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Cooking up Fine Remedies: On the Culinary Aesthetic in a Sixteenth-Century Chinese Materia Medica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Vivienne Lo  and
Penelope Barrett
Penelope Barrett
Affiliation:
The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 210 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK
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Flesh of the Quail

Sweet, bland, non-poisonous.

Not to be eaten before the month of May, eaten with pig's liver it will cause blackheads, with mushrooms one develops haemorrhoids.

A visceral tonic and vitalizer. Makes the bones and muscles strong and able to endure cold and heat. It relieves inflammation. With ginger and red mung bean it cures diarrhoea and dysentery. Fried in cream it is fattening to the belly, but it is good for reducing the abdomen swollen on account of water retention. For the chronic disorders of children.

Type
Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , 01 October 2005 , pp. 395 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 Li Shizhen (Ming), Bencao gangmu , Xin jiaozhu ben, ed. Liu Hengru et al., 2 vols, Beijing, Huaxia chubanshe, 2002 (hereafter BCGM), vol. 2, 47 juan, p. 1731 , tr. Bernard E Read, Chinese materia medica: avian drugs, Peiping, Peking Natural History Bulletin, Dec. 1932, (hereafter Read, Avian drugs), Rubric 278 (unpaginated). Our emphasis. As will be evident in the footnotes, we have made frequent use of Read's lively and authoritative English versions of BCGM, which reflect a lifetime's work on the subject. Where translations by Read were not available, or were too free for the purposes of this paper, we offer our own literal translations.

2 Andrew Boorde, The first boke of the introduction of knowledge and a compendyous regyment, ed. F J Furnivall, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 10 London, Early English Text Society, 1870, p. 277; from the edition of 1547. As quoted in Andrew Wear, Knowledge and practice in English medicine, 1500–1680, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 170.

3 Thomas Cogan, The haven of health: chiefely gathered for the comfort of students, and consequently of all those that have a care of their health, amplified upon five words of Hippocrates, written Epid. 6, Labor, cibus, potio, somnus, Venus … Hereunto is added a preservation from the pestilence, with a short censure of the late sicknes at Oxford of Thomas Cogan, London, printed by Henrie Midleton, for William Norton, 1584, p. 98, as cited in Wear, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 170.

4 J B van Helmont, Oriatrike: or, physick refined, trans. J[ohn B] C[handler] (1st ed., 1662), London, 1664, pp. 450–55, on p. 451, as quoted in Wear, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 402. Van Helmont did not value the skills required to blend a gentle and effective recipe. As representative of the Ancients in the debate between Ancients and Moderns, he developed a medical system based on the chemical principles of simples and was opposed to the Galenic physicians who served up compounds.

5 Calculation from Paul Unschuld, Medicine in China: a history of pharmaceutics, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986, p. 149. Li Shizhen totals the number of recipes in the introduction to each of his sections.

6 The translation of wei as “sapor” emphasizes the range of medical as well as culinary virtues designated by the term.

7 Roel Sterckx, ‘Le pouvoir des sens: sagesse et perception sensorielle en Chine ancienne’, in R Lanselle (ed.), Du pouvoir, Cahier du Centre Marcel Granet 1, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2003, pp. 71–92; see also Roel Sterckx, ‘Food and philosophy in early China’, in Roel Sterckx (ed.), Of tripod and palate: food politics and religion in traditional China, London, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2005.

8Lüshi chunqiu (Mr Lü's Spring and Autumn): 14.2 Ben wei (Fundamental sapors), compiled under the auspices of Lü Buwei (290–235 BCE). Translations taken or adapted from John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, The annals of Lu Buwei, Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 309–11. Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi compiled under the auspices of Lü Buwei (290–235 BCE), ed. Chen Qiyou , Shanghai, Xuelin, 1984, p. 741.

9 Angus Graham, Disputers of the Tao, La Salle, ILL, Open Court, 1989, pp. 314–70.

10 Kenneth Albala, ‘Dietary regime in the Renaissance’, in Malloch Room Newsletter, Jan. 1994, 7: 1–2.

11 Mark Grant, Galen on food and diet, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 62.

12 Owen Powell, Galen: On the properties of foodstuffs, Cambridge University Press, 2003, K524, p. 57 and K639, p. 106.

13 See, for example, G E R Lloyd, The revolutions of wisdom, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1987, pp. 194–8. In a personal communication, Lloyd also stresses that the dominance of tetrads in the European tradition tends to be overstated. Although Galen favoured four humours, four elements and so on, there were many rival theories about which were the important humours—and what humours actually were.

14 “Power and Effect” is the rubric in each entry under which Fuchs describes the medical indications of the plants. See Leonhart Fuchs, The new herbal of 1543 (Das Kräuterbuch von 1543), Cologne and London, Verlag Taschen, 2001.

15 The theory of signatures is associated with the work of the Swiss naturalist Paracelsus (1493–1541).

16 Knoblock and Riegel, op. cit., note 8 above, bks 1–12 and p. 309. For a discussion of the late medieval introduction of comprehensive systematic correspondences, see Ulrike Unschuld, ‘Traditional Chinese pharmacology: an analysis of its development in the thirteenth century’, Isis, 1977, 68: 224–48. See also Donald Harper, ‘Iatromancy, diagnosis, and prognosis in early Chinese medicine’, in Elisabeth Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese medicine, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 99–120, on pp. 107–8. We follow Angus Graham in the translation of xing as “agents” rather than the more exclusive and temporal term “phases” in consideration of its wider connotations of active process, i.e. the quality of wetting and sinking associated with water or the flaming and rising associated with fire. Cf. Graham, op. cit., note 9 above, p. 326.

17 Paul Buell and Eugene Anderson, A soup for the Qan, London and New York, Kegan Paul International, 2000, pp. 575–91.

18 Joseph Needham, et al., Science and civilisation in China, vol. 6, Biology and botanical technology, part 1, Botany, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 308.

19 Kim Taylor, ‘Medicine of revolution: Chinese medicine in early Communist China, 1945–63’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2000, pp. 108–83; see also Volker Scheid, Chinese medicine in contemporary China: plurality and synthesis, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 65–106, esp. p. 70.

20 BCGM, vol. 1, p. 6.

21 Robert Hymes, ‘Not quite gentlemen? Doctors in Sung and Yuan’, Chinese Science 1987, 8: 9–76; see also Asaf Goldschmidt, ‘The Song discontinuity: rapid innovation in northern Song dynasty medicine’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, 2005, 1 (1): 53–90.

22 Chen Hsiu-fen, ‘Medicine, society, and the making of madness in imperial China’, PhD thesis, University of London, April 2003, p. 46; see also Yi-Li Wu, ‘The bamboo grove monastery and popular gynecology in Qing China’, Late Imperial China, June 2000, 21 (1): 41–76; see also Marta Hanson, ‘Merchants of medicine: Huizhou mercantile consciousness, morality and medical patronage in seventeenth-century China’, in Hashimoto Keizo, Catherine Jami and Lowell Skar (eds), East Asian science: tradition and beyond, Osaka, Kansai University Press, 1995, pp. 208–10.

23 Paul Unschuld and Zheng Jinsheng, ‘Manuscripts as sources in the history of Chinese medicine’, in Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen (eds), Medieval Chinese medicine, London, RoutledgeCurzon, 2005, pp. 19–44, p. 32.

24 See BCGM, vol. 1, pp. 1–7 (various prefaces); Mingshi , ed. Zhang Tingyu et al., Beijing, Zhonghua shuju, 1974, vol. 25, 299 juan, p. 7653; L Carrington Goodrich and Chaoyang Fang (eds), Dictionary of Ming biography 1378–1644, New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 859–65; Lu, Gwei-Djen, ‘China's greatest naturalist: a brief biography of Li Shih-chen’, Physis, 1966, 8: 383–92; Needham, et al., op. cit., note 18 above, pp. 308–21; Nathan Sivin, ‘Li Shih-chen’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973, vol. 8, pp. 390–8; Chang Hui-chien, Li Shih-chen—great pharmacologist, Beijing, Foreign Languages Press, 1960.

25 Georges Métailié, ‘The Bencao gangmu of Li Shizhen: an innovation in natural history?’, in Hsu (ed.), op. cit., note 16 above, pp. 221–61, on p. 242.

26 BCGM, vol. 2, juan 47, p. 1700.

27 Ibid., juan 46, p. 1688.

28 Ibid., juan 26, p. 1059.

29 “Medieval” in Chinese historical studies designates the period that roughly spans the fall of the Han dynasty in the third century CE to the tenth/eleventh centuries after the fall of the Tang dynasty. Li Shizhen's self-citation is different in scope and function from Sima Qian's postscripts in Shiji. While Sima Qian also refers to himself in the third person—as taishi (Grand Historian)—Li is present in the text both as cited authority and as commentator.

30 Timothy Brook, The confusions of pleasure: commerce and culture in Ming China, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998.

31 BCGM, vol. 2, 50 juan, p. 1817. Emphasis added.

32 Ibid., 50 juan, p. 1829. Emphasis added.

33 For a more complete summary of the literature, see Huang Hsing-tsung, Science and civilisation in China, vol. 6, Biology and biological technology, part 5, ‘Fermentations and food science’, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 126–32.

34 Tomb M1 was excavated in 1999. Wu Yang was one of the first generation of the family of the marquises of Yuanling. From the Shiji and Hanshu accounts, we know he was ennobled in 187 BCE and died in 162 BCE. The several hundred mortuary goods were poor in quality and reflected the general poverty of the area around Yuanling during the end of the Qin and beginning of Han dynasties. I am grateful to Zhang Chunlong for an unpublished report containing recipes, Zhang Chunlong and Guo Wimi, ‘Yuanling Huxishan yihao Han mu zhujian “Meishifang” ji xiangguan cailiao jieshao’ . See the general description by Vivienne Lo, in a report on the ‘International academic conference on the Changsha bamboo documents dating to Wu of the Three Kingdoms: to celebrate one hundred years of new discoveries and research into bamboo strips and silk manuscripts’, 15–19 Aug. 2001, http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/earlychina/res/confrept/changsha.html

35Dujin has not yet been identified.

36 Donald Harper, Early Chinese medical literature: the Mawangdui medical manuscripts, London, Kegan Paul International, 1998, pp. 253–4.

37Idem, ‘The cookbook in ancient and medieval China’, unpublished paper prepared for the conference on ‘Discourses and practices of everyday life in imperial China’, Columbia University, Oct. 2002.

38 Ute Engelhardt, ‘Dietetics in Tang China and the first extant works of materia dietetica’, in Hsu (ed.), op. cit., note 16 above, pp. 173–92; Donald Harper, ‘The cookbook in Ancient and Medieval China’, unpublished paper, 2002. See Hanshu (History of the former Han), juan 30, Ban Gu edition, Beijing, Zhonghua shuju, 1972, p. 1777; Sui shu , juan 34, ed. Wei Zheng et al., Beijing, Zhonghua shuju, 1973, p. 1043.

39Miao Qiyu , Qimin yaoshu jiaoshi, Beijing, Nongye chubanshe, 1982, p. 458, n. 13; and p. 475, n.30, as quoted in Harper, op. cit., note 38 above.

40 Huang, op. cit., note 33 above, p. 122.

41 Tr. David Hawkes, Ch'u Tz'u: the songs of the south, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, p. 107.

42 Powell, op. cit., note 12 above, pp. ix, 4–5.

43 “Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant/Haec tria, mens laeta, requies, moderata diaeta.” Sir John Harrington, The School of Salernum: Regimen sanitatis Salerni, English version, first publ. 1607, modern edition, Salerno, Ente provinciale per il turismo, 1953, p. 22.

44 Sterckx, ‘Le pouvoir’, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 71–92.

45 See, for example, the use of medicinal foods and moxibustion to cure the internal heat of a “gentleman” who has over-indulged in sex. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu , vol. 4, ed. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu, Beijing, Wenwu chubanshe, 1985, p. 164.

46 Catherine Despeux, ‘Interdits de nourriture en Chine/Dietary prohibitions in China’, trans. Penelope Barrett, unpublished paper.

47Zhouli , Shisanjing zhushu edition, ed. Ruan Yuan , Beijing, Yiwen yinshuguan, 2001, vol. 3, 5.72.

48 Geoffrey Lloyd, personal communication.

49 Zhangjiashan 247 hao Hanmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu, Zhangjiashan Hanmu zhujian , Beijing, Wenwu chubanshe, 2001, p. 244.

50 Tr. Harper, op. cit., note 36 above, p. 336.

51 Joanna Grant, A Chinese physician: Wang Ji and the ‘Stone Mountain medical case histories’, London, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, pp. 128–9. See also Elisabeth Hsu on this matter, ‘Pulse diagnostics in the Western Han’, in Hsu (ed.), op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 51–91, on p. 72.

52 Liu Lexian , Shuihudi Qinjian rishu yanjiu , Taibei, Wenjing chubanshe, 1993.

53 Vivienne Lo, ‘The Yellow Emperor's toad canon’, in a special edition of Asia Major, essays contributed in honour of Michael Loewe, ed. Nathan Sivin, 2001, 14 (2): 1–38; Donald Harper, ‘Dunhuang iatromantic manuscripts: P.2856 R° and P.2675 V°’, in Lo and Cullen (eds), op. cit., note 23 above, pp. 134–64.

54 Despeux, op. cit., note 46 above.

55 Sun Simiao, Beiji qianjin yaofang, modern ed., Beijing, Renmin weisheng, 1955, juan 26, pp. 464–75.

56 Ibid., p. 465. Engelhardt, op. cit., note 38 above, pp. 181–4.

57 Sun Simiao, op. cit., note 55 above, p. 464.

58 Paul Unschuld, op. cit., note 5 above, pp. 208–12.

59 This is an ancient Chinese measure, sometimes translated as a “pint” and approximately equivalent to 200 cubic centimetres. Ten sheng are equivalent to one dou .

60 Ma Jixing (ed.), Dunhuang yiyao wenxian jijiao (The Dunhuang Medical Texts Edited and Collated), Nanchang, Jiangxi guji chubanshe, 1998, p. 674.

61 Preface to Li Shizhen, Bencao gangmu by his son Li Jianyuan , BCGM, vol. 1, p. 6.

62 Métailié, op. cit., note 25 above, p. 222.

63 BCGM, vol. 2, 51 juan, p. 1850. Also translated in Bernard E Read, Chinese materia medica: animal drugs, Peiping, Peking Natural History Bulletin, 1931 (hereafter Read, Animal drugs), Rubric 352 (unpaginated). Read adds that the other precious treasures are: “Phoenix marrow, bear's paws, ape's lips, dragon's liver, tail of the carp, roasted ox and cicada cheese. Some people include dromedary hump and deer's tail.” Bernard Read's versions of Bencao gangmu have been our chief source for the identification of materia medica, supplemented by more recent medical and botanical reference works. BCGM, vol. 2, juan 51, p. 1857.

64 Despeux, op. cit, note 46 above.

65 This is an ancient Chinese measure, sometimes translated as “ounce” and approximately equivalent to 15.3g.

66 Adapted from Buell and Anderson, op. cit., note 17 above, p. 311.

67 Ibid., p. 558.

68 BCGM, vol. 2, 44 juan, pp. 1611–14 passim.

69 Ibid., 45 juan, p. 1658. Cf Bernard E Read, Chinese materia medica: turtle and shellfish drugs, Peiping, Peking Natural History Bulletin, Dec. 1937 (hereafter Read, Turtles), p. 19.

70 BCGM, vol. 2, 45 juan, p. 1661. Cf Read, Turtles, p. 26.

71 John Wilkins, Foreword to Powell, op. cit., note 12 above, p. xvi.

72 K.V1. 455, tr. Powell, op. cit., note 12 above, p. 29.

73 Wilkins, op. cit., note 71 above, p. xxi.

74 BCGM, vol. 2, 52 juan, p. 1940.

75 Ibid., 52 juan, p. 1913.

76 BCGM, vol. 2, 51 juan, p. 1909, tr. Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 403.

77 Ibid., tr. Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 403A.

78 Ibid., 52 juan, p. 1931, tr. Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 423.

79 Ibid., 52 juan, p. 1932, tr. Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 424.

80 Ibid., 52 juan, p. 1935. Translation quoted from William Cooper and Nathan Sivin, ‘Man as a medicine: pharmacological and ritual aspects of traditional therapy using drugs derived from the human body’, in Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin (eds), Chinese science: explorations of an ancient tradition, MIT East Asian Science Series, 2, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2003, p. 248.

81 BCGM, vol. 2, 52 juan, p. 1934, tr. Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 431.

82 K C Chang, ‘Ancient China’, in Kwang-Chjih Chang (ed.), Food in Chinese culture: anthropological and historical perspectives, Newhaven, Yale University Press, 1977, pp. 40–1.

83 BCGM, vol. 2, 26 juan, p. 1055.

84 Ibid, pp. 240–42.

85 Métailié, op. cit., note 25 above, p. 251.

86 In a personal communication, Geoffrey Lloyd has drawn attention to a similar association between singing and madness in some Greek diagnoses. Cf. Lloyd, op. cit., note 13 above, p. 21.

87 This is an ancient Chinese measure, sometimes translated as “pound” and approximately equivalent to 0.5kg.

88 BCGM, vol. 2, 51 juan, p. 1770.

89 Shigehisa Kuriyama, The expressiveness of the body and the divergence of Greek and Chinese medicine, New York, Zone Books, 1999, pp. 233–42.

90 BCGM, vol. 2, 26 juan, p. 1069.

91 Ibid.

92 Ibid., 26 juan, p. 1059.

93 This use of excreta clearly signals that this is a medicinal preparation rather than a culinary one. However it does not seem to fall into the category of “shocking remedies” like the Dreckapotheke of Greco-Roman medicine, or to carry the same associations of driving out pollution by means of pollution. Cf., for example, Heinrich von Staden, ‘Women and dirt’, Helios, 1992, 19: 7–30.

94 BCGM, vol. 2, 26 juan, p. 1059.

95 BCGM, vol. 2, 26 juan, p. 1069.

96 Xie Guihua, ‘Han bamboo and wooden medical records discovered in military sites from the north-western frontier regions’, in Lo and Cullen (eds), op. cit., note 23 above, pp. 78–106, esp. pp. 84–8.

97 BCGM, vol. 2, 50 juan, p. 1770.

98 Ibid., 45 juan, p. 1665.

99 Ibid., 46 juan, p. 1669.

100 Ibid., 45 juan, p. 1657.

101 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1863.

102 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1903.

103 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1896.

104 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1906.

105 Ibid., 50 juan, p. 1769, tr. Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 322.

106 Ibid., 47 juan, p. 1696.

107 Eugene Anderson, The food of China, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988, p. 97 et passim.

108 BCGM , vol. 2, 27 juan, p. 1127.

109 Ibid., 23 juan, p. 997.

110 Françoise Sabban, ‘China’, in Kenneth F Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas (eds), The Cambridge world history of food, 2 vols, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000, vol. 2, pp. 1165–75, on pp. 1169–71; see also Zheng Jinsheng, ‘Dietary hygiene and allied literature in the Ming dynasty of China’, www.cintcm.com/e_cintcm/e_forum/dietary%20hygiene%20and%20allied%20literature.htm

111 BCGM, vol. 2, 28 juan, p. 1143.

112 Ibid., 28 juan, p. 1145.

113 Ibid., 48 juan, p. 1728, tr. Read, Avian drugs, Rubric 270.

114 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1903.

115 We have followed Read's translation since, despite an apparent error in transcription, he identifies the bird from the characteristics listed (a bald and vicious water bird). BCGM , vol. 2, 47 juan, p. 1695, tr. Read, Avian drugs, Rubric 249.

116 BCGM, vol. 2, 45 juan, pp. 1665–6.

117 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1848.

118 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1857.

119 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1880.

120 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1882

121 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1888.

122 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1889.

123 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1902.

124 Ibid., 47 juan, p. 1699.

125 Ibid., 47 juan, p. 1733.

126 Ibid., 47 juan, p. 1702.

127 Ibid., 47 juan, p. 1700.

128 Ibid., 47 juan, p. 1731.

129 Ibid. Smartweed, or water pepper, is also listed as a culinary and medicinal herb used by Culpeper.

130 BCGM, vol. 2, 50 juan, p. 1791.

131 Ibid., 51 juan, p. 1902. See Read, Animal drugs, Rubric 392.

132 Translated in Buell and Anderson, op. cit., note 17 above, p. 295.

133 See, for example, Zhuo Zhao and George Ellis, The healing cuisine of China, Vermont, Healing Arts Press, 1998.

134 Wear, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 170.

135 BCGM, vol. 2, 51 juan, p. 1888.

136 See, for example, Judith Farquhar, Appetites: food and sex in post-socialist China, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2002.

137 BCGM, vol. 2, 46 juan, p. 1671.

138 Joanna Grant, op. cit., note 51 above, pp. 116–40, passim.

139 Glen Dudbridge, The tale of Li Wa: study and critical edition of a Chinese story from the ninth century, London, Ithaca Press, 1983, p. 167.

140 Christopher Cullen, ‘Patients and healers in late imperial China: evidence from the Jingpingmei’, Hist. Sci., 1993, 31: 99–150, p. 108.

141 Li Yu, The carnal prayer mat, trans. Patrick Hanan, New York, Ballantine Books, 1990, ch. 6, p. 100; ch. 8, p. 120.

142 Chang (ed.), op. cit., note 82 above, p. 11.

143 Fa-ti Fan, ‘Victorian naturalists in China: science and informal empire’, Br. J. Hist. Sci., 2003, 36 (1): 1–26, p. 14.