the overall history of Materia Medica, but what kind of changes have occurred in the attitude of authors and readers to "Materia Medica" in this period, and what kind of reconstruction has been made to the knowledge and compilation methods of Materia Medica. Of course, the commercial success of the Materia Medica is only one aspect of the compilation of Ming and Qing Materia Medica, and the literati community is not just a reader of the Materia Medica, and another important feature of the Ming and Qing Materia Medica is the concern for medicinal properties, which is inseparable from the thought and academic atmosphere of the literati and Confucians. The next thing I will introduce is the world of "medicine" and "reason" presented in "Medicine as a Thing".
The Theory of Medicine: Literati Fun and Professional Skills
"Medicine for Things" has a meticulous observation of the publishing history of Materia Medica, but it does not neglect the attention and perusal of specific content. The third and fourth chapters of the book provide a perspective on the changes in the knowledge of Materia Medica, which can be summed up in a question consciousness: Is the study of Materia Medica the professional skill of the healer or the end of the Confucian personality? In the seventeenth century, the mainstream study style of Materia Medica changed several times, but this was not simply a change in epistemology and ideology, but also closely related to the political and social environment at that time. When it comes to the theory of medicine, it is necessary to mention the change of the style of Materia Medica in the Jinyuan period, and in the research of Ganxi Renren and Zheng Jinsheng, the characteristics of Jinyuan Materia Medica are summarized as the exploration of pharmacology, which has been influenced by the rise of science since the Song Dynasty. The third chapter of "Medicine as a Thing" briefly reviews the discussion of "sex" and "reason" by many theoretical thinkers since Zhu Xi, in which the "things" represented by "medicine" show a prominent position, and the knowledge of qualities has become an important way for the literati to explore the principles of nature.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Jiangnan was active with many literati communities interested in pharmaceutical knowledge, and it was also the place where the Donglin Party members taught and discussed politics, but these two seemingly unrelated groups had a surprising intersection. Although previous research has focused on the political ideas and activities of the Donglin Party, their interest in medicine is difficult to ignore. In their circle of contacts is a "divine doctor" Miao Xiyong, who discusses current affairs and medical theories and collects prescriptions. Miao's Shennong Materia Medica not only appropriates the Confucian style of "shu", but also the discussion of medicinal properties is closely related to the study of sexual theory since the Song Dynasty. Although the Donglin Party was persecuted and suppressed in the Ming Dynasty, Miao Xiyong's way of exploring medicinal properties took root among the Jiangnan literati. In the last 20 or 30 years of the Ming Dynasty, Materia Medica and medicinal knowledge became a fashionable topic among the Literati of Jiangnan, and various related literati communities and teaching activities emerged, and the exploration of medicinal properties was regarded as an important way for Confucians to explore the principles of nature. The publication of Materia Medica books was also unprecedented, and it was during this period that Li Shizhen and his Compendium of Materia Medica became the darlings of the publishing market, and even works pretending to be li Shizhen's name appeared.
The literati's exploration of Materia Medica shaped the Confucian authority on pharmaceutical knowledge, but different voices also existed. The fourth chapter turns its perspective to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, although the Materia Medica books with strong literary interests in the late Ming Dynasty were reprinted in the early Qing Dynasty, the voice of professional healers reshaping "medical orthodoxy" gradually became prominent. In addition to the voice of the healer, the author also examines the positioning of Materia Medica knowledge in three official cultural projects of the Qing Dynasty, namely the Integration of Ancient and Modern Books, the Compilation of the Golden Book of The Medicine Sect, and the Compilation of the Four Libraries. These books or series of books reflect a different epistemological orientation than in the late Ming Dynasty, and Materia Medica is once again positioned as the professional skill of healers, but the boundary with the Confucian science of character and materialism is increasingly strengthened. Here, "Medicine as Matter" shows an important turn in the field of Materia Medica in the early Qing Dynasty, and the originally unified knowledge of Materia Medica is increasingly divided into two kinds of learning with clear boundaries: the Confucian study of the grid and the healing techniques of the healer.
Here we have to mention a key question in the history of Science in China: Why did the Chinese naturalistic tradition decline after the Compendium of Materia Medica? This problem traces back the development of Chinese science from the Western scientific concept in the early modern period, and believes that the Ming and Qing Materia Medica shifted from natural science to clinical therapeutics. Although BianHe also uses the expression of natural history, she tries to transcend this modern binary division of "naturalism" and "clinical" and explore the epistemological turn in terms of China's own classification of knowledge. In this Confucian study, the study of gewu includes not only comprehensive Materia Medica such as the Compendium of Materia Medica, but also works such as Miao Xiyong's Shennong Materia Medica, which explore medicinal properties based on the science of Confucian nature, which in previous studies are mostly subordinate to "clinical Materia Medica" works. Therefore, in the discussion of Confucian natural interest and medical expertise, the key is no longer to focus on the natural form and classification of drugs or to pay attention to the therapeutic utility, but the pull between Confucians and doctors for the authority of pharmaceutical knowledge.
The author also refers to Levinson's "literati amateurism," which could be provisionally translated as "literati deprofessionalism." From this standpoint, the Ming and Qing literati regarded professional skills such as the "medical ephemeris" and even painting as part of the Confucian study of personality. They denigrate "workers" (medical workers, painters, etc.) who possess specialized skills, and emphasize the authoritative position of Confucianism in interpreting professional knowledge. The narrative of the late Ming Dynasty in Medicine for Things does largely conform to this "deprofessionalism", but the author opposes the essentialization of this literati ideal. This is not so much an intrinsic feature of the elite culture of the Ming and Qing dynasties, but rather a product of the special political and social environment of the late Ming Dynasty. The division and combination of "Confucianism" and "medicine" has also promoted the exploration of the problem of "Confucian medicine" in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and previous research has focused on the social identity of doctors, while the author's interpretation of Materia Medica knowledge and epistemology has presented the separation of the relationship between the two in more detail. The changes in the world of Ming and Qing Materia Medica are not limited to books and pharmacology, but the intellectual authority of literati and healers is increasingly influenced and challenged by another level: the increasingly prosperous medicinal material market and medicinal materials from far away.
Medicine materials: from tribute to commodities
Let's move from text and knowledge to specific medicinal herbs. In addition to medical and herbal books, another common document for documenting drugs is the "Property" section of the Chronicles. For what reasons did magistrates and literati record or revise the "medicinal herbs" in their products? How do we understand this part of the medicinal record? What kind of intellectual culture does it reflect? In the second chapter, Medicine for Things examines medicinal herbs as tugongs and their role in the financial reform of the Ming Dynasty. In the Tang and Song dynasties, medicinal herbs were associated with the "state soil" produced, and local tributes also symbolized the central government's control over its territory. Medicinal materials in the Ming Dynasty were still one of the "materials" collected by the central government from the localities, but the source and logic of tribute had undergone major changes: first, the source of medicinal materials in the Ming Dynasty was mainly transferred to the south, and the rated taxes of the two were greatly increased than in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the collection was more mandatory. On the one hand, this has aroused the discussion of the rationality of taxes among scholars, and on the other hand, it has also forced local governments to gradually change the way they collect medicines. Because the amount of medicines apportioned at all levels is inconsistent with the actual production of local products, many places have to collect them in the form of folding silver, and then purchase corresponding medicinal materials from the market and hand them over. This change occurred before Zhang Juzheng implemented the "one whip law" reform, and from this point of view, the tax reform of the Ming Dynasty in the sixteenth century also had a bottom-up motivation. This change represents a gradual shift in the control of drug knowledge from the central to the local, with local officials promoting the renewal of local records on the one hand, and declaring the abundance of local property in a more positive manner.
The monetization of taxes has also further promoted the cross-regional trade in medicinal materials, and Xu Dachun's exclamation of "medicine is not prepared" indicates the advent of a new era, and the process of commercialization has more profoundly affected the cultural map of pharmaceutical knowledge after the seventeenth century. The author of the fifth chapter carefully depicts the two sides of drug commercialization: at the end of the sixteenth century, Zhangshu Town, Jiangxi Province, became the distribution center of medicinal materials, and the national cross-regional medicinal materials trade system was initially formed; urban drug stores gradually replaced small private pharmacies, and the trend of pharmaceutical division gradually emerged. The medicinal materials trade has promoted the emergence of the concept of "authenticity", and medicinal herbs from Far Away have been sought after by the market. The operators of the drug store gradually parted ways with the identity of the doctor, and instead emphasized their expertise in medicinal materials and pharmaceuticals.
The impact of markets and trade on pharmaceutical knowledge is described in more depth in Chapter VI. Through a close reading of Zhao Xuemin's "Compendium of Materia Medica", the author reveals an alternative knowledge production field outside the mainstream Materia Medica. A large number of rare and exotic medicines from the mountains, borderlands and exotic lands are recorded in the "Collection of Remains", and these medicinal knowledge often comes from "mountain people", "native people", butchers, hunters, fishermen, merchants, "Fan people", and liuyu curtains. Zhao Xuemin's exile career also gave him more opportunities to be exposed to these folk medicines and related knowledge. "Wild" has become a symbol of the quality of medicinal herbs, but "wild" also implies unknown risks and uncertainties. Consumers continue to try to deal with and take these distant curiosities in various ways in their daily lives, which further dissolves the boundaries between food and medicine. Unlike the established system of pharmaceutical knowledge in Materia Medica, this knowledge flows through informal networks and shapes a more practical and concrete culture of pharmaceutical knowledge in civil society in the process of constant formation and transformation.
The commercial development of Ming and Qing society and the social and cultural changes brought about by it have been extensively and deeply studied in the field of Ming and Qing history, and "Medicine for Things" starts from medicinal materials and profoundly discusses the changes brought about by the market and money in the field of knowledge. The flourishing of the medicinal trade dissolved the authority of the central government, literati and healers on pharmaceutical knowledge, and brought us to a more local, practical and folk field of knowledge. One of the recent trends in the study of the history of science has been the focus on the non-elite quest for natural things and knowledge, which understands scientific research as a practical activity, and the field of knowledge production has shifted from scholars' study halls and laboratories to fields, markets and workshops. For Chinese researchers in the history of science, exploring the intellectual traditions of non-elite groups has to face the limitations of data. Most of the "scientific and technological" literature that survived during the traditional Chinese period came from elites, which required researchers to either expand their horizons for collecting information or update the way they read traditional documents. Recent research by Andrew Schonebaum has demonstrated the wealth of folk medical knowledge in manuscript medical books, popular novels and plays, while Bian He has unearthed the interaction and tension between elite and non-elite intellectual traditions by perusing traditional "elite" literature. This requires researchers to be more theoretically conscious and keen,to make no predetermined value judgments about the two intellectual traditions, and to observe the knowledge construction process from specific practical activities.
Yu Theory: The Cultural Map of Natural Knowledge in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
In the concluding remarks, "Medicine for Things" quotes a passage from the Qing Dynasty's "Medicine Drama" "Medicine Society Diagram", "Even if you don't use living medicine every day, you are willing to forget about living medicine and encourage joyful recitation, then everyone knows its medicine, that is, everyone knows its nature." The title of the book, Know Your Remedies, may come from the "Knowing Medicine." On the one hand, "knowledge" expresses knowledge, on the other hand, it is the cognition of drugs and the practice of seeking knowledge. This book starts from Materia Medica and Medicine, but the foothold is the change of knowledge culture in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Reading through the book, the power of the market and money has been shaping the circulation of materials and the production of knowledge, and the author has a consistent concern for the production of knowledge between folk and local. The author has already explained the innovation of "Medicine as a Thing" in the field of pharmaceutical history and medical history, and here I will briefly talk about its inspiration and related thinking on the study of the history of science in China.
Nowadays, the understanding of "science" in the history of science is becoming more and more diverse, and it is no longer "science" in the strict Western sense, but the practical behavior of understanding and exploration of natural knowledge in different societies and cultures (that is, plural "scientific" sciences). In this context, the "Needham problem" may seem outdated, but the history of Science in China does have a long way to go to surpass the "Needham problem". How to get rid of the discourse framework of the Western scientific revolution and reconstruct the evolution process and "paradigm shift" of China's science and technology itself? This is a difficult problem for researchers. Carla Nappi's research on the Compendium of Materia Medica and Dagmar Sch fer's research on Tiangong Kaiwu both unearthed unique thinking and cognitive patterns of Chinese thought and culture towards natural objects and technologies from their respective professional/technical texts. Medicine for Things shows us another possibility. Traditional knowledge of herbs and medicines is not only about treatment, it is also the knowledge and practice of different groups to explore natural things and their relationship with people and the universe. We may call this orientation "natural history", but we do not have to evaluate the development and rise and fall of Chinese Materia Medica by European naturalistic standards. Starting from local ideological resources, the author explores the competition and pulling of two knowledge paradigms, "Confucian character and material learning" and "professional skills of healers", which are both influenced and challenged by practical knowledge from the market and folk fields. The Chinese Materia Medica tradition did not decline after Li Shizhen, but underwent another profound cognitive change. What does this change mean for China's own "scientific" tradition? This is still a question that researchers need to continue to explore.
Of course, talking about the evolution of Chinese science itself does not mean ignoring a comparative and global perspective. As part of global history, the history of Ming and Qing China was influenced by external factors and shaped the course of global history in the same period. For nearly two decades, overseas Chinese history researchers have been working to place ming and qing history in the broader context of "early modernity." The term "early modern" (also translated as "early modern") refers to the period of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) that may reflect her broader academic concerns. How to define China's "early modernity" and respond to the "Needham problem" are also two sides of the same coin, both related to the issue of the periodization of Chinese history. In her research on Bon Cao, Bian He shows the significance of the intellectual and cultural changes of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and she prefers to define early modernity in terms of China's own historical process. From this point of view, the next step may be to continue to discuss the positioning of this history in the history of global science, and whether the changes in the intellectual world of Ming and Qing China were as deeply involved in the history of the early modern world as the economic and social fields?
In addition to the methodological significance at the macro level, I would like to finally propose two specific research-level considerations. First of all, the author's research on Materia Medica literature has brought us a very different historical narrative, which prompts us to change the way we interpret and understand traditional scientific and technological literature. While a close reading of the content of the text is important, the exploration of authorship and intent, the mode of compilation, the type of text, and the publication and circulation cannot be ignored. In other words, it is necessary to understand the text in the practical process of its formation and dissemination. Second, the intellectual traditions of the elite and the non-elite are not diametrically opposed, and the two are often in interaction, and constantly reshape the cultural map of natural knowledge in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the field of Chinese social history and historical anthropology, the so-called "big traditions" and "small traditions" have been deeply explored, and the study of civil society and mass culture has also become a grand view. Relatively speaking, we still know very little about the natural knowledge and technological traditions of non-elite groups in China's history, and we still have insufficient excavation of their historical significance. "Medicine for Things" shows keen insight into this problem, but due to the nature of the data, the breadth and depth of the discussion of local and folk knowledge culture are still insufficient. More than thirty years after the first English edition of Popular Culture in the Late Chinese Empire, a Chinese translation of this seminal collection of essays has finally been published, but it does not involve a discussion of natural knowledge and technology. However, over the past thirty years, the study of the public and folk culture in the Ming and Qing dynasties has unearthed a large number of folk literature, many of which are related to science and technology and medical treatment. Researchers of the history of science and technology may learn from relevant literature interpretation and research methods to make up for the missing link in this traditional knowledge cultural map.