Know Your Remedies - by He Bian (Paperback)

About the Book

"Traditional Chinese medicine has been practiced in various forms for more than a thousand years. Practitioners may heal patients with herbal remedies, acupuncture, massage, exercise, and modified diets. Even today, herbal medicines are of particular importance; Chinese pharmacies containing a vast array of remedies can be found in cities and towns the world over. This book is an interdisciplinary and cultural history of the concept of "pharmacy," both the drugs themselves and the trade in medicine, during the Ming and Qing dynasties of early modern China. This was a time of change for traditional Chinese medicine and for Chinese science as a whole. Many historians have argued that sixteenth-century China was a high point of scientific inquiry, followed by a period of intellectual decline. Though political and intellectual shifts led to a crisis of authority over pharmaceutical knowledge in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Bian argues that this period of supposed intellectual decline was in fact characterized by numerous efforts to further refine and spread the pharmacological knowledge amassed in the Ming dynasty. She draws on a wide range of primary sources, but particularly through the study of bencao (pronounced "pen ts'ao"), a genre of encyclopaedic works, often called matteria medica or pharmacopoeia in the West, that collect information on medicinal substances. As the early modern Chinese Empire expanded and print culture became more widespread, the pursuit of medical remedies became a significant commercial enterprise. The author connects theory and practice of pharmacy during the Ming and Qing dynasties to broader developments in intellectual history, book culture, commerce, and taxation"--

Book Synopsis

A cultural history of the concept of pharmacy, both the material nature of drugs and the trade in medicine, in early modern China

Know Your Remedies presents a panoramic inquiry into China's early modern cultural transformation through the lens of pharmacy. In the history of science and civilization in China, pharmacy--as a commercial enterprise and as a branch of classical medicine--resists easy characterization. While China's long tradition of documenting the natural world through state-commissioned pharmacopeias, known as bencao, dwindled after the sixteenth century, the ubiquitous presence of Chinese pharmacy shops around the world today testifies to the vitality of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Rejecting narratives of intellectual stagnation or an unchanging folk culture, He Bian argues that pharmacy's history in early modern China can best be understood as a dynamic interplay between elite and popular culture.

Beginning with decentralizing trends in book culture and fiscal policy in the sixteenth century, Bian reveals pharmacy's central role in late Ming public discourse. Fueled by factional politics in the early 1600s, amateur investigation into pharmacology reached peak popularity among the literati on the eve of the Qing conquest in the mid-seventeenth century. The eighteenth century witnessed a systematic reclassification of knowledge, as the Qing court turned away from pharmacopeia in favor of a demedicalized natural history. Throughout this time, growth in long-distance trade enabled the rise of urban pharmacy shops, generating new knowledge about the natural world.

Bringing together a wealth of primary sources, Know Your Remedies makes an essential contribution to the study of Chinese history and the history of medicine.

Review Quotes

"Deeply researched and insightful."---Yiyun Huang, Journal of Asian Studies

"An entirely novel approach to a known topic. . . . Read this book with interest and pleasure to begin to appreciate the development of a complex nation over two thousand years of conquering, and being conquered by, people of diverse faiths and national structures."---Tony Dayan, British Society for the History of Medicine

"He Bian ingeniously uses conventional historical sources to uncover the hidden story of nonelite knowing of material remedies."---Xiaomeng Liu, Exchange

"Honorable Mention for the Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize, China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies"

About the Author

He Bian is assistant professor of history and East Asian studies at Princeton University.