Yan Liu

My first monograph, titled "Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China," was published in June 2021 by the University of Washington Press. The book offers a cultural history of poisons as healing agents in the formative age of Chinese pharmacology (200–800), highlighting the shifting boundary between medicines and poisons as shaped by technical, political, and cultural conditions.

"Healing with Poisons" is freely available in an open access edition, thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University at Buffalo Libraries. Click the link here:
https://uw.manifoldapp.org/projects/healing-with-poisons

Propelled by the flourishing Silk Road, a wide range of aromatics entered the Sinitic world from India, Southeast Asia, and Persia in the first millennium CE. This article offers a cultural biography of saffron (yujin xiang), a plant of Kashmiri and Persian origins that was imported into the Sinitic world starting in the fifth century. By studying a nexus of medical writers, Buddhist monks, traders, and envoys who participated in the circulation and deployment of saffron, I explore the process of knowledge-making that endowed the aromatic with assorted uses in Tang society. To understand and utilize the fragrant substance, Chinese actors regularly aligned it with preconceived notions in their own cultural repertoire. I argue that the transmission of saffron and its associated knowledge across cultural spheres was a dynamic process of negotiation between the novel and the classical, the foreign and the domestic, the exotic and the familiar.

This article surveys the history of poisons in premodern China and Europe. It reviews the existing literature on the study of poisons and offers comparative insights into the foundational ideas of poisons in China and Europe as well as their connections to disease, alchemy, politics, and gender.

The article is available here: https://lps.library.cmu.edu/ETHOS/article/id/468/

This article explores the history of mercury in Chinese medicine and alchemy. It highlights the transformative power of mercury, making it a key substance in the cure of sickness and in imparting immortality. The article employs a digital platform called “Shorthand” that integrates words and images with interactive features.

The article is available here:
https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n7034/html/08-fluid-being/index.html

This article examines a salient medical practice in medieval China: healing by incanta-tion. Focusing on the seventh century, when the status of incantatory healing reached its apex, I show how the Tang court incorporated the technique into its medical institutions and how physicians used it to treat diverse illnesses. In particular, this article investigates incantation from an etiological perspective. By studying the incanta-tory remedies of the famous physician Sun Simiao, I reveal an etiological eclecticism that encompassed both demonic and functional causes of illness. This demonstrates a strong practical sensibility in Sun's works. A further study of vermin (particularly worms), which were etiologically related yet different from demons, shows the entan-glement of the two etiologies that tied the activity of worms to the physiology of the body. These observations suggest that medieval Chinese medicine often involved the working of multiple etiologies in a linked and dynamic manner.

This article examines the culture of poisons in ancient China, identifying their dual roles in healing and killing. It further compares ancient Chinese and Greek pharmacies, revealing both similarities and divergence in the understanding of poisons.

This is a short piece for the general public that I wrote for the online open-access forum Asian Medicine Zone (http://www.asianmedicinezone.com/). It is based on a talk I delivered at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Denver, 2019. For a more elaborate study of this topic, please see Chapter 5 of my book.

Here is the link to the piece:
http://www.asianmedicinezone.com/chinese-east-asian/understanding-efficacy-yan-in-tang-china/

This is a short piece for the general public that I wrote for the online open-access forum The Recipes Project (https://recipes.hypotheses.org/).

Here is the link to the piece: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/10446

A more in-depth study of a transcultural history of saffron in premodern China will be published in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in 2022.

This is a short piece that I wrote for the online open-access forum The Recipes Project (https://recipes.hypotheses.org/). It offers a case study of gelsemium, a highly poisonous herb, and reflects on the local adaptation of medical knowledge.

Here is the link to the piece: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/8065

This course surveys the history of Asia from ancient times to 1600, covering the regions of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea), South Asia (mainly India), and to a lesser degree, Southeast and Central Asia. It aims to provide students with the general knowledge of the civilizations emerged from these regions, exploring their political culture, characteristics of the society, religious practices, as well as the features of science, technology, and medicine. In particular, the course focuses on the interconnections and sometimes fragmentation of these regions and their ties to the rest of the world throughout history, as mediated by the movement of ideas, texts, people, and things.

This course surveys Chinese medical history from antiquity to the present. It starts with a look at Chinese medicine in the contemporary world, exploring its unique features, diverse practices, and debated efficacy. It then goes back to history, studying the foundational ideas in Chinese medicine and their evolution over time. Particular attention will be directed to the perception of illness, the body, and medicinal substances. Furthermore, it explores the diverse and miscellaneous practices of Chinese medicine in society through the lens of religious healing, state regulation, medical practitioners, gender and sexuality, and its interplay with the world. Finally, it examines in the more recent past how Chinese medicine interacted with Western medicine and how it reinvented itself during this contested process. Overall, this course seeks to not only enrich our understanding of Chinese medicine in the past, but also utilize historical knowledge to illuminate our ways of living today.

This course probes the history of food in Asia, exploring both the rich culture of food within Asia and its fast spread to the rest of the world in recent past. Topics covered include the techniques of cooking, the religious meanings of food, regional features, food trade, food and colonialism, food and national identity, and Asian food in America. In the end, the course seeks to use the study of dishes and drinks in Asia as a gateway to not just understand the fabric of Asian history and society but also illuminate our dietary habits and ways of living here and now.

By examining the history of poisons through twelve case studies, this seminar explores the complexity of drug materiality by contemplating the intimate relations between poisons, medicines, and panaceas. Using specific poisons as the anchor of analysis, the course investigates the social fabric and cultural milieu in which particular ideas and practices of poisons emerged, flourished, or diminished. One key aspect of the course is to introduce a comparative perspective to the study of medical history. By studying above topics in both European/American and Asian contexts, the course seeks to identify surprising parallels, striking differences, and hidden connections between these traditions.

This seminar seeks to explore the rich cultural history of the body by reading monographs in the fields of history, anthropology, and literature, which encompass both theoretical analyses and empirical studies of the body in varied contexts. The course focuses on, but not limited to the history of medicine, and scrutinizes issues of sick bodies, dissected bodies, gendered bodies, racial bodies, disabled bodies, among others. In addition, the course discusses extensively the history of the body beyond the Western world, and explores how the body is differently understood and practiced in Asia and in Africa.

This course offers an introduction to recent approaches in the study of Asian history. Covering East, South, and Southeast Asia and focusing on the changeful and tumultuous age from the early modern period to the present, the course selects monographs from disparate disciplines (history, anthropology, literature, political science) and explores a wide range of topics including science, technology, and medicine, politics, colonialism, urban/rural culture, modernity, gender, and global history. By interrogating the conceptual and historical meanings of Asia, the seminar seeks to probe the unique local features of Asian cultures and societies on the one hand, and their intimate, and often unexpected connections to the rest of the world, on the other. The ultimate goal of this course, therefore, is not just to deepen the historical and historiographical understanding of Asia, but also to bring a heightened awareness of Asian studies, at both theoretical and empirical levels, that would benefit each student's own research regardless of its regional focus.

This is a three-part video on incantatory healing in medieval China. Part of the research in this video was published in my 2019 article in "Asian Medicine."

Here is the link to the video: https://shorts.fas.harvard.edu/2012-winners. Enjoy!