A catalog of benevolent items
Li Shizhen's Compendium of classical Chinese knowledge
- ISBN: 9780520404243
- Editorial: University of California Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2024
- Lugar de la edición: Berkeley (CA). Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
- Encuadernación: Rústica
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 410
- Idiomas: Inglés
Distills ten volumes, four dictionaries, and 1,800 years of knowledge into an authoritative introduction to the Ben cao gang mu.
The Ben cao gang mu was the world's most comprehensive encyclopedia of natural history and medicine when it was published in China in 1593. In fifty-two chapters, the physician Li Shizhen recorded two millennia of medical observations, interpreting the wide-ranging uses of plants, animals, minerals, and artificial substances and including countless verbatim quotations along with his own evaluations.
Edited and translated by Paul U. Unschuld, A Catalog of Benevolent Items provides thoughtfully curated selections from the Ben cao gang mu, organized by theme. This anthology offers little-known details of China's historical knowledge of nature; traditional Chinese medicine and its theoretical foundations; social and cultural facets of ancient Chinese civilization not documented elsewhere; and the information management of a sixteenth-century Chinese scholar.
Division of items : 16 sections
Widespread culture, local customs, personal interventions
Visions of associations : from magic correlations observed in equal appearances and functions to systematized correspondences of the yin and yang and Five Phases doctrines
Cosmic structures : Numbers, time and cardinal directions
Demons and spirits, shamans and exorcism
Involvement of Buddhists and Daoists
The human body : Its organs and paths of entrance
Standing up to nature : cosmetics, body enhancement, anti-aging
Social and natural conditioning : gender and sex
The significance of reproduction : fertility and pregnancy, abortion and birth
Case records : assessment and justification of therapeutic strategies
Neglected heritage : tool-supported therapy
Sources of therapeutic expertise : beggar and sovereign, chance encounters and dreams
Dealing with poison
Raw materials found in nature and items produced from them
Explanation of names
"Further research is required" : controversy and judgment
Sample text plant monograph : chai hu, sickle-leaved hare's ear
Appendix
Glossary
Selected entries from the Ben Cao Gang Mu.
Translated, edited, and introduced by Paul U. Unschuld.
