Skip to Main Content

Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China

Online ISBN:
9780691189048
Print ISBN:
9780691179049
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China

He Bian
He Bian
Princeton University
Find on
Published online:
17 September 2020
Published in print:
14 April 2020
Online ISBN:
9780691189048
Print ISBN:
9780691179049
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

This book 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, the book 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, the book 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.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close