Yan Liu

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.