Overview
- Presents first transnational history of a medicinal fungus, highlighting transformation of knowledge
- Combines transnational history, natural history and the history of science and medicine
- Contributes to our understanding of the globalisation of modern scientific enterprise
Part of the book series: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History (MBSMH)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book explores the dissemination of knowledge around Chinese medicinal substances from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries in a global context. The author presents a microhistory of the caterpillar fungus, a natural, medicinal substance initially used by Tibetans no later than the fifteenth century and later assimilated into Chinese materia medica from the eighteenth century onwards. Tracing the transmission of the caterpillar fungus from China to France, Britain, Russia and Japan, the book investigates the tensions that existed between prevailing Chinese knowledge and new European ideas about the caterpillar fungus. Emerging in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe, these ideas eventually reached communities of scientists, physicians and other intellectuals in Japan and China. Seeking to examine why the caterpillar fungus engaged the attention of so many scientific communities across the globe, the author offers a transnational perspective on the making of modern Europeannatural history and Chinese materia medica.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Di Lu is a historian of medicine and modern science. He studied at the University of Kent and University College London, and served as a Thomas Arthur Arnold Fellow, Dan David Scholar, and Zvi Yavetz Fellow at Tel Aviv University. His research explores the transnational history of medicine and natural history, with a specific focus on cross-cultural exchanges of medicinal substances and species between East Asia and the West from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949
Book Subtitle: A Microhistory of the Caterpillar Fungus
Authors: Di Lu
Series Title: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-24722-4Published: 08 February 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-24725-5Published: 08 February 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-24723-1Published: 11 March 2023
Series ISSN: 2947-9142
Series E-ISSN: 2947-9150
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 294
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: World History, Global and Transnational History, History of Medicine, History of China, History of Science