The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

TAKEN FROM NATURE: SINO-BRITISH

MEDICAL ENCOUNTERS IN THE EARLY

MODERN PEIROD

A Dissertation in

History

by

Miaosi Zhang

© 2020 Miaosi Zhang

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2020 The dissertation of Miaosi Zhang was reviewed and approved by the following:

Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

Kathlene Baldanza Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies

Daniel Chapin Beaver Associate Professor in History and English

Erica Fox Brindley Professor of Asian Studies, History, and Philosophy

Michael Kulikowski Professor of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Head, Department of History

ii ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the exchange of medicinal plants and medical practices between and Britain in the early modern period. Using knowledge of materia medica such as tea, rhubarb, china root, and camphor as the entry point and drawing on archival and primary source materials collected in Britain and China and in Chinese and English, I show that scientific and medical research was inextricably bound up with commercial interests for the British Empire. Missionaries and explorers introduced China’s achievements in medicine and its practitioners’ rich knowledge in materia medica to European audience. The long-term trade routes led European merchants, physicians, and apothecaries into the global intellectual pursuit of medical . All of these contributed to competitive voices in creating, circulating, and consuming knowledge related to materia medica and medical practice from China. The appropriation of Chinese medicinal plants in early-modern England was forged through the creation of scholarly, commercial, and cultural discourses on the commodities. This particular mode of transmission was significant to understand the conflicts between the prerequisite knowledge through texts and the actual experience of consuming the commodities in the commodification of exotic remedies in early-modern England. The process also revealed that, learned physicians and domestic practitioners were equally crucial to the appropriation of exotic remedies. Learned physicians served as intermediaries between lay practitioners and exotic ingredients by accommodating these exotic herbs in through vernacular medical writings. Domestic practitioners, enforcing these remedies in daily life, made them part of early-modern English medical culture.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures v

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. Ordering the Natural World: Construction of Western Intellectual Tradition of Chinese Herbal Medicine 19

Chapter 2. Trading Knowledge of botany and materia medica in eighteenth century 50

Chapter 3. The Hope of Health: British medical encounters with exotic practices and remedies 95

Chapter 4. Legitimating Tea Drinking in British culture 131

Conclusion 186

Bibliography 197

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Chinese fruit trees from Michael Boym 28

Figure 2: Collection of Chinese , including Rhubarb, ginseng, and tea. J. B. Du Halde, 1738. 34

Figure 3: Joseph-François Lafitau, American ginseng vs. Chinese ginseng, 1718. 46

Figure 4: Chinese or Turkish rhubarb (), c. 1842. 69

Figure 5: Frontispiece of Directions for bringing over seeds and plants from the East-Indies and other distant countries, in a state of vegetation, 1770. 80

Figure 6: Tea bush, Athanasius Kircher, China Illustrata, Amsterdam: 1667. 137

Figure 7: Frontispiece of An essay upon the nature and qualities of tea, 1705. 157

v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Ronnie Po- chia Hsia. Thank you for taking me under your supervision, for encouraging and guiding me through this journey. Prof. Hsia offered constructive criticisms and suggestions to direct the way of my work, which becomes the most precious rewarding of my intellectual path. Thank you for your patience, enthusiasm and invaluable advice throughout this process.

I would like to express my gratefulness to Prof. Kathlene Baldanza, the meetings and conversations with you in the past a few years were so important in inspiring me to think outside the box. Thank you for being generous with your time in reading and commenting all my drafts chapters. I appreciate for your encouragement and providing information on conferences, workshops, and fellowships related to my research. I would also like to thank Prof. Dan Beaver and Prof. Brindley for taking part in my dissertation committee, and for providing thoughtful advice and comments, and allowing me to think the broader picture of my research.

I want to thank my fellow Ph.D. students for your support throughout the years. I thank my cohorts Mallory Huard, ShaVonte Mills, Christopher Valesey, Benjamin Herman, Cecily Zander, and Samantha Billing for your friendship and all the stimulating discussions. I thank Yanan Qizhi, Xiangyu Xu, Kwok-leong Tang, Hsin-fang Wu for your encouragement and support.

I will not be able to finish this dissertation without the financial support of some institutions. Penn State’s History Department provided me with scholarships to conduct archival research in London and . The Center for Humanities and Information at Penn State granted me one-year of predoctoral fellowship, which allowed me to devote all my time in doing research and writing.

Finally, I would like to thank my parents for always being there for me, for encouraging me and believing in me. I cannot imagine going through this journey without your love, kind words and support. Without my parents this moment would never have come.

vi Introduction

In 1769, John Coakley Lettsom (1744-1815) completed his doctoral thesis concerning the

natural history and medical properties of tea at the Leyden University. During his lifetime,

Lettsom was a physician in London, but most of all, a keen botanist, who actively exchanged

living plants and seeds with his contacts all over the world. Three years after his graduation from

Leyden, Lettsom’s dissertation was published, entitled The Natural History of the Tea-tree: With

Observations on the Medical Qualities of Tea, and Effects of Tea-drinking, which positioned him

at the center of an intense, long-term debate over the medical and social effects of tea in the

European world.1 Not only because he rectified Carl Linnaeus’s classification of tea as two

distinct species, scientific investigations he conducted to prove virtues and deleterious effects of

tea-drinking that had been debated by physicians since the late seventeenth century, but also he

drew our attention to effects of tea-drinking on the British diet in general. At the end of this

work, Lettsom concluded,

“So far therefore tea, if not too fine, if not drank too hot, nor in too great quantities, is perhaps preferable to any other vegetable infusion we know. And if we take into consideration likewise, its known enlivening energy, it will appear that our attachment to tea, is not merely from its being costly or fashionable, but from it superiority in taste and effects to most other vegetables.”2

Lettsom’s conclusion signaled several medical and cultural effects of tea-drinking on

British society in the eighteenth century. First of all, tea was promoted by some medical

authorities as an herbal panacea. Medical writers repetitively described its countless curative

virtues, including a wide range of ailments, such as colds, headaches, asthma, indigestion, and

1 Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, John Coakley Lettsom, Memoirs of the life and writings of the late John Coakley Lettsom: with a selection from his correspondence. London: 1817. Penelope Hunting, “Dr John Coakley Lettsom, Plant-Collector of Camberwell.” Garden History 34, no. 2 (2006): 221-35. 2 John Coakley Lettsom, The Natural History of the Tea-tree: With Observations on the Medical Qualities of Tea, and Effects of Tea-drinking, London: 1772. 50.

1 constipation. The second influence was the accommodation of tea in British alimentary

structures, principally the ways to consume it and the general effect on the European diet and

nature of meals. Thirdly, tea, along with several other exotic remedies, had specific effects that

can substitute indigenous herbal remedies. Lettsom claimed that this beverage could serve as an

alternative to other “vegetable infusions” with which Europeans were familiar.

This dissertation examines the cultural encounters between China and Britain in the early

modern period, specifically analyze the encounters of medical knowledge and natural history

through scholarly, commercial, diplomatic activities. The early modern period witnessed a

moment of booming cross-cultural contact and exchange, initiated by academic interests,

commercial and colonial ambitions, resulted in the introduction of a large number of botanical

commodities to the European world for commercial and medical uses. The collecting and

reception of medicinal commodities from China in early modern England not only required the

individual to analyze and utilize these imported commodities through scientific observation and

experimentation, but also the efforts of English consumers to accentuate the commodity as daily

practices, rituals, and habits. The appropriation of Chinese medicinal plants in early-modern

England was forged through the creation of scholarly, commercial, and cultural discourses on the commodities.

In this dissertation, I structured the transmission of medical knowledge between England and China into several stages. The first stage was textualization, a process of constructing the academic discourse of Chinese herbal remedies that preluded the consuming experience of

English people. Through the early efforts of missionary and explorers in identifying, cataloguing, and translating, they constructed an intellectual tradition of Chinese herbal remedies, which further inspired the European pursuit of new medicinal substances. The second stage concerned

2 the commodification and domestication of exotic medicinal plants, a multidimensional process involving medical and social debates, the appropriating the commodities in English households during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The final stage concerned the consumerization of Chinese herbal remedies, a process revealing the encountering of predominant textual knowledge and individual experimental attempts with exotic remedies. I argue that this mode of transmission was essential to reveal the conflicts between the prerequisite knowledge through texts and the actual experience of consuming the commodities in the commodification of exotic remedies in early-modern England. The process also revealed that, learned physicians and domestic practitioners were equally crucial to the appropriation of exotic remedies. Learned physicians served as intermediaries between lay practitioners and exotic ingredients by accommodating these exotic herbs in through vernacular medical writings.

The first stage of the trajectory was the translation and textualization of natural history and medical knowledge from China through the works of Jesuit missionaries and explorers. The introduction of knowledge related to novel and unfamiliar herbs and medical practices further stimulated European interest in exotic herbal medicine and expectation for the potential therapeutic effects of those herbs. In the process of their translation and writing, the academic discourse about Chinese herbs, or more broadly, “exotic” herbs, were formed. The cross-cultural medical exchange between China and the West has drawn considerable attention from scholars, who claim that Chinese medicine was the cultural lens for Westerners to understand China and

Chinese society.3 Linda Barnes’s compelling study traces the imagination, misunderstandings, and distortions in Western observation of Chinese medical practices since the thirteenth century.

She noticed that some early-modern European physicians became intrigued by Chinese medicine

3 Linda Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 (Harvard University Press, 2005), 2-3.

3 and attempted to strip away the Chinese part of the medicine and to legitimate practices through

Western medical theory.4

In this dissertation, I would like to show that my attempt to separate the material and theoretic parts of Chinese medicine in early-modern England helps to explain the reception of

Chinese herbs by English people. Although early textual evidence told English people actual ways to use the remedies from China, divergent patterns appeared when English attempted to transfer the knowledge in texts to the actual experience of consuming the remedies. The emergence of those divergences and ways attempting to accommodate the disagreements were part of the process of commodification, in which Chinese medicinal plants were removed from its cultural origin. Tea, for example, was first introduced to England as a medicinal herb in the early seventeenth century. According to the prerequisite knowledge of tea from Jesuit missionaries, explorers, and merchants, Chinese people drank hot tea every day as a healthful herbal beverage. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the booming of British tea trade with China, the widespread consumption of tea by British people in households, and the experimental enquiry on the plant by naturalists and physicians started to reframe tea according to the British context.

This dissertation explores the meanings of the “commodification” of natural objects, specifically medicinal plants, and related concepts in early-modern cultural encounters between

China and England. When we use the term “commodification,” we have the tendency to simplify the process and only focus on the result of the exchange. Historians have proved that from the mid-seventeenth century to the eighteenth century, the consumption of imported pharmaceutical

4 Linda Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 (Harvard University Press, 2005), 181-185.

4 ingredients expanded dramatically in the European world, specifically in Britain.5 However, the impact and consequence of the boost in drug imports on medical practices remain unknown.

Marcy Norton, in her work on the introduction of tobacco and chocolate from Mesoamerica to the Iberia market, reminds us that the quantitative evidence in trade records does not automatically reflect the actual disseminating and reception of foreign commodities in European society. Norton argues, the reception of these new commodities in the European world reflected

“the appropriation and further adaptation of exotic traditions to European taste and social needs.”6 Other historians also noticed that the growing global trade networks and more consistent supply of foreign drugs did not promise the success of transferring exotic botanical and medical knowledge.7 Over the early modern period, natural objects that traveled across long

distances through exchanges were gaining social, cultural, political, and even emotional

meanings when they were adapting to a new environment.

In the early-modern England context, the development of medicine and natural history as

the consequence of imperial and commercial expansion has enjoyed much scholarly attention

recently. Many scholars have examined the flow of natural commodities with therapeutic

properties from overseas colonies to local consumers in Europe. Patrick Wallis studies imports of

medical drugs in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. His research shows how the

increasing demand for foreign remedies affect English medical consuming behavior, and the

5 Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, Volume 25, Issue 1, February 2012, 20–46. 6 Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 144. 7 These historians mainly focus on medicinal substances that had alternative effects and induced addiction, such as tobacco and opium, which were generally known as intoxicants or narcotics. See W. D. Smith, “Complications of the commonplace: tea, sugar and imperialism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 33, 1992, and Jordan Goodman, “Excitantia: Or, how Enlightenment Europe took to soft drugs,” in Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy ed., Consuming Habits: Global and Historical Perspectives on How Cultures Define Drugs (London, New York: Routledge, 1995).

5 influence of exotic remedies on the “expansion of commercially-supplied health care” during this

period. Andrew Wear’s research mainly focuses on broader social and cultural issues related to

the consumption of exotic remedies in early-modern England, such as affordability for ordinary

people, and the debates on threats of foreign substances. Mark Harrison also focuses on the

exchange of British and indigenous medicine, intervention of medicine in cultural and trade

domains. However, he is more interested in professional medical practitioners and how their

experiences with exotic medicine influenced British medical culture.8

My intervention here, however, is to bring the discourse of commodification into an

intimate sphere. I would argue that domestic medicine was the primary site for understanding the

commodification of exotic medicine in early modern England. Early-modern medicine in

England was, in a large part, a body of practical knowledge utilized by domestic medical

practitioners.9 The knowledge of plant-based remedies, combining self-diagnosis and treatment with commercially available medical resources, was especially favored by household medical practitioners. The booming market for vernacular medical printing in early-modern England revealed that ordinary people shared more medical knowledge, either pharmaceutical ingredients or practices, with their physicians. With the increase of drug imports in England from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, the intimate space of households became an

experimental site and also knots of the information network for transmission of imported

remedies.

8 Mark Harrison, Medicine in an age of Commerce and Empire: Britain and its Tropical Colonies 1660-1830 (Oxford University Press, 2010), Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, Volume 25, Issue 1, February 2012, 20–46. Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge University Press, 2000) 9 Historians like Elaine Leong argues that early-modern medicine was more a body of practical knowledge mastered by women of households than a male learned knowledge and practices. Women were not only expected to take care of the health of her family members, but also connected female relatives, friends, servants, apothecaries through their knowledge. Elaine Leong, “Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household,” Centaurus, 2013, 55: 81-103.

6 It is significant to reconstruct the trajectory of adapting imported remedies in the

European world by focusing on their interference into domains like culture, trade, and science.

Through this way, we could better contextualize what commodification is. The commodification

of remedies from China reveals various dimensions of the medical world in early-modern

England, including the interactions between imported remedies and English medical theories and

practices; the competitive voices of learned and domestic medicine; A striking example of this

process may be seen in the domestication of tea in early-modern England. The introduction of

the beverage had a profound impact on English taste and social life. Even though tea was first

introduced to England as an exotic remedy, tea consumption was mainly connected with the

pleasures of femininity, domesticity, and luxury in eighteenth-century England; the emergence of

tea as a fashionable beverage created a demand for the accessories of the tea table. The

increasing consumption of tea also had a profound influence on the diet in general and the nature

of meals.10

Before the arrival of the exotic remedies, English physicians already had a plentiful

inventory of herbs to work with. There was a rich history of consuming herbal plants and

publishing herbal works, especially from the late fifteenth century to the seventeenth century.

However, with the introduction of tea, coffee, and chocolate as major stimulants into the early-

modern English market, physicians generally realized that consuming these beverages could be

addictive. Meanwhile, its function as a stimulant or intoxicant was often related to the culture of sobriety and respectability and highly praised by medical and literary works. The incorporation of tea in eighteenth-century British society revealed the trajectory of the commodification of

10 See Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) 83-85, 176-178.

7 exotic medicinal plants, from expensive remedies to luxurious exotics and, finally, a daily necessity in early-modern England.

Another concept that closely related to commodification is the domestication of exotic remedies in early-modern England. While English consumers were accepting exotic ingredients for medicinal and culinary uses, medical practitioners and botanists played essential roles in assigning new commodities various meanings within medical and scientific discourses. They were responsible for locating these commodities in European therapeutic theories and medical practices. In some cases, they made efforts to transplant exotic plants in English gardens despite very different climate and soil conditions. The attempt to identify and transplant the true Chinese rhubarb in seventeenth-century England involved botanical, horticultural, and medical breakthroughs. The experiences accumulated by physicians, botanists, and druggists led to the successful cultivation of a rhubarb species, R. palmatum, all over Britain. The species was also considered as a “native-grown” root of Britain and botanists claimed that “it is nothing inferior to that which is brought out of China.” Meanwhile, the habitual consumption of these commodities required a public affirmation of their roles and influences in the social and cultural contexts. The robust intellectual interest in these commodities consistently connected their potential functions to specific social changes. For example, the spread of coffee, tea, and chocolate became part of the redefinition of boundaries of public and private life and shifting class and gender lines in the eighteenth century.

One particular challenge for the domestication of exotic remedies in the European world was how to incorporate them into Galenic medical theory. Exotic beverages like coffee, cacao, and tea, which seemed to European physicians that it was difficult to identify their humoral makeup according to the old theory. The nourishing nature of coffee and tea suggested the hot

8 and moist humoral qualities, while the stimulating effect and astringent taste reminded its cold

and dry qualities. The extensive body of medical works concerned with the medical values of

these beverages signified the intensive debates during this period. Hence, it largely depended on

how physicians interpreted the beverage and the illness. Many medical writers made use of new

medical theories to claim the health benefits of these beverages. Ken Albala’s article examines

the transformation of chocolate from a medicinal food to a purely recreational drink in the

following centuries. He points out that the introduction and consumption of exotic drinks such as

coffee and cacao in the early modern period challenged the humoral physiology of the old world

and offered the new medical chemical and mechanical theory an opportunity to compete with

humoral physiology to explain the effects of exotic beverages on the human body.11

Professional medical practitioners, usually as the initial reception of exotic remedies, first

promoted these commodities as exotic and rare medicine. The legitimating of the consumption of

exotic plants often led to intense medical and cultural debates; usually, a considerable body of

literature was created. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the medical world in

England was encountering increasingly intense disputes and struggles due to the rise of the new

medical theories, especially the development of chemical and mechanical medicine and their

contests to Galenic theory. The authority of professional medical practitioners was contested by lay practitioners, including midwives, housewives, mountebanks, whose participation in medical practices were guaranteed by an increasing vibrant medical market.12 I argue that the promoting

of exotic remedies by learned physicians was not only due to economic profits, but most

11 Ken Albala, “The Use and Abuse of Chocolate in 17th Century Medical Theory, Food and Foodways,” Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment, Volume 15, 2007 - Issue 1-2: Chocolate: Case Studies in History and Culture, pp. 53-74. 12 Elizabeth Lane Furdell, Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (University Rochester Press, 2002), 29-32.

9 importantly, by assigning new meaning to these exotic plants they were able to reclaim their

medical authorities and their monopoly in using these remedies. These learned physicians often

served as intermediaries between lay people and foreign ingredients by accommodating these

exotic herbs in through vernacular medical writings.

Recently, the increasing scholarly attention has turned to the consumption of medicine in

early-modern English households. The use of imported remedies in the context of domestic

medicine could help us to reconstruct the integration of exotic medical knowledge in English

medical culture. As Patrick Wallis points out, the use of imported remedies could either connect

exotic ingredients and exotic knowledge or create demand for incorporating into local

therapeutic understandings.13 Domestic recipe books were especially useful for understanding the extent to which the exotic remedies affected the consuming habit of medicine in early- modern England.

Early modern manuscript recipes and cookbooks have received increasing scholarly attention in the history of science and medicine, food history, and early modern social practices.

They served as one of the best evidence to trace the incorporating exotic remedies by the

European market and how they were consumed, especially in the domestic context. This dissertation draws on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscript recipe books from the extensive archive of manuscripts recipe collections in Wellcome Library for the History of

Medicine and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries collection of British Library. Some of the recipe books are collective production of family through generations, and others are just assembled scrapbooks of a single author and even are anonymous, which not only contain rich information about various sorts of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge, including imported

13 Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, Volume 25, Issue 1, February 2012, 20–46.

10 remedies, but also reflected an everyday aspect of medical consumption in a household context.

The material objects that this dissertation mainly focuses on are botanical commodities with therapeutic effects from China, including tea, ginseng, China root, and rhubarb. The consumption of Chinese goods in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not something new for the European world; since the first century, trade contacts between China and Roman had introduced Chinese silks, porcelain, and tea to Europe. Early modern global explorations and trades led to the introduction of various kinds of foreign objects, such as animals, plants, chinaware, textile, and many other manufactured products, in the European world. They were transforming European daily material life from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. As a

“more transient variety of material culture,” exotic plants had profound effects on European quotient life.14 The seventeenth-century witnessed a significant increase in English drug

imports.15 Dried drugs and living plants were transmitted through the EIC trade in Canton during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not only as lucrative commodities for merchants, but the potential physiological effects of exotic remedies also made them appealing to English physicians, patients, and apothecaries.

The Sino-British encounters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also involved

multiple and overlapping networks of human agents, who gathered, categorized, studied, and

consumed these natural objects. In part, this dissertation is about the agents in the transmission of

medical knowledge, including British naturalists, EIC merchants, diplomats, consumers, for the

Chinese side, including merchants, literati, herbalists, and the local plant collectors who

14 Giorgio Riello, “Global Things: Europe’s Early Modern Material Transformation,” in Richardson, Catherine, Tara Hamling, and David R. M. Gaimster. The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (Routledge: 2017), 34. 15 Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, Volume 25, Issue 1, February 2012, 20–46.

11 employed by British merchants and collectors.16 Fa-ti Fan’s work successfully describes British naturalists, including merchants, diplomats, and missionaries, engaged in collecting and classifying flora and fauna sources in China. As he notices, the British collectors were well aware of the significance of local informants and botanic knowledge in their exploration.17

Through encounters of various kinds of human agents and networks they interwove, this

dissertation intends to show that scientific and medical research was inextricably bound up with

commercial interests for the British Empire. In the encounters, they struggled to make sense of

unknown people and plants, natural and medical knowledge, unheard practices, and rituals. In

the 1670s, James Cuninghame, a physician of the , had hunted plants at

Amoy and Chusan. British interests in Chinese botanical commodities had continued to the

eighteenth century and revealed the intersections between commerce and scientific exploration.

In 1770, British naturalist John Ellis published his hands-on treatise, Directions for Bringing

over Seeds and Plants, from the East Indies and Other Distant Countries, in a State of

Vegetation, which illustrated the encounter between non-European plants and EIC collectors and

their role as a conduit between exotic plants and English naturalists. Meanwhile, local gardeners,

herbalists, merchants provided knowledge including biological traits, medical properties that

enabled British collectors to identify plants they wanted, and knowledge, including cultivating

and nurturing, allowed them to transport living plants and seeds to London.

Abundant scholarships have examined the English East India Company’s interest in

natural history and how this interest stimulated the creating of various kinds of elaborate

16 Even though British collectors and merchants would use "gardener" and “herbalist” in their correspondence to refer to local collectors who helped them to locate and identify plants, we should be clear that botany and horticulture in modern sense was not introduced and established in China until the mid-nineteenth century. Therefore, these terms did not correspond to their meaning in Western context at this time. However, British merchants realized local "gardener" and “herbalist” equipped proper working knowledge in botany and herbal remedies, which might remind British their own gardeners and herbalists. 17 Fa-ti Fan, British naturalists in Qing China. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004).

12 networks to produce and circulate knowledge of the natural world.18 Serving as both employees of English East India Company and correspondents of botanists of the Royal Society, British plant collectors searched for exotic herbal plants in coastal China. They brought back seeds, living plants, herbarium, Britain, and learned botanical and medical knowledge related to these plants from their local informants in China. This dissertation particularly focuses on understanding the Company as a medium that brought humans and commodities into a cultural contact and knowledge circulation in an age of global trade and exploration. With the exclusive consumption of rhubarb in early-modern England, English botanists and physicians attempted to cultivate the plant in English gardens in order to lower the market price and relieve the heavy reliance on imports. In order to promote domestic rhubarb cultivation, English physicians and botanists tied the functions of rhubarb tightly to the health of English people and national welfare.

According to Harold J. Cook, the global pursuit of natural knowledge, especially medical plants, can be considered as the central focus of intellectual and commercial activity in the early modern period.19 This dissertation intends to build on the scholarship emphasizing the close

connection between the global request for natural knowledge, commercial activities, and the

material culture of exotic remedies in the early modern period.20 British plant collectors and their

networks played critical roles in facilitating the transmission of botanical knowledge and exotic

18 See Anna Winterbottom and Alan Lester, The East India Company and the Natural World (Springer, 2014) and Hybrid knowledge in the early East India Company World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 19 Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press 2007) 20 Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Renate Wilson, Pious Traders in Medicine: A German Pharmaceutical Network in Eighteenth-Century North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 2000).

13 botanical commodities.21 I argue that they were not only the intermediaries between exotic

botanical knowledge and local physicians but also were essential conduits of knowledge in their

own right as well. In eighteenth-century Britain, the rapid transformation of scientific inquiry,

the rise of empiricism, and the development of botany and medicine, all served as a foundation

of a scientific network, built around and the Royal Society, engaging in global

natural history and botanical commodities.22

This dissertation mainly consulted the India Office Records in the British Library,

including G/12 and R/10 China Factory Records. Most sources in these volumes are about the

cargoes and goods they carried out in China, relations between supercargoes, Chinese

authorities, and merchants. Since its establishment at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the East India Company had made efforts to trade with China for exotic goods ranging from porcelain and textiles to tea and rhubarb. It was not until the late seventeenth century, that merchants of the Company were permitted to trade at Amoy, Canton, and Chusan at Coastal

China. Starting from 1715, ships that were dispatched to Canton appointed a supercargo to manage commercial operations onshore; the diaries of supercargoes contain their frequent insolvencies with Hong merchants, either legal and commercial difficulties or daily problems. In the Miscellaneous Papers for China volume, journals of individual merchants and captains on trade matters and also their interactions with local merchants and Hoppos.

This dissertation also utilizes medical writings produced by professional medical

21 Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). Also see Anna Winterbottom ed., The East India Company and the Natural World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Miller, David Philip and Peter Hanns Reill, ed., Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2011) 22 John Gascoingne examines the emergence of a group of scientific practitioners centered around Joseph Banks and the Royal society, and Joseph Banks’s promotion of “useful knowledge” that would ultimately profit the state. See his work, Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

14 practitioners from the early modern period to trace their role as significant conduits of new

knowledge and commodities. I want to argue that these writings played a significant role in

legitimating the medical use of exotic remedies in European medical context, and spreading

related knowledge to the public. These medical writings included herbals, dietetic advice,

household recipe books, hands-on therapeutics, translations of famous medical authors, with lists

of ingredients.23 Early modern English herbalists, such as William Turner and John Gerard,

realized the necessity to educate lay practitioners and the public fundamental and practical

medical knowledge. They engaged in producing vernacular herbal knowledge that was accessible

to laypeople for daily consultation. Their works became an essential source for lay practitioners

and domestic medicine.

The dissertation was constructed into four main chapters. Chapter one focuses on the construction of the European intellectual tradition of Chinese herbal medicine in the early modern period. This chapter would be a general overview of the textualization of materia medica knowledge in China through the efforts of explorers, missionaries, and physicians before the regular long-term trade network was created between China and Europe. These writings signified

European intentions to explore and understand foreign remedies based on herbs. Even though

Jesuits and merchants having identified the rich botanical source in China and assiduously

catalogued names and functions of some Chinese medicinal plants, few European medical

practitioners applied these plants to prepare their remedies. These early intellectual exercises

promoted the emergence of the transnational academic network, through which European

naturalists and medical practitioners started to incorporate both materials and practices from the

23 The role of learned medicine to transmit medical knowledge to lay people, see Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Elizabeth Lane Furdell, Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (University Rochester Press, 2002).

15 non-European natural world in their knowledge system.

Chapter two focuses on medical encounters in Sino-British trade and scientific networks,

specifically medicinal plants transmitted through EIC imports and botanic hunting of the Royal

Society. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an increasing number of exotic herbs

were imported into the British market. Some of these herbs, including related practices, habits,

and tastes from their original cultural context, have known to early-modern English physicians through early intellectual encounters. With the booming imports of medical commodities from

China, such as rhubarb, tea, and ginseng, through the English East India Company trade in

Canton, English physicians were gaining actual experience in using these herbs to treat their patients. At the same time, individuals and groups were involved in transferring living plants from Canton to Britain, including not only British merchants, and captains, but also Chinese merchants, gardeners, herbalists. These people served as intermediaries between exotic botanical knowledge and British physicians. The commodification of foreign remedies in British medical context required not only medical authorities to assign them new meanings and utilities, but also the efforts of domestic medical practitioners to familiarize these remedies in daily consumption.

Turning to a different perspective of British interests in Chinese medical remedies and practices, Chapter three first examines British responses to Chinese medical practices in the eighteenth century through medical encounters during the Macartney Embassy and Sir John

Floyer’s introduction of Chinese medical practices, such as pulse diagnosis. These scenarios reveal an unbalanced reception of material and theoretic aspects of Chinese medicine in eighteenth-century Britain. Then, this chapter provides comparative research on the common interests in herbal medicine and dietetic advice in China and Britain in the early modern period.

The rich source of existing recipes, works of materia medica, and health advice treatises as a

16 form of easy-accessible self-treatment allow us to explore the encounters of learned and lay medical practitioners. Meanwhile, both herbal knowledge and health advice represented the endeavor of the learned physician to transmit medical knowledge through educating lay practitioners. This form of knowledge transmission influenced the introduction and spread of exotic herbal remedies in early-modern England.

Chapter four examines incorporating tea in early-modern British medical and cultural contexts, which reveals the trajectory of the commodification of exotic herbs in the European world. The European reception of many exotic botanic ingredients followed a quite similar trajectory. They were first introduced to the European world as valuable medicine with miraculous effects. However, whether these new ingredients could be absorbed in European therapeutic theory and practices required an intense medical and cultural debate, which usually generated a considerable amount of literature. For example, the knowledge of tea-drinking had already known to the British through works of Jesuit missionaries and explorers. In the eighteenth century, men in the English East India Company service engaging in Canton trade resided, acquired wealth, tastes and local knowledge. They traveled home with them sets of practices and rituals related to tea-drinking. The inter-cultural material exchange, in this case, tea from a medicinal plant to a daily necessity, is a very complicated process. The commodification of tea in British market was the result of a stable and large quantity of supply, the existence of a cultural package including sets of practices, habits, and tastes, a consistent debate to legitimate its consumption, and a community of consumers enforcing tea-drinking as a daily social habit.

This dissertation uses the transmission of medicinal plants between China and Britain to explore the commodification of exotic remedies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

17 The structure of chapters follows the trajectory of introducing and incorporating Chinese medicinal herbs in early-modern England, including textualization, commodification, commercialization, consumerization. These processes were interwoven together through the flowing of human agents, including merchants, physicians, and diplomats, and objects, such as tea, ginseng, and rhubarb. The intellectual tradition of medical botany and natural history of

China were textualized through writings of missionaries, explorers, and merchants, and become familiar to the British in the seventeenth century. With the increasingly regular trade of the

English East India Company at Canton, medicinal plants from China, such as rhubarb, China root, ginseng, especially tea as products and new knowledge became consistently available by

British consumers. The steady supply of these medical commodities and expanded scientific interests intensified public discussion and debates of these commodities in commercial, medical, and cultural contexts in eighteenth-century Britain. Tracing the interferences of medicinal plants in commercial, medical, and cultural domains allows us to reconstruct trajectories of exotic remedies and their patterns of commodification during the making of modern consumer society in the eighteenth century.

18 Chapter 1 Ordering the Natural World: Construction of Western Intellectual Tradition of Chinese Herbal Medicine

Since the first Portuguese merchants ventured to the coasts of China in the early sixteenth century, the exotic images and ideas of China as a curious land penetrated the European world through economic, cultural, political interactions. Early European encounters with Chinese medicine represented a trajectory full of curiosity, imagination, and misunderstanding. The introduction of novel and unfamiliar herbs and medical practices further stimulated European interest in exotic herbal medicine and expectation for the potential therapeutic effects of those wondrous herbs. Chinese medicine was considered an oriental novelty and a catalyst of desire by

European missionaries and physicians. Through their cataloging and translating, they built up an intellectual tradition of Chinese medicine, especially the herbal remedies, which further inspired their pursuit of new medicinal substances. These early efforts served as part of a larger commercial project by identifying potentially profitable commodities and prepared for the further expanding of European knowledge of Chinese materia medica depending on close cooperation between traders and scientists in the eighteenth century.

As Linda Barnes pointed out, the reception of medical ideas was inseparable from

Western perceptions of China and the Chinese more generally.24 On the one hand, the descriptions of China as an ancient and highly developed civilization, ideal political prototype, possessing a literati class with virtue and talent, were particularly appealing to European intellectuals. On the other hand, some accounts resisted Chinese medicine by describing Chinese doctors as ignorant of anatomy and the human body. In short, Western observations on Chinese healing practices also reflected these diverse representations of China in general.

24 Linda Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 (Harvard University Press, 2005), 2-3.

19 This chapter provides a brief introduction to the experience of Europeans, namely Jesuit missionaries, explorers, merchants, and their encounters with remedies and medical practices in

China. Their descriptions provided two different perceptions of Chinese medical knowledge, namely “noble, delicate” and “simple, limited.” At this stage, despite Jesuits and merchants having identified the rich botanical source in China and assiduously written down names and functions of some Chinese medicinal plants, few European medical practitioners applied these plants to prepare their remedies. It was not very clear that the knowledge was gathered for medicinal purposes, for their novelty and rarity, or solely for its association with China. Most of these accounts remained as “intellectual exercises” that promote the study and collecting of exotic plants and foreign medical practices; also, facilitating the construction of early European imagination of China in general. The late seventeenth century witnessed the emergence of the transnational academic network stimulated by naturalists and medical practitioners who assembled and incorporated both materials and practices from the non-European natural world in their knowledge system.

1. 1 Cataloguing Oriental medicinal plants

The first European who acquired knowledge about China through direct contact is Marco

Polo, the most well-known explorer from Venice visited China during the rule of Kublai Khan in the second half of the thirteenth century. In his detailed chronicle about his voyage in Asia,

Marco Polo recorded various knowledge of China, including customs, social structure, and technologies. He also showed equal interests in plants and fruits that he saw, including sugar cane, grapes, cultivated in Hangzhou. He recorded medicinal practices and plants used in

Chinese medicine, such as rhubarb produced in Gansu, galangal, and camphor in Fujian, “China is rich in medicinal herbs. Here you can buy a pound of rhubarb for ten cents, which in Europe

20 would cost six or seven times as many gold pieces.” He noted that in China, “they make use of

very simple remedies, such as herbs, roots, and other such things. The whole art of Chinese

medicine is practically contained in the rules we ourselves follow for the use of herbs.”25 The

English merchant John Frampton translated the accounts of Marco Polo from Spanish to English

readers in 1579 under the title, The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo, which soon

became “the most necessary for all sorts of persons.”26 Marco Polo’s travel and his account

developed a portrait of China as great wealth and complex social structure, which invoked

curiosity and desire for Europeans to explore this Empire further.

During the early modern period, European travelers to the Far East consistently brought

back information about China, including medical knowledge. Portuguese were among the first

medical pioneers to the East in the early modern period. The travels of Vasco da Gama (1469-

1527) and his discovery of a sea route from Europe to India created a direct commercial link

between Asia and the European world. Many Portuguese merchants appeared at Goa and

Malacca at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and moved further into the Sea

and entered to Canton. Despite the isolation policy of the Ming government along the southern

coastline, these merchants still managed to obtain a high profit through illicit trading spices from

the Southeastern states to Canton. The first official Portuguese embassy to China was dispatched

from to Canton in 1517. Tomé Pires (ca. 1468-1524), the son of a Lisbon apothecary,

had been appointed the Portuguese ambassador to China and had arrived in Canton with a letter

from King Manuel I (r. 1495- 1521) late in 1517. The reason for choosing Tomé Pires as the

ambassador of the first Portuguese mission to was due to his background as an

25 China in the sixteenth century: the journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610 / translated from the Latin by Louis J. Gallagher. With a foreword by Richard J. Cushing, Archbishop of Boston. 16-17, 32. 26 Carmine G. Blasse ed. Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period. 10-15.

21 apothecary. “The king of Portugal did not send anyone but this Tomé Pires, whom he sent on the advice of the noblemen and captains of India, because this Tomé Pires had been apothecary of

Prince Dom Afonso, and was discreet and eager to learn, and because he would know better than anyone else the drugs there were in China.”27 Tomé Pires was mainly responsible for choosing and controlling drugs in the mission.

Before this mission, Tomé Pires was sent to India in 1511 as a drug trade agent and had supervised the spice trade in Melaka from 1512 to 1515. He finished the first European description of Malaysia in 1515, entitled Suma Oriental, which provided a detailed account of the trade relations between Canton and Malacca, including a wide variety of information including rich botanical information in this area. Besides that, he sent a detailed letter to King

Manuel in which he recorded up-to-date knowledge of drugs and spices in Asia, such as galangal, musk, rhubarb, pepper, and camphor. Tomé Pires reached Beijing in 1520, but Ming

Emperor Zhengde (1505-1521) passed away before receiving him. After this unsuccessful diplomatic mission, the Portuguese shifted their focus to .

During the late sixteenth century, European apothecaries played an essential role in identifying exotic plants and medical practices in those overseas explorations. As one of the few

European accounts of Chinese medical knowledge from this period, Garcia da Orta’s work, titled

Coloquios dos Simples e Drogas da India (Colloquies on the Simplest and Drugs of India), introduced several medicinal plants from China that could “curing all diseases.” Garcia da Ort was the first physician to the Portuguese Viceroy of India at Goa, and he sailed for India in 1534 and settled down at Goa. He spent a lot of time travelling and study of the country and its flora.

This great physician and botanist lived in India for more than thirty years, and there he carried

27 The Suma oriental of Tomé Pires: an account of the East, vol. 1, 41.

22 out his researches and studies in exotic materia medica. He published his monumental work

Colloquies on the Simplest and Drugs of India in 1563, which was considered the first and the

most significant contribution of tropical medicine to the European audience. In this fascinating

work of Indian spices and medicines, he mentioned several Chinese medicinal plants, including

camphor, cassia bark, rhubarb, galangal, and China root. Garcia da Orta was one of those

involved in introducing China root, the well-known remedy for syphilis, to Europeans, “As all these lands, China and Japan also have this morbo Napolitano (syphilis), it please a merciful God

to provide this root as a remedy with which good doctors can cure it.” The root was also an

effective treatment to “the Itch, trembling, aches, gout. It is also very good for a weak stomach,

headache, and the stone in the bladder proceeding from cold.” He also mentioned the root was

introduced and employed with great praise and high level of expectation, “for some persons had

been cured by it, their treatment having been very successful.” 28

Juan González de Mendoza, an Augustine friar who had never been to China himself,

was commissioned by Philip II to produce an account of China in 1580. Mendoza mainly

depended upon writings of Martin de Rada (1533-1578), who was among the first Catholic

missionaries ventured in the , acquired a number of Chinese books during his voyage

to Fu (Fujian) in 1575. Based on these sources, Mendoza produced a detailed

description of China, including history, antiquities, government, populace, religious beliefs,

, and also captured medical tradition and botanical diversity of the empire. Mendoza

mentioned, “there are also many herbs for medicines, as very fine rhubarb, and of great

quantities, and wood called Palo de china (China wood). I do leave to speak of many other

profitable medicinal herbs for the use of man, for that if I should write the particular virtues of

28 Garcia da Orta, Colloquies on the Simplest and Drugs of India, trans. Clements Markham, 1913. 378-379.

23 every of them, it would require a great volume.”29 By the end of the sixteenth century, this work had been translated into Latin and most European vernaculars.

Although Portuguese expansion into Asia and their efforts to take control spices and other goods were not quite successful, the enormously profitable spice trade they propelled became a key driving force behind the further competition over trade routes and natural resources in the area in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

1.2 Translating exotic medical knowledge

The early European publication on Chinese medicine owned much to the legacy of Jesuit missionaries’ translations of various Chinese texts. Drawn by its millions of potential converts, different Catholic orders began to arrive in the Far East in the late sixteenth century. Jesuit missionaries were among the earliest Europeans to establish a permanent appearance in China.

The Jesuits first arrived at Macau in 1562, and then they were finally allowed by the local officials of Guangdong to set foot on mainland China in 1583. To facilitate their mission in

China, Jesuits utilized their knowledge in and classics with their distinct academic qualification. They successfully infiltrated into the circles of local literati officials, who took Jesuits as their fellow literati and supported them while they were making their way northward to Beijing. In the collection of the letters and memoirs of these distinguished scholars in China, we could find a great number of articles treating various objects of natural history, such as botany, mineralogy, and zoology. The accounts concerning Chinese botany left by the early

Jesuit missionaries had a remarkable influence on their successor explorers. Their roles as translators and transmitters of knowledge about China influenced European opinion and impression on this empire in the far east enormously.

29 Juan González de Mendoza, The historie of the great and mightie kimgdome of China, vol 1, translated by R. Parke, London: Edward White.

24 Jesuit missionaries had played as the significant transmitters of information about China to their European audience and also shaped the early European image of China. Since Matteo

Ricci established the first Jesuit mission in China in 1583, his fellow missionaries were able to infiltrate into the circle of literati officials in China through diplomatic skills, literary and religious understanding, and especially scientific knowledge. One successful example is Johann

Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666), who not only reached a position of power in Ming court by modifying the calendar for Chongzhen Emperor but also managed to survive the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in 1644 and became a counselor for young Shunzhi Emperor of Qing.

Jesuits were particularly interested in medical theories, practices, and knowledge of materia medica in China. They explained both medical philosophy and practice in detail through texts and illustrations to the European elite class. Whereas at the early stage of Jesuits’ exploration of Chinese herbal remedies, they simply cataloged names of different medicinal plants without further explanation of the nature of these plants and how Chinese physicians used them. Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci was the most well-known expert on China among his contemporaries. His journal recorded Jesuit mission in China from 1582, the year he arrived at Macao, to 1610, the year of his death. The Belgian Jesuit Nicolas Trigault (1577-1610) reorganized and translated Matteo Ricci’s work concerning China and the history of their mission published under the title, De Christiana Expeditions Apud Sinas (On the Christian

Expedition to China) in 1615. Ricci was impressed by the treatises on materia medica produced in China, and he mentioned “they do everything delicately with herbs…. they make use of very simple remedies, such as herbs and roots. In fact, the whole Chinese medicine is almost contained in the precepts of our own botanicals.”30 There are some descriptions regarding the

30 Matteo Ricci, Nicholas Trigault, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610 (Random House, 1953), 16, 32.

25 vegetable production of China in Chapter III, such as “they have in China all our principle fruits

with the exception of and almonds. Besides these they have a great variety of fruits

unknown in Europe as in Canton the Licy and the Longan not found elsewhere.” He also gave an

account of the Chinese camphor tree and how the Chinese used camphor in their medicine.31 Not

only many fruits that were common in Europe were mentioned, but also medicinal plants that

had commercial profit, such as rhubarb and China root, were described. “China is rich in

medicinal herbs which are known elsewhere only as importations. Rhubarb and musk were first

brought in from the West by the Saracens, and after spreading throughout the whole of Asia, they

were exported to Europe at an almost unbelievable profit. Here you can buy a pound of rhubarb

for ten cents, which in Europe would cost six or seven times as many gold pieces.” 32

While Jesuits were cataloging medicinal herbs in China, they noticed some herbs were

attributed mysterious power of immortality. Alvarus de Semedo (1585-1658), a Jesuit from

Portugal who arrived in China 1613, mentioned the root of ginseng, calling it the “panacea, and

the remedy dispenses immortality.” He discussed Chinese medicine in his work Relatione Della

Grande Monarchia Della China.33 He evaluated the tradition of positively,

“medicine is in a very good condition in China, and they have abundance of ancient books of that

art.” However, they do not “let blood, and use no syrup, potions, nor pills. Much less have they

use of cauteries, a medicine of great advantage.” Alvarus de Semedo recorded a sick missionary

was treated by a local physician at Nankim (Nanjing). The doctor “felt his pulse, and performed

his ordinary ceremonies;” He figured out the patient had measles, then compounded three

31 Emil Bretschneider, History of European botanical discoveries in China, 10-12. 32 Matteo Ricci, Nicholas Trigault, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610 (Random House, 1953), 16. 33 This work was first published in Spanish in 1643, and then was translated into other European languages. The English translation, entitled The History of that Great and Renowned monarchy of China, appeared in 1655. The work successfully publicized the Jesuit China mission throughout Europe.

26 medicines to the sick. The treatment did not become effective until the next morning, and the

sick recovered very fast. Semedo did record something particular that he noticed in the treatment

of the Chinese physician. He saw a physician prescribed a few pieces of dietetic advice, such as

drinking boiled water and fasting, to the missionary for recovering his strength. Semedo noticed

that physicians in China valued the idea of taking nourishment (調養) for the patient to regain

health after the remission from illness.

He also noticed the knowledge of materia medica was a vital part of Chinese medicine,

“They are herbalists, using herbes, rootes, fruits, seeds, and all drie. There are whole fairs only of

medicine. In the cities and townes the apothecary shops are very well provided.” Some plants he

mentioned, in particular, drew the attention of Jesuits, such as ginseng, camphor, China root,

rhubarb, and Tea plants, along with how Chines used these drugs. He discussed the medicinal

properties of ginseng from the northern province Liaodong, “it is so excellent medicine, it

augments their strength and vigor, and if it be given to a sick person it doth marvelously comfort

and warme him.” 34 He also introduced some plants in Southern China provinces, including local

plants on the island of and Formosa (Taiwan).

One of the most significant figures in the early stage of European encounters with

Chinese medicine was Michael Boym (1612-1659), a Polish Jesuit who came to China in the

mid-17th century. Boym wrote exclusively on almost every aspect of China related to natural

history, including medicine, botany, and pharmacy. He was the first European who conducted an

in-depth study on Chinese medicine, particularly on pulse diagnostics and herbal remedies.

Boym produced a collection of engraving of plants, entitled Flora Sinensis (中國植物志,1656)

34 Alvarus de Semedo, The history of that great and renowned monarchy of China. Wherein all the particular provinces are accurately described, (English translation 1655), 21-22, 55-56.

27 (Figure 1). He also wrote two treatises on Chinese medicine entitled Pulse Diagnosis explained

by Wang Shuhe based on medical rules, and Single Herbs used by Chinese People in Medicine,

which dealt with pharmacological knowledge and contained prescriptions used by a third-century

Chinese physician Wang Shuhe 王叔和 (210-280).35 Both works were included in German

physician Andreas Cleyer’s book Specimen Medicinae Sinicae published in1682.

Figure 1: Chinese fruit trees from Michael Boym, Briefve relation de la Chine, et de la notable conversion des personnes royales de cet estat: Flora Sinensis, Paris, 1696.

35 Edward Kajdański, “Michael Boym’s ‘Medicus Sinicus’,” T’oung Pao, Second Series, vol. 73, 1987, 161-189. The original Latin titles are Auctoris Vam Xo Ho pulsibus explanatis medendi regula and Medicamenta Simplicia quaed Chinenibus ad usum medicum adhibentur. It is the first European book on Chinese herbs, which described and illustrated 289 Chinese herbal plants.

28 Michael Boym gave a high complimentary to Chinse medicine, “We must persist with all

these principles of Chinese medicine, do as the cases we list here and study the experiences of

the doctors that have been accumulated in the centuries of practice. Because of these

experiences, the great monarchy has become so prosperous and is still full of vitality.” His

medical treatises were based on his broad study of Chinese medical classics and his first-hand experience with these drugs. It was more than a simple catalog of Chinese herbal medicines but provided valuable information on how physicians in China combined and processed these drugs.36 After the publication of Michael Boym’s work, European physicians were introduced to

a whole different system of medical knowledge.

Although Boym’s work on Chinese medicine was not published under his own name at

first, parts of the work were published in different languages anonymously and had a significant

influence in the European world. In 1671, the French version Les Secrets de la Médecine des

Chinois was published at Grenoble, France. A few years later, the work was published again in an Italian translation. In 1682, German physician and botanist Andreas Cleyer published another work on Chinese medicine entitled Specimen medicinae sinicae or Examples of Chinese medicine, which contained theories of Chinese medicine, knowledge of materia medica, and several diagnostic methods, including one of the first acupuncture charts to be published in the

European world. Cleyer served as surgeon general of the in Batavia from 1665 to 1697. However, the actual author of Specimen medicinae sinicae was Michael

Boym. Andreas Cleyer had collected the fragments of Boym’s work on Chinese medicine, pulses diagnosis, and prescriptions of Wang shuhe, from the hand of another Jesuit Philippe Couplet, who brought Boym’s manuscripts to Batavia around 1656 in order to transfer them safely back to

36 Edward Kajdański, “Michael Boym’s ‘Medicus Sinicus’,” T’oung Pao, Second Series, vol. 73, 1987, 161-189., 175-177.

29 Europe.37 In 1687, the work was finally published in the name of Boym entitled Clavis Medica

ad Chinarum Doctrinam de Pulsibus (A Medical Key to the Chinese Doctrine of the Pulses), and

also admitted the efforts of Cleyer in collecting the fragments of the work.

The content of Specimen medicinae sinicae shows a great interest in Chinese medical

knowledge. In contrast to earlier Jesuits’ attempts to transfer Chinese pharmacopoeia in forms of

drug lists, Specimen medicinae sinicae introduced the properties of Chinese drugs along with medical formulas, with precise ingredients and dosages. He also brought up the idea of compatibility (配伍) and mutual restriction (畏返)of drugs, and how physicians in China selected and combined those roots and herbs base on the different symptoms and the nature of medicines.38 In the preface to prescriptions of Wang shuhe, Boym talked about the major

purpose of his work and some primary challenges he faced. He pointed out how these drugs he

found in China were unfamiliar to his European knowledge background, and he was unable to

identify them and provide more useful information. “I was anxious to find a remedy for these

difficulties, hence the proposal of preparing an herbarium of Chinese drugs which are used in

China, with their merits discussed in the corresponding descriptions and with inserted drawings.”

In order to make his European readers put the prescriptions in practice, Boym asked his readers

to use the books of prescriptions and pulse diagnosis side by side, “Once you have properly known the pulse, consult this book, and take care to have those medicines made and

administered that are prescribed therein for each specific pulse.” 39

37 See Edward Kajdański, “Michael Boym’s ‘Medicus Sinicus’ and Marta Hanson, Gianna Pomata, “Medicinal Formulas and Experiential Knowledge in the Seventeenth-Century Epistemic Exchange between China and Europe,” Isis, vol. 108, 2017, 1-25. 38 Marta Hanson, Gianna Pomata, “Medicinal Formulas and Experiential Knowledge in the Seventeenth-Century Epistemic Exchange between China and Europe,” 8-9. 39 The quote is from the translation of Marta Hanson. In Marta Hanson, Gianna Pomata, “Medicinal Formulas and Experiential Knowledge in the Seventeenth-Century Epistemic Exchange between China and Europe.”

30 As Marta Hanson and Harold Cook both point out, the final publication of Clavis Medica

ad Chinarum Doctrinam de Pulsibus under the name of Michael Boym, along with efforts of

Andreas Cleyer and Philippe Couplet, represented a common interest and collaborative scholarly effort to transmit Chinese medical knowledge to European world in the seventeenth century.

People like Boym identified some common grounds between European and Chinese medicine that allowed the exchange of medical knowledge, especially in pharmacology.

Jesuits’ interest in Chinese medicinal plants was not only for medicinal reasons, to

transmit the “miracles of nature and art” of this great empire to the European audience was a

vital part of their mission. For Athanasius Kircher, it was a huge intellectual program of ordering

China and accommodating its otherness. Kircher spent many years as a professor of mathematics

at the Collegium Romanum in Rome. During this period, Kircher acquainted many missionaries

departing for or returning from the Far East, usually China. Personal contacts with them allowed

easy access to the significant archives of the Jesuits and vast knowledge of the material and

missionary experience. Kircher’s sources were ranging broadly from his fellow Jesuits’ letters

from the Far East to the comprehensive works of China by Martini, Trigault, Semedo.40 In his

masterpiece China Monumentis Illustrata, he made the spectacle of remarkable China visible

through a large number of illustrations. As he pointed out, “my business is to alledge, in respect

to the curious Reader, the more rare Curiosities and Secrets of Things observ’d to be treasur’d up

in this Nation and others adjacent, not observ’d hitherto by any former Authors; with the

Prodigies both of Nature and Art, each being recorded in their proper place.”41 His descriptions

40 More discussions on depicting China as curious and exotic land, see chapter five in David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1989), and Dinu Luca, “Illustrating China through its Writing: Athanasius Kircher’s Spectacle of Words, Images, and Word-images,” Literature and Aestheitcs 22, no, 2 (2012): 106-37 41 Charles D. van Tuyl, Athanasius Kircher, China illustrata (Muskogee, Okla.: Indian University Press, Bacone College, 1987). 5.

31 and illustrations of the flora in China included ginseng root, rhubarb, the tea shrub, the mango and papaya trees, were less about the medicinal knowledge but more to satisfy the curious

European appetite to rare and curious exotica. Besides Kircher, some travelers also chose to present their understanding of the exotic features of China through illustrations. Dutch traveler Johannes Nieuhof (1618–1672) visited China as a member of the embassy of the Dutch East-India Company from 1655-1657. He was ordered to produce illustrations for the Dutch trade mission from Canton to Beijing. In 1659, Nieuhof produced a journal comprised of eighty-one original illustrations and diary-style notes. His illustrations in watercolors captured cities, palaces, people, flora, and fauna that he and the embassy encountered during the travel. The work was published under the title An Embassy from the East-India Company in 1665 and was translated into French, German, Latin, and English. In Chapter XV, “Of Roots, Herbs, Flowers, Reeds, Trees, and Fruits,” Nieuhof gave a brief introduction to some herbs like ginseng, , tea, Eragrostis ferruginea 知风草, and crinitum (Thunb.) 金丝草, and identified how these herbs looked like, where they were found, and what properties they had. He paid particular attention to ginseng, “the sovereign virtue of this root, that it has recovered some that were brought to deaths door.” He pointed out, the root has already known to Europeans through the work of Garcia da Orta, “this root has a particular virtue for the cure of the Spanish Pox (syphilis), and is sovereign against the itch, trembling, aches, and gout.” Nieuhof made the assertion, “And thus much I dare from my own knowledge affirm, That whatever is to be had in Europe, is likewise found in China; and if in truth there want anything, Nature hath supplied that single defect with divers other things beyond

32 those we have in Europe.”42

In the early eighteenth century, Jesuits’ effort in introducing materia medica from China

had constructed a preliminary understanding of Chinese medicine for European physicians. Jean-

Baptiste du Halde, in his seminal work A Description of the Empire of China, devoted several

chapters on natural history, medicine in China, and provided partial translation from the well-

known pharmaceutic work in Ming China, the Compendium of Materia Medica (Figure 2). He

admitted that Europeans were still very ignorant about Chinese medicine. He pointed out, “it is

certain that the Chinese are not less skillful in the cure of diseases with their medicines than the

European physicians.” Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674-1743) himself had never been to China. As

the compiler of the Lettres édifiantes, he was able to make use of a large number of letters of the

Jesuits missionaries to China and India. Some of these letters were not included in the collection

of the Lettres édifiantes but addressed directly to Du Hald.43 In this work, he devoted separate

chapters to Chinese natural history, agriculture, and medicine. In the chapter on Chinese medical

practices, Du Halde provided his readers a detailed description of pulse diagnosis, “as the most

singular part of the Chinese medicine is the ingenuity of the physicians in judging of distempers

by the beating of the pulse.” He concluded that it is a significant part of Chinese medicine and

“in effect, their able physicians predict pretty exactly all the symptoms of a disease; and it is

chiefly this that has rendered Chinese physicians so famous in the world.”44 This treatise “The

Secret of the Pulse” was translated from the work of Chinese physician Wang Shuhe, The

Classics of the Pulse (脈經), which had already translated by Michael Boym and included in the work Clavis Medica under the name of Andreas Cleyer in 1687.

42 Nieuhof, Johannes, An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, emperor of China, trans. Jacob van Meurs. London: John Macock, 1669. 43 Bretschneider, Early European Researches into the Flora of China, 32-33. 44 Jean-Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, vol.3, 376.

33

Figure 2: J. B. Du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, London, 1738. Collection of Chinese flora, including Rhubarb, ginseng, and tea.

In volume III, Du Halde dedicated an extended treatise on Chinese materia medica, which cited extensively from the well-known seventeenth-century work of Li Shizhen on materia medica, Bencao gangmu. Du Halde noticed that Li Shizhen’s work was quite different from

34 earlier Chinese pharmacopeia. Li emphasized on a hierarchical order when he reorganized

materia medica, which was different from ancient classics like The Classical Pharmacopoeia of

Shennong (神農本草經) , which classified drugs into three grades.45 The structure of Li

Shizhen’s pharmacopeia is “like a net with its main line (gang) and meshes (mu), this Herbal has main titles under which are arranged the subjects dealt with, in the same way as meshes are arranged and linked with the main line.”46 Du Halde also noticed that Li Shizhen attached great

importance to the names of herbs and pointed out the shifts of names overtimes.

Du Halde particularly interested in several herb plants in China, including ginseng,

Dongchong xiacao (冬虫夏草), tea, rhubarb, and Santsi (三七). He not only introduced the

growth, taste, virtues, and effects of these drugs, provided detailed descriptions on how to

prepare them, but also how to use these drugs in compound recipes. He noticed that in Chinese

herbal medicine, some drugs are served the function of servants or officers, and they are

assistants for the better performance of others. For instance, both china root (土茯苓) and

milkvetch root (黃芪) are good servants for ginseng to fortify the spirit and keep your body

active.47

One misunderstanding that Du Halde had was that Chinese medicine was not about an

investigation in natural philosophy, anatomy, or attempted to know the causes of distempers. He

claimed that the major purpose of Chinese medicine is the preservation of health, “However, the

study of medicine has always been greatly esteemed by the nation, not only because it is useful

for the preservation of life and the recovery of health, but because they are persuaded that there

45 The Classical Pharmacopoeia of Shennong (神農本草經)is a canonical text of materia medica compiled around the second and third centuries BC, drugs were classified into upper, intermediate, and lower grades according to their medical effects and toxicity. 46 Jean-Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, vol.3, 586. 47 Jean-Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, vol. 4, 6-8.

35 is a close connection between it and the motions of the Heaven.” Even herbal remedies recipes in

Chinese medicine is mainly for health-preserving, “they have no venomous or malignant quality,

whatever quantity you take, or how long you use them, they do no harm. The remedies keep your

body in a good disposition, preserve the spirits in just equality, even in old age.”48 He notice that

there were some differences in the strength of healing effects among the recipes he included in

the book.

Jesuits had played as significant interlocutors for European medicine in the Qing court as

well, especially during the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722). They successfully attracted the interest of the , who himself actively involved in medical practices. Antoine Thomas

(1644-1709), the secretary of Fernand Verbiest in Beijing, confirmed Kangxi Emperor’s interests in Western medicine, and his eager hope to get more Western physicians and new books.

Antoine Thomas also mentioned the Emperor’s intention in creating a more positive circumstance for Western physicians to practice medicine on Chinese patients. Meanwhile, the

Emperor ordered to build a botanical garden for planting Western medicinal plants, which was requested by Giuseppe Baudino (1657-1718), an Italien pharmacist served in Kangxi court in

Beijing for many years. In order to avoid a lack of the primary material for his preparing medicaments, the Emperor decided to create a garden for various medicinal plants transmitted to

Beijing through Jesuit networks.49

At the end of the seventeenth century, French Jesuit Dominique Parrenin (1665–1741)

became the Emperor’s private tutor in medicine, mainly focused on Western anatomical

knowledge. During this period, Parrenin was ordered to supervise the translation of French

48 Jean-Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, vol. 4, 351-352, 467-468. 49 Noël Golvers, “Jesuits in China and the Circulation of Western Books in the Sciences” (17th-18th centuries), 26- 30. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, No. 34, Special Issue: Networks and Circulation of Knowledge: Encounters between Jesuits, Manchus and Chinese in Late Imperial China (2011), pp. 15-62, 64-85

36 anatomical works into Manchu, under the title Complete Record of Anatomy , which completed around 1715. Through this work, Perrennin, along with many other Jesuit physicians, wanted to demonstrate that Western anatomical knowledge could be applied to Chinese bodies and an essential element for the improvement of Chinese medicine.

Jesuit understanding and transmission of Chinese medicine had certain limitations.50

There were active medical exchanges between the Jesuit and Qing court during this period, such

as Western drugs were regularly available to the Qing court, and there were also translations of

medical treatises into Chinese and Manchu languages. The exchange of Sino-Western medical

knowledge was mainly unilateral, and Western medical therapy and ideas did not bring any

influence or change on Chinese medical practices or theories either within or outside the

imperial court.

1.3 The making of the transnational academic network for transmitting medicinal plants

Jesuits’ work on Chinese medical practices and pharmacological knowledge had a

consistent influence in the European world, especially as significant sources for scientific

academies, such as the Royal Society in London and the Academy of Sciences in Paris. As

Andrian Hsia points out, the English knowledge about China was mainly from the Continent in

the eighteenth century, particularly from French missionaries. The accounts from missionaries

and travelers could be easily accessed by the scholarly community in both original languages and

translation.51 The influence lasted until the early nineteenth century, physicians and naturalists

50 Beatriz Puente-Ballesteros, “Jesuit Medicine in the Kangxi Court (1662-1722): Imperial Networks and Patronage”, East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, No. 34, (2011), pp. 86-162, also see her article “Antoine Thomas, SI as a «Patient» of the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722): A Case Study on the Appropriation of Theriac at the Imperial Court”, Revista de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia, 2012, 213-250. 51 Fan Cunzhong, “The Beginning of the Influence of in England,” 61-86, in Adrian Hsia ed., The Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1998), 74.

37 who visited China with British diplomatic embassies still relied on Jesuits works before they left for China. For instance, Clarke Abel, the physician accompanied Lord Amherst on his mission to

China (1816), drew exclusively in his account from narratives written by Jesuit naturalists, such as Memoires concernant les chinois by French Jesuit Joseph Amiot, Voyage a Pékin, Manille et l'Ile de France by Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes.

English naturalists and physicians were fascinated by the increasing interactions with people and materials beyond the European world. Through the Jesuits’ letters and reports, the

Royal Society received considerable knowledge in medicinal plants and medical practices in

China. In the Philosophical Transactions, the scientific journal published by the Royal Society from 1665, people could easily find the translated accounts of Chinese plants, such as ginseng, china root, and camphor, written by French and German Jesuits. In the same year, Jesuit Alvarus de Semedo’s book The history of that great and renowned monarchy of China was translated and introduced by Thomas Henshaw, one of the primary founders and a fellow of the Royal Society.

Semedo was the first European author to mention the origin and medicinal properties of Chinese ginseng in his work.

First established in 1660, the Royal Society of London aimed at further promoting by the authority of experiments the sciences of natural things and useful arts. From the late seventeenth to the eighteenth century, the records, correspondence, and publications reflected an interest in certain medicinal plants from China, such as ginseng, rhubarb, and cinnamon bar. The fellows of the Royal Society of London built on the knowledge repositories of Chinese medical practices and materia medica constructed by Jesuit missionaries. The Royal Society of London received its charter from King Charles II in 1662 and aimed at promoting experimental learning and the improvement of natural knowledge.

38 Since the first Secretary, Henry Oldenburg (1619-1677), the Royal Society had set up the

goal for the society to maintain a correspondence network all over the world and missionaries

were their major informants. The extensive influence of Jesuit scientists in the seventeenth and

eighteenth- century England was reflected by the works published in the Philosophical

Transactions, a scientific journal started to publish by Henry Oldenburg, the first Secretary of the

Society in 1665. The journal consisted of papers contributed by fellows of the Society,

correspondence from foreign explorers, and reviews of newly published scientific works. The

editors most welcomed Jesuits’ correspondence with their investigations of foreign matters.

From the 1660s, Jesuits reports formed a significant part of information about China for the

Royal Society. As in John Beale’s letter to Robert Boyle (1627-1691), one of the primary

founders of the Society, “by their universal commerce, incessant industry, and bottomless purses

we may receive useful intelligence and experimental information from all parts of the world.” 52

Over thirty articles, reviews, and observations written by Jesuits related to China was published

in Philosophical Transactions between 1666 to 1774.53

Robert Boyle was very interested in knowledge related to China, including natural

science, religious belief, social life, and imperial court, especially medicine. As he pointed out,

“though our doctors are much more learned men than theirs, yet probably their writings and

practice may teach us something that is new, and something making for our present purpose.”54

Jesuits’ works and correspondence were sources that he frequently cited in his writings about

China. According to Robert Boyle’s suggestion, the Royal Society paid particular attention to information related to Chinese medicine.

52 Thomas , The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, London, 1744, vol 4, 277. 53 Han Qi, “Sino-British scientific relation through Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” 51. 54 Thomas Birch, The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, London, 1744, vol 2, 161.

39 In 1698, Boyle’s successor Hans Sloane received a China Cabinet full of instruments and samples used by Chinese surgeons from Edward Buckley, the chief surgeon in Madras. Among these instruments, several are new and of different shapes from the same used in Europe. Sloan presented this cabinet at the meeting of the Society.55 As the Secretary of the Royal Society from

1690 to 1741, Sloane followed his efforts in promoting the global botanical exploration.

Meanwhile, Hans Sloane diligently made copies of books, collecting letters and papers, and contributed to the creation of archives about Chinese science and technology. Sloane was especially interested in botanical and medical knowledge and passionately obtaining plant specimens with therapeutic effects around the world. He became the major founder of the

Chelsea Physical Garden in London in 1713.

Jesuits not only sent back knowledge in Chinese materia medica in written form, botanical collections, seeds, and herbarium specimens also arrived in the hand of botanists and physicians in the European world. One of the most influential Jesuit naturalists is Father Pierre

Le Chéron d’Incarville (1706-1757), who resided in Beijing from 1740 to 1757. His work brought the scientific activities of the Jesuits in China into a new phase, especially in the field of natural history.56 Father d’Incarville was trained as a botanist under the renowned botanist

Bernard de Jussieu. He left Lorient for China in January 1740, and stay in Beijing till his death in

1757. During this period, he remained as a major corresponding member of the Bureau of

Commerce and the Académie des Sciences. Father d’Incarville paid much attention to plants in and around Beijing and made a few herbarium collections. In order to investigate the botanical wealth of the Qing Empire, d’Incarville cultivated a personal relationship with the Qianlong

55 Hans Sloan, An Account of a China Cabinet, Filled with Several Instruments, Fruits, etc. Used in China: Sent to the Royal Society by Mr. Buckly, Chief Surgeon at Fort St. George. By Hans Sloane, M. D. Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 20 (1698), pp. 390-392 56 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol.6, 620-626.

40 emperor by sending him plants he collected from Jardin des Plantes in Paris. In his letter to

Bernard de Jussieu, he asked to send him some seeds that he could present to the emperor. “I will be able to make myself known as a curieux des fleurs and eventually as a botanist, this may give me the chance to see many plants that I will otherwise never be able to see ...” His efforts were not in vain. Later, he reported to Bernard de Jussieu that the seeds and plants provided him free access to the emperor’s garden.

The correspondence and articles of Jesuits in the Philosophical Transactions revealed a significant influence of Jesuit science, particularly in natural history and medicine, to the Royal

Society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jesuit missionaries were also essential intermediates in the transmission of botanical and medical knowledge from China to London.

Through the consistent reports and letters between Jesuit missionaries and members of the Royal

Society, a transnational academic network on disseminating knowledge related to China was created in the eighteenth century.

1.4 British physicians encountered with an exotic remedy

Certain medicinal plants, such as ginseng, rhubarb, and China root, received particular attention from British botanists and physicians. The introduction of ginseng to British physicians and botanists in the late seventeenth century, the discovery of the substitute species in American colonies, and the success of creating the trade network of ginseng between England, American colonies and China in the 1750s, reflected the increasing corporative efforts in legitimating the consumption of foreign remedies. It also reveals a shift in incorporating exotic materia medica in

Western medicine, in which the individual experience of both physicians and patients became credential for these exotic substances.

41 In 1748, Pierre Nicolas d’Incarville sent an annotated catalog of Chinese plants from

Beijing to Cromwell Mortimer, the Secretary of the Royal Society at that time. Along with the catalog, Mortimer also found several packets of seeds labeled with the names of the plants in

Chinese. Mortimer immediately sent the seeds to botanical gardens at Oxford, Edinburgh, and

Chelsea, and asked his colleagues there to plant the seeds and wrote down journals about the cultivation of these plants. Ginseng was one of the plants in the parcel that received extensive attention in Britain. First known in Jesuits’ work as “the remedy that dispenses immortality,” the transnational academic network facilitated the introduction of ginseng plant in Europe. The knowledge of Chinese materia medica that appeared in Jesuits’ accounts was tested and experienced by medical professionals and patients. The accumulation of personal experience with exotic remedies, in turn, led to increasing demands for specific substances.

British physicians were already familiar with the curative properties of ginseng in the mid-seventeenth century through their Jesuit correspondents. In the first volume of Philosophical

Transactions published in 1666, a brief introduction of ginseng that translated from French experimenter Melchisédech Thévenot had already caught the attention among physicians,

“ginseng, highly prized by Chinese doctors, an extraordinary Restorative and Cordiall, recovering frequently with it agonizing persons.” Later in 1679, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-

1682), a prominent scholar who had a great interest in natural history, sent a letter to his son Dr.

Edward Browne, a fellow of the College of Physician at that time, “You did well to observe

Ginseng. All exotick rarities & especially of the East, the East India trade having encreased, are brought into England best profitt made thereof. Of this plant Kircherus writes in his China illustrata.” Then he said that ginseng was being sold in London, but he was curious to know

42 whether his son had tried the plant himself.57

In the meantime, the fellows of the Royal Society started to carry out scientific observations and tests on botanic specimens from China, including ginseng. Dr. Andrew Clench, the vice president of the Royal Society at that time, was very interested in Chinese ginseng. On

26 June of 1679, Dr. Clench presented the Royal Society “A certain root lately brought out of

China, called ginseng, of great esteem in China for its virtue in restoring consumptive persons, and those emaciated with long sickness, to their former health and strength. It was valued in

China at twice its weight in silver. Its taste is very bitter and somewhat hot upon the tongue somewhat like gentians, and seems to be a very good stomachic.” 58 He referred to early pharmaceutical work in China, probably The Classical Pharmacopoeia of Shennong (神農本草

經), that this plant used to restore a weak pulse, to disperse fatigue and improve both physical strengthen and mental activity. Most importantly, it was regarded as a tonic for anti-aging and promoting longevity. Dr. Clench delivered in some of it for the repository wrapped up in some

Chinese papers, together with a paper containing an account of his experiments with it in

England. The experiment marked the first serious attempt to examine and test the plant.59

Physicians started to draw public attention to the effects of ginseng through cases that they encountered. Robert Wittie (1613-1684), a York shire physician, wrote a treatise on the healing properties of ginseng in 1680. He cited several cases in which the tincture of ginseng had proved a “known, safe, and experienced remedy” for patients of different ages. One of the

57 Sir Thomas Browne's Works, Including His Life and Correspondence: Memoirs of Sir Thomas Browne. Domestic correspondence, journals. Miscellaneous correspondence, vol. 1, 236-238. 58 Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London, for Improving of Natural Knowledge (London, 1737), vol. 3, 490. 59 John H. Appleby, “Ginseng and the Royal Society,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Mar., 1983), pp. 121-145

43 evidence was about Mr. Andrew Marvell, a poet, and politician at the end of the seventeenth

century. Mr. Marvell “was much emaciated, and reduced unto a perfect Skeleton, a mere Bag of

Bones, by a long Hecktick Feaver, joyned with an Ulcer of the Lungs; being despaired of by all

friends, I was resolved to try what the tincture of this Root would do.” Dr. Wittie gave the patient

some tincture of ginseng and asked him to take it along with warm milk every morning. After a

while, he found the patient’s “lost Appetite restored, and his natural Ruddy Complexion revived

in his Cheeks, to the Amazement of his desponding Relations, that he was called Lazarus the

Second.” Dr. Wittie thought this is one of the best medicines in the world, and in many cases,

better against consumptions and distempers of the lungs than any other medication. At the end of

this pamphlet, he mentioned Robert Boyle, who once told him, this medicine was “sent from

heaven,” to save the lives of thousands of men, women, and children.60

In 1681, Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712), a botanist and fellow of the Society, described a

medicinal plant from China called ninzin in his work Musaeum Regalis Societatis, “Taken from

a parcel sent over by a Chinese physician, and given by Dr. Andrew Clench, I received the root

ninzin (ginsing), a pair of large ginger roots (galangal), and several other roots that I was not able

to identify. The root ninzin divided as the Mandrake, into two legs. It is much used, and relied

upon in Epilepsy, fevers, and other both chronic and acute disease.”61 At the same time, they

received several “accurate” drawings of the plants that were sent from China to the Royal

Society, which showed “the relative size of and proportion of the root, stalk, leaves, buds and

60 Robert Wittie, Some observations made upon the root called nean, or ninsing: imported from the East-Indies. Shewing its ... virtue, in curing consumptions, ptissicks, shortness of breath, distillation of rhume. 1680 61 Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis, or, A catalogue & description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society, London, 1681.

44 flowers.” Nehemiah Grew and his colleague John Ray both believed that the drawings

“significantly improved the Society’s understanding on the plants’ botanical characteristics.”62

The Philosophical Transactions also played an essential role in publishing and

circulating the knowledge of ginseng to the general public.63 In 1713, the journal published an

account of ginseng by French Jesuit Pierre Jartoux, who became a court mathematician for

Emperor Kangxi and compiled an atlas of the Empire by order of the emperor. Jartoux’s account

was his own encounter with the ginseng plant during his survey at the border with Korea. He

provided a full report about the habitat of the plant and first-hand information of its medical

application. He recorded in detail how the Chinese used both the root and leaves for decoction,

“As for the Root of this Plant, it is necessary to boil it a little more than Tea, to allow time for

extracting its Virtue; as is practiced by the Chinese when they give it to sick Persons, on which

occasion they seldom use more than the fifth part of an Ounce of the dried Root. But as for those

that are in Health, and take it only for Prevention, or some slight Indisposition, I would advise

them not to make less than Ten Doses of an Ounce, and not to take of it every Day.” 64 He also

provided his personal experience of a ginseng test on his own body. “The Tartars often bring us

the Leaves of ginseng instead of Tea; and I always find myself so well afterwards, that I should

readily prefer them before the best Tea. Their Decoction is of a grateful Colour; and when one

has taken it twice or thrice, its Taste and Smell become very pleasant.” Jartoux’s account

enhanced British physicians and botanists’ understanding of the curative effects of ginseng and

even evoked more curiosity about the plant by claiming that ginseng could be found in other

62 Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London, for Improving of Natural Knowledge, 493. 63 John H. Appleby, “Ginseng and the Royal Society,” 127. 64 Jartoux Pierre XXV. The description of a tartarian plant, call'd gin-seng; with an account of its virtues. In a letter from Father Jartoux, to the Procurator General of the Missions of India and China. Taken from the tenth volume of letters of the Missionary Jesuits, printed in Paris in octavo, 171328Phil. Trans. R. Soc.

45 parts of the world. He concluded that ginseng would prove an excellent medicine if European

physicians could have sufficient amounts of it to “examine the nature of it chemically, and to

apply it in a proper quantity according to the nature of the disease for which it may be

beneficial.”65 (Figure 3)

Figure 3: Joseph-François Lafitau, Mémoire ... concernant la précieuse plante du gin-seng de Tartarie, découverte en Canada, Paris, 1718. American ginseng vs. Chinese ginseng.

65 Jartoux Pierre XXV. The description of a tartarian plant, call'd gin-seng; with an account of its virtues. In a letter from Father Jartoux, to the Procurator General of the Missions of India and China. Taken from the tenth volume of letters of the Missionary Jesuits, printed in Paris in octavo, 171328Phil. Trans. R. Soc.

46 Even though British physicians and botanists considered ginseng as an exotic remedy with promising medical properties, the English East India Company was never able to import ginseng in large amounts from China. The Chinese ascribed extraordinary virtues to the root and had long considered it as a sovereign remedy in almost all diseases. The root was extremely rare and expensive in China, and only through private trade of the Company, a limited amount of the root was brought to London as an exotic luxury remedy. However, the transnational efforts in the examination of ginseng led British botanists and merchants to a new source for getting the root.

In 1715, French Jesuit Joseph François Lafitau claimed that he identified a similar plant, based on Jartoux’s description and claim, in “la Nouvelle France” when he was on a mission to

Quebec. The discovery stimulated decades-long discussions between the Royal Society in

London and the Académie des sciences in Paris.

In the 1720s, reports about the discovery of ginseng in many other parts of northern

American colonies, such as Virginia and Pennsylvania, reached London. William Byrd, a planter from colonial Virginia and also a member of the Royal Society, not only confirmed that ginseng growth on the northern continent of America during his mission to settle a boundary dispute between Virginia and North Carolina in 1728, but also reiterated that these ginsengs shared the similar virtues with Chinese ones in his correspondence with Hans Sloane. During the 1730s,

British botanists started to promote the sale of ginseng from America to China. The Scottish physician and botanist John Fothergill (1712-1780), expressing his interest in ginseng trade with his friend in 1736. He still cited Du Hald’s influential work as a significant source, “I lately was presented with a very great curiosity from that place, viz a piece of a root, and the top of a plant, which they call Ginseng, as perfectly agreeing with P. Du Halde’s description of that celebrated

47 vegetable it is but lately discover’d, and in a very small quantity.” In 1750, Fothergill informed his friend that they had begun to “receive considerable quantities of ginsengs from America.”66

Conclusion

This chapter provides a background on the introduction of Chinese materia medica and medical practices to the European world in the early modern period. Jesuits talked about Chinese medicine through their letters, reports, and translations. Their catalog and detailed description of medicinal plants represented part of their encounters with Chinese understandings of illness and healing. The interactions of physicians and Jesuit missionaries reflected the growing awareness of new medical knowledge and commodities during this period. The case of constructing the understanding of ginseng from China, the identifying of a similar plant in northern American colonies, and the transmission of ginseng as a desirable medical commodity revealed the construction of a transnational academic network for identifying and transmitting foreign medicinal plants. It was also considered as an intellectual project facilitating the shaping of

European perceptions of exotic remedies. The case of the ginseng plant signified the increasing significance of personal experiences with exotic materia medica in legitimating the consumption of foreign remedies among European physicians and patients. The next chapter will focus on collecting exotic medicinal plants stimulated by both scientific and commercial interests in eighteenth-century Britain. The trade of medicinal plants through the English East India

Company and the global botanic hunting of the Royal Society went hand in hand in transferring medicinal plants from China to London. The project was collaborated by hands-on collectors employed by both the Company and botanists who were not able to travel abroad. These

66 John Coakley Lettsom, The Works of John Fothergill, M.D. 1783. 202-203.

48 intermediate figures in the next chapter crossed boundaries of trading, and scientific exploration helped successfully to channel the flow of materia medica to British physicians, apothecaries, druggists, and customers.

49 Chapter 2 Trading Knowledge of botany and materia medica in eighteenth century

In 1724, Hannah Sheppard received a letter from local apothecary Joseph Payne

regarding her requests of various remedies for children’s ailments. In the letter, Joseph Payne

recommended several remedies including purging: “Take rhubarb root 4 ounces, Angelica Roots

one once, Sarsaparilla one ounce, China root half an ounce, a half harts tongue leaves. Boil all in

three quarts of water, add half pint of the white Lisbon wine as you take it from the fire and

cover it close till tis cold.” Another remedy was for wind colic, “take rhubarb and salt of tartar, of each half dram; Brandy 4 ounces; or spirit of aniseeds: digest, and strain off after some time, and you have an excellent tincture for baby wind colic.”67 The herbs in recipes revealed very

diversified origins. Some of the ingredients could be planted and collected in one’s garden; some

exotic herbs could be purchased, either as dried herbs, powders, tinctures, or as compounded

drugs, from local apothecaries and druggists. As a result of the development of trade routes with

the East Indies, British drug imports in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries experienced a

gradual expansion in both quantity and category. 68 Since the early seventeenth century, the ships

of the East India Company (EIC) carried Asian commodities to England directly. Large

quantities and more regular trade of rhubarb, camphor, china root, and tea, in particular, were

accessible to both professional and amateur medical practitioners at this time.

The global commercial transmission of medicinal plants or exotic remedies has drawn a

lot of academic interests in the past decade. Many researchers have investigated the introduction

of medical commodities from other parts of the world to local researchers and consumers in

Europe. These studies show that trade companies and scientific academies were equally related

67 Wellcome Library, MS. 3082, Medical Recipe Book, 18th century. 68 Elaine Leong, “Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 82, 2008, 145-168. For early-modern British drug trade, see Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, Volume 25, Issue 1, February 2012, 20–46

50 to the transfer of materia medica in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Meanwhile, some researches focus on the networks that facilitated the transmission of botanical commodities.69 They target individuals and groups in transferring commodities of materia medica, including learned physicians and apothecaries, collectors, merchants, and the like.

Particularly, the studies on the English East India Company and their trade with China received increasing attention. The EIC employers who traveled to China did not just bring back the plants; most importantly, they had to learn everything from biological traits, cultivating, nurturing from local Chinese gardeners. The knowledge was especially important when these Europeans needed to bring the plant aboard and kept them alive for months on the sea. Even though many studies have done on these EIC employers as agents for imperial trade and scientific networks, local

Chinese gardeners remained as invisible players buried in the historical records.

Fa-ti Fan’s work is one of the major attempts to reconstruct the British natural-historical project in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China.70 He successfully describes British naturalists, including merchants, diplomats, and missionaries, engaged in collecting and classifying the sources of flora and fauna in China. Most importantly, he notices the role of

Chinese agents, including local gardeners, herbal doctors, plant hunters in transmitting local botanical knowledge to British naturalists. He emphasizes their roles in shaping natural history as modern science and the formation of an “informal empire.” This chapter will build on Fa-ti Fan’s work to underscore the role of local informants as hands-on botanical collectors. Furthermore,

69 Pratik Chakrabarti, Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest and Therapeutics in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2010); Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England’s Drug Trade, c. 1550-c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, 25:1 (2012) 20-46; T.D. Walker, “The Medicines Trade in the Portuguese Atlantic World: Acquisition and Dissemination of Healing Knowledge from Brazil (c. 1580- 1800)”, Social History of Medicine, 26:3 (2013) 403-431; Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds.), The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World (London and New York: Routledge 2016) 70 Fa-ti Fan, British naturalists in Qing China. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004).

51 previous studies on Sino-British cultural encounters tend to emphasize British dominance and the

passive position of local knowledge. I would argue that local botanical and materia medica

knowledge from local informants played an active role that not only helped British research on

natural history in China, the knowledge imported along with botanical goods to the British

market and facilitated British understanding and acceptance on Chinese natural history, materia

medica, and medical practices.

Europeans who reached China during this period brought with them various aspirations

and requests, mostly related to trade, colonial expansion, and the desire to disseminate their

religious and cultural practices. One of the fascinating aspects of the encounters is the

commodification and transmission of plants, especially those with medicinal effects.71 Early-

modern Britain imports of medicinal plants from China were mainly from the trade of the

English East India Company. Searching through the India Office Records from 1687 onwards,

there are consistent records regarding rhubarb, china root, ginseng, tea, camphor, cassia.72

Although plants formed only a small part of British trade with Canton, it was not only very profitable but also involved encounters of natural history and medicine between China and

Britain. Meanwhile, employees of the Company also brought living plants, seeds, and herbarium back to London, which were usually requested by their colleagues, mostly botanists and physicians in the Royal Society in London.

The English East India Company first started as a small group of English investors and businessmen looking for new trading opportunities, received a charter granted by Queen

71 See Paula Findlen ed. Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500-1800 (London, Routledge, 2012). This collection of essays offers a rich study on the circulation and consumption of material objects transferred from various cultural and geographic boundaries in early modern time. 72 In September 1687, the Court of Directors announced that they would carry on the China trade direct from England, and under their own management, and not under the Madras Council.

52 Elizabeth in 1600 to trade with the entire area east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of Cape

Horn, also known as the East Indies. Primarily prompted by commercial initiatives, a large part

of the Company was consisted of experienced merchants who previously worked in the Levant

Company, which dealt with trade to the East through land routes. For the following two

centuries, the English Company significantly increased the overseas trade between Asia and

Europe.73 At the early stage, the Company engaged mainly with existing profitable spice trade,

such as pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg. By the end of the seventeenth century, exotic

commodities such as coffee, tea, cacao, cotton, and indigo were not only successfully introduced

to the British domestic market but also had a significant impact on British intellectual, social,

and cultural life.

With the increasing EIC imports from Canton and widely use of exotic ingredients, the

value of medicinal ingredients, such as rhubarb and tea, was well established in eighteenth-

century Britain. However, the process that the British attempted to domesticate the product was

facing compatible challenges. Domesticating the use of exotic herbs in Britain involved an

intense effort of physicians to locate the correct species, merchants to identify the best variety for

commercial purpose, and botanists to develop a proper cultivation technique that could be

replicated in Britain. Among these efforts to commodify exotic remedies, domestic medical

practitioners played a crucial role in circulating knowledge related to exotic drugs and

normalizing the medical use of them. The recipes made by laypeople provided a bottom-up view

of circulating knowledge of exotic herb-based remedies. Their enthusiasm for collecting and

making up various medicines not only reflected the significance of medicine as part of early-

modern domestic knowledge, tracing the sources of herbal ingredients that household

73 Emily Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757 (Princeton University Press, 2014), vii-ix.

53 practitioners had engaged with also shows the diversity of producing early-modern medication.74

2.1 Searching for regular trade network with China

Since the founding of the English East India Company in 1600, its employees started to search for more opportunities to reach for contact with the Chinese authorities, either from

Bantam or from Japan, in order to obtain permission to send shipping to Canton or other ports.

Both the Dutch and the Portuguese had already stepped into trade with China at that time. The

Dutch had sent ships to Canton in 1604 and 1607, but in each case, they had been roughly rebuffed. On the other hand, the Portuguese were allowed to carry on very restricted commerce with Canton from their settlement at Macao. It was not until 1635 when the English took advantage of the conflicts between the Dutch and the Portuguese: the London sailed from Surat finally reached Macao, and again in 1636.

The voyage of Captain John Weddell in 1636 and 1637 to Goa, Malacca, and Macao can be considered as one of those early English attempts to create commercial ties with China. In

1637, the EIC merchants recommended a second voyage to China, which should bypass Macao and endeavor to open up trade near Canton. However, the newly founded Courteen’s Association

(1635), a group of merchants who were granted a license by Charles I to trade in the East Indies and in open disregard for the EIC’s monopoly privileges, received fully imperial support and was able to force an entrance where EIC had failed. They dispatched a fleet for the same purpose under Captain John Weddell. In 1637, four ships under the command of Captain John Weddell arrived at Macao and Canton. This episode of early contact between England, Portuguese Macao, and China can be found in the diaries of Peter Mundy, an English mercantile trader, whose

74 Patrick Wallis, “Apothecaries and the Consumption and Retailing of Medicines in Early Modern London,” in From Physick to Pharmacology: Five Hundred Years of British Drug Retailing, ed. Louis Hill Curth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp.13–28, on pp. 15–16. Elaine Leong, “Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 82, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp.145-168

54 writings were published under the title The Travels of Peter Mundy.75 Weddell’s fleet left Goa on

January 7, 1637, and established a few English factories in the East Indies, sailing from there via

Malacca to the Pearl River off Macao. The Portuguese Governor was worried that the English merchants would disrupt their monopoly over the trade in the region and tried to adopt every available means to prevent these English interlopers from securing any trade. At the same time, they were also confronted by local Chinese officials. Finally, the Chinses permitted three of the

English merchants to proceed to Canton, where they were allowed to arrange for the sale and purchase of goods. At the end of that year, the fleet managed to bring back with them a small number of goods purchased at Canton.

Meanwhile, the Company turned its focus to other possibilities, such as Formosa

(Taiwan), where the Dutch had successfully established a post there, but were just driven out by

Koxinga, who was holding the area for the Ming court against the Manchu invasion. The English wanted to take the chance to replace the Dutch and made several voyages. In 1675, the Flying

Eagle was dispatched from Bantam to Taiwan and managed to get permission from local authorities to trade at Amoy (). Next year, a ship was sent to establish a factory at that port. Later, the English succeeded in securing the port after the Manchu force conquered Amoy in 1681, which the EIC took it as a sign to make a further movement to Canton. However, it was not until the early eighteenth century when the Company obtained temporary settlements at

Chusan, Canton, and Amoy. In 1757, an imperial edict prohibited Europeans from resorting to

Chusan, Ningpo, or Amoy, and confined all foreign trade to Canton. The English EIC finally received official permission to establish a regular factory at Canton in 1762, which

75 The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667. Vol. III (In Two Parts). Travels in England, India, China, etc., 1634-8. Edited by Lt.-Col. Sir Richard Carnac Temple, published by the Hakluyt Society, 1919.

55 correspondent with the dramatic increase of tea trade between EIC and China.76

Since 1757 the formalization of Canton trade, an elaborate system which officially confined all foreign trade to Canton, the Qing government ordered the Hong merchants to take full responsibility for all commercial activities with the foreign merchants. According to Paul

Van Dyke, these Hong merchants “were the only persons licensed to trade directly with foreigners” and “from 1700 to 1760, there were anywhere from half a dozen to two dozen or more licensed merchants operating in any given year.” 77 Hong merchants came together in the

1720s and again in the 1760s, forming the Co-hong, a quasi-merchant-guild that guaranteed its members’ priority to trade with foreigners. These Hong merchants not only regulated trade affairs with the foreigners, but they would also serve as the intermediaries between foreign merchants and the Hoppo, imperial commissioned Custom Superintendents at Canton. Despite the seemingly increasing regular trade with Canton, merchants of the Company felt more impositions and restrictions while they were trading with Hong merchants, especially increasing duties enforced on them and physical restrictions.

The eighteenth-century Canton was not only a space for trade encounters. As Fa-ti Fan points out, Canton was “a contact zone for Chinese and Westerners.” Each year thousands of foreigners visited Canton, and the culture of the city was “at once local and international.”78

Chinese and foreigners encountered each other every day and at all levels. 79 The Sino-British encounter at Canton through trade, diplomatic missions, and botanical explorations was carried out by different varieties of agents, including merchants, surgeons, gardeners, naturalists. The

76 William Foster, England’s Quest of Eastern Trade, in Patrick Tuck, The East India Company 1600-1858, vol. 1 (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 324-333. 77 Paul Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 9. 78 Fa-ti Fan, British naturalists in Qing China. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004), 16-17. 79 Fa-ti Fan, British naturalists in Qing China, 4-5.

56 scientific and commercial interests in exotic botanical commodities, including rhubarb, tea,

China root, camphor, cambogia, and other spices, were the driving force behind the encounter.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Company transmitted both

dried drugs and living medicinal plants from the East Indies, which made the knowledge of the

natural world satisfy both commercial profit and scientific curiosity.80 Drugs such as dried

rhizomes of rhubarb, galingale, and China root that possesses specific medicinal properties

became a regular part of EIC imports with the increase of domestic demands for foreign

remedies in the seventeenth century. In 1588 only 14 percent of drugs consumed in England had

come from outside Europe. However, the figure had risen to 48 percent by 1621and by 1669, and

it had reached 70 percent, the majority coming from India and the East Indies. The value of these

imports had risen from £600 in 1567 to £6,000 in 1669. Around 90 percent of those imported

drugs came into the Port of London. The EIC merchants then sold them to the London druggists,

wholesalers who provided supplies for local and provincial apothecaries and druggists.81

Ultimately, these drugs entered domestic drug chests of both elite and ordinary families.

In the meantime, some EIC employees, including supercargoes, physicians, and captains, worked as plant collectors for naturalists and botanists from the Royal Society, the Kew Garden, and the Chelsea Physic Garden. Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, instructed his collectors to pay attention to plants of economic and medicinal uses.82 These collectors encountered large varieties of living plants in visiting local markets, Fa-tee nurseries, and gardens of Hong merchants, and they tried to transport them back to England.83 Even though

80 Anna Winterbottom and Alan Lester, The East India Company and the Natural World (Springer, 2014), 99-100. 81 Denis Leigh, “Medicine, the City and China,” 54-55. 82 British Library, Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1784, ff. 65. 83 Fa Tee (Huati) nurseries are gardens for nursery and display various kinds of useful and decoration plants created by Canton merchants. These gardens were popular destinations for leisure and shopping for horticultural essentials and also cultural exchange for Western sojourners at Canton.

57 some plants did not survive the long sea voyage due to the limitation of techniques, some plants

were successfully transplanted in English gardens. As these plant collectors entered into

botanical exchanges, other kinds of interactions, such as medical practices and new information

about the natural world, emerged as well.

2.2 British interests in Exotic Drug imports in early modern period

As Patrick Wallis pointed out, the development of long-term trade routes had a

significant influence on the change of the types of drugs imported to England during the

seventeenth century. The desirable and recognizable physiological effects of exotic drugs made

them especially appealing to English physicians, patients, and apothecaries. The domestic

demand and the interest of East India Company in exotic drugs led to the increase of drug

imports in England from the late sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century. The

seventeenth-century witnessed a significant increase in drug imports; the volume of imports

reached 25,774 pounds, almost ten times greater than the average amount in the late sixteenth

century. The increasing drug imports in the eighteenth century were generally slow, but certain

exotic drugs, including senna, China root, rhubarb, and Jesuit bark (sarsaparilla), were imported

in large quantities. Some highly-priced drugs, such as ginseng, were imported in small volumes

through private trade and smuggling due to the striking increase in customs duties during this

period.84

Among drugs imported in large quantities from China in the seventeenth centuries to

eighteenth centuries, rhubarb, China root, tea, camphor, and ginseng were the major ones.

Rhubarb was familiar to European physicians for centuries, and it often appeared as a highly

valuable medicinal herb in works of explorers and merchants reaching China in the early modern

84 Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800”, Social History of Medicine, Volume 25, Issue 1, February 2012, 20–46.

58 period. After 1700, the EIC engaged in rhubarb trade and brought increasing quantities to

London. China root, also known as Radix China, was first introduced to Europe by the

Portuguese visiting Goa as an effective cure for syphilis in the early sixteenth century. After the

Portuguese established a trading post at Macao, China root immediately became a popular

commodity. English merchants had noticed the value of the root since the mid-seventeenth

century. In 1672, the EIC directors in London ordered 500 piculs of radix China from Taiwan.

The root also frequently appeared in the trade between China ports and Madras of the Company.

In 1717, the ship Marlbro carried 250 piculs of China root to be sold in Madras. In 1733, the ship

Prince Augustus was loaded with 100 piculs of China root from China to Madras.85

East India Company’s trade with China increased steadily from the late seventeenth to

early eighteenth century. Between 1698 and 1713, about forty-three English ships visited

Chinese ports like Chusan, Ningbo, Amoy, and Canton. One of the early records of drugs from

China appeared in the records of EIC cargoes was in1637, when the Catherine under Captain

Weddell was loaded with commodities obtained in Canton and Macao, including 100 piculs of

china root. In 1687, the London and the Worcester were dispatched from Bombay to Amoy.

Amongst the commodities positively ordered on the Company’s account were 300 Tubbs of camphor. In 1704, the Kent sailed from Canton back to London, and her cargo included 22 piculs of rhubarb. In the log of the Anson of her voyage to Whampoa in 1750, kept by the commander,

Jonathan Ramsay, is a record of thirteen chests of rhubarb being shipped home in his privilege tonnage. Some of the private trade in 1764 included the following: Captain John Mitford of the

Northumberland, six boxes of rhubarb, Captain James Moffatt of the Latham, eight boxes of rhubarb, Captain John Sandys of the Norfolk, seven boxes of rhubarb, Captain Richard Hall of

85 IOR/G/12/37, Diary and Consultations of the Council in China, Jan. 1734–Apr. 1735, ff. 129. 24.

59 the Worcester, ten chests of rhubarb and eighteen chests of cambogia, while Captain Farham

Nairn of the Lord Holland shipped home nine chests of rhubarb and thirteen chests of cambogia.86 In 1702, the Court of Committees instructed supercargoes on ships bound for

Canton to purchase drugs, “if you can procure any other Druggs likely to turn to account bring some, especially dying materials as Safflore [safflower] &c or any new sample of Druggs whereof you can learn the use bring a little for trial.”87 The “List of Goods Proper to be Provided at Canton” reflected the Company’s special interests in medicinal commodities.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, global trade networks became the increasingly vital impetus behind the dissemination of botanical and medical knowledge. The discovery of new exotic materia medica brought not only economic profits but also the promise of cures for illness, both familiar and unknown. The commodification of exotic remedy was not only about the transmission of medical commodities to the English market, but also the reception of those commodities as a domestic remedy. Historians generally agree that household medicine played a significant role in making and circulating medical knowledge in early modern

England.88 Specific remedies, such rhubarb, received particular interests among English botanists and physicians and were also accessible for domestic medical practitioners. The next section will examine the domesticating and commodification of rhubarb through the efforts of botanists, merchants, professional, and amateur medical practitioners in eighteenth-century

Britain.

2.3 Domesticating exotic remedies in eighteenth-century Britain

86 Hosea Ballou Morse, The chronicles of the East India Company, trading to China 1635-1834. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, vol. 1, 26, 63, 144, 284, 87 IOR, E/3/93, 517-21, and G/12/6, 867. 88 Elaine Leong, "Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household." Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 82 no. 1, 2008, p. 145-168.

60 The British trade with China included a large number of local remedies. While we are reading through the India Office records, what we found are often quantitative evidence like this: ginger 500 piculs, China root 100 piculs, Rhubarb 22 piculs, or tea 470 piculs. However, we will realize that it was not easy to trace the diffusion of exotic remedies in different social levels through quantities of imports to Britain; it is especially difficult to trace the spread and reception of knowledge that related to those commodities. Without knowing how to make use of these ingredients, these goods would remain intangible to British people. Rhubarb, as an effective laxative, had been widely used by Chinese physicians since very ancient times. The medical knowledge related to rhubarb had also been introduced to Europe through works and translations of Jesuit missionaries in the early seventeenth century. British physicians were already familiar with rhubarb as a medicinal ingredient. The primary debates over rhubarb in eighteen-century

Britain focused on identifying various species and the cultivation of the plant in British gardens.

Marcy Norton’s work Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasure (2010), traces the trajectory of tobacco and chocolate in the early modern Iberian Atlantic world. She points out, the primary reason for tobacco and chocolate came to the European world was because European consumers

“adopted the habit from the New World.” As soon as tobacco and chocolate reached Europe, medical and botanical writers started to define these exotic substances through “scientific” classifications. However, Norton claimed that these writers “had little impact on how European used the New World substances, but they contributed greatly to how they thought about them.”

She insists that “sets of practices, habits, and tastes” that Amerindians described tobacco and chocolate were brought back to as a cultural package by Europeans.89

When the British were consuming rhubarb as a medicinal plant, they consumed the

89 Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 167.

61 knowledge transmitted by Jesuit missionaries and explorers from China at the same time. Just as

Spanish consumers accepted not only tobacco and chocolate but also Mesoamerican rituals and

behaviors related to these goods.

2.3.1 Locating rhubarb in Chinese sources from Jesuit translations

Before we start to explore imported exotic remedies and the effort to domesticate rhubarb

in Britain in the eighteenth century, let us first have a general overview of the history of medical

use of rhubarb in China. One of the most popular foreign remedies imported through China trade

is rhubarb. In China, the dried roots of rhubarb, known as da huang 大黄 in the pharmacopeia,

was used as a laxative since a very early period. In the Divine Farmer’s Classics 神農本草經,

the earliest pharmacopeia knew in China, rhubarb was depicted as a drug useful for purging

congested blood and breaking down abdominal bumps, stagnated liquid, and food in bowel.90 It

was also known for its effects in facilitating digestion and harmonizing the inner organs. From

the late fifth to the eighteenth century, the original place and medical effects of rhubarb had

consistently been questioned and reclaimed by medical writers.

The knowledge of rhubarb was already known to British physicians and botanists during

the early eighteenth century. We have talked about how Jesuit missionaries served as informative

intermediates in transmitting Chinese botanical and medical knowledge to the Royal Society in

London. In the late seventeenth century, Michael Boym presented the botanical characters of

rhubarb in an illustration in his work Flora Sinensis (中國植物志,1656), which included a

detailed description of more than twenty plants from China. Boym also provided information on

90 The original work has long been lost. Even though many medical authors and Daoists in the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE) mentioned about a book titled Shen nong jing (The Divine Farmer’s Classical), it is not clear whether the Shen nong jing is the original version of Shen nong ben cao jing. The Daoist scholar Tao Hongjing (452-536) was the first who mentioned the Shen nong ben cao jing.

62 the origin of the plant and how it was harvested and processed for medical use. Other Jesuits’ works, including Athanasius Kircher’s China Illustrata (1667) and Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s

Description of the empire of China and Chinese Tartarie, both included description and illustration of the rhubarb plant. Du Halde’s work was published in English in London in 1738.

These works all circulated widely in the European world during this time.

In the early eighteenth century, Jesuits had incorporated translations of Chinese pharmacopeia into their works. These selections and translations represented their understanding of Chinese medicine and natural history.91 Interestingly, Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge introduced by Jesuits was a patchwork that different authors from different periods could be identified. One of the major works that Du Hald incorporated was the most well-known pharmaceutic work in China, the Compendium of Materia Medica (本草綱目,1596) by Ming naturalist Li Shizhen 李時珍(1518-1593). The translation contended Li Shizhen’s introduction of materia medica knowledge from various medical schools in previous dynasties, including The

Collected Commentaries on Shennong’s Classics of Pharmaceutics 神農本草經集注 compiled by the Taoist medical writer Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (456-536); and The Newly Revised Materia

Medica (新修本草, 659), the first government-sponsored materia medica in China.

From the translation of rhubarb, we could not only identify several materia medica works from earlier times but also some disagreements between different authors. For example, Chinese medical writers disagreed with each other about the origin of rhubarb. Tao Hongjing claimed that

“Rhubarb today was mostly collected from the northern mountain areas of Yizhou (Sichuan).

Even though the curative effects of these were not good as rhubarbs originated from Hexi

91 Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009), 144.

63 (Gansu), some of the best quality still have the texture of the brocade and bitter taste.”92 The

Newly Revised Materia Medica (新修本草, 659) corrected mistakes and misleading comments in

Tao Hongjing’s work. The compiler Su Jing pointed out that Tao spent most of his life in the

Jiangnan area, and his knowledge of materia medica was greatly affected by his regional

restriction. Du Halde noticed the inconsistent record about the origin of rhubarb, and he

eventually adopted Su Jing’s revision of Tao Hongjing’s idea that rhubarb from Sichuan is not as

good as those from Gansu.93 During the Northern Song period (960-1127), the Gansu area was under the control of the Tangut Empire for a long time, and physicians at this time had to take rhubarb from Sichuan for their prescriptions. In Su Jing’s account of rhubarb, “a medicinal plant

that can be found in the valley of Hexi and Longxi, also in Sichuan, Hedong, and Shanxi. The

best ones are those from Shuchuan with the texture of the brocade, and the next ones are from

Longxi, which are called Tangut rhubarb.”94

Besides its medical effects, Du Halde also noticed that the imperial government of Han

Chinese utilized rhubarb trade to manipulate its relationship with these non-Han people.95 The

reason for this is that one of the major producing areas of rhubarb is Hexi (Gansu), a northern

borderland was consistently taken over by foreign powers such as the Tanguts, the Mongols, and

the Tibetans since the eleventh century. According to pharmacopeias in China, non-Han people

in the north consumed a large amount of meat, and their inner organs are slowly accumulated by

dampness and heat. Unlike Han people take rhubarb as curative medicine, it was a daily

92 Tao Hongjing, Collected Commentaries on Shennong’s Classics of Pharmaceutic, ed. Shang Zhijun, Shang Yuanshen, vol. 5 Herbs. 陶弘景,尚志钧,尚元勝輯校: 《本草經集注》 卷五, 322页. 93 Jean-Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, vol.3, 232-24. 94 Su Jing 蘇敬撰Shang Zhijun 尚志钧辑校 : The Newly Revised Materia Medica vol. 10 《新修草本》卷十《草部下品之上》，1981，247頁。 95 Jean-Baptiste du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, vol.3, 34-35.

64 necessity for them to preserve health. Rhubarb served as a significant cultural notion for Han

Chinese to distinguish themselves from non-Han barbarian people in the North. Interestingly,

this cultural attribution of rhubarb would continue to influence the Qing government rhubarb

trade with English EIC in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

2.3.2 British efforts in commodification the medical use of rhubarb

In the European world, the records about rhubarb can be found in pharmacopeias since

the classical era. The Greek botanist in the first century, Dioscorides, in his seminal work, De

Materia Medica, wrote, “Rha, by some called Rheon, grows in those countries which are beyond the Bosphorus.” Pliny, the Roman naturalist in the same period, also gave a similar account of a plant called Rhacoma, and it was in Pliny’s description that rhubarb became a panacea.

However, it was not until the early modern period that rhubarb as an effective exotic remedy reigned supreme among European physicians.

In early-modern Europe, rhubarb had been widely used as a mild and relatively safe

laxative by both physicians and domestic medical practitioners. The eighteenth-century

physicians believed that the employment of purgation on the human body is the most effective

way to keep health and curing diseases. A wide range of therapeutic regimens, such as letting

blood, prescribing gentle laxatives, provoking vomit, urination, and perspiration, were

recommended by most physicians at this period. Among the most frequently used purges were

common acidic garden fruits, such as elderberries, figs, cherries, raspberries, complemented by

wine. Besides fruits, rhubarb was also widely used by physicians as an effective and safe

laxative. One of the most renowned physicians in early-eighteenth-century Europe, Herman

Boerhaave, was known for his strong faith in purging and his commitment to botanical experimentation. The use of rhubarb in his recipes remained consistently in his over three

65 decades of clinical practice. He prescribed rhubarb in many diseases of children and pregnant

women and claimed that even new-born babies could benefit from a draft of rhubarb.96

Even though the knowledge of the curative properties of rhubarb had long been part of

European medical history, the exclusive consumption of rhubarb is an early modern phenomenon. In the early seventeenth century, Europeans started to learn more detailed knowledge of rhubarb, such as its origin, through letters and works of Jesuit missionaries.97 The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed a significant increase in importing dried rhubarb roots in the European world through the land route dominated by the Russian caravan trade. After the English EIC entered the rhubarb business in the early eighteenth century, the large transmission and consumption of the product started to reach a high point in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the early eighteenth century, the EIC imported over 10,000 lbs. of rhubarb annually and reached about 67,764 lbs. in 1768.98 Since the 1740s, the EIC took over 80

percent of the total rhubarb imports from all sources to Europe. In the eighteenth century, the

traditional drug from China had emerged as a desirable and standard commodity in the European

market. Europeans experienced a “veritable rhubarb mania.” 99

On December 16, 1704, supercargoes of the Loyal Bliss captained by Robert Hudson

received instructions from the Company before they leave for Canton to acquire rhubarb “as

much as you can gett fine and good.”

96 Clifford M. Ford, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug (Princeton University Press, 2014)136-140. 97 The Belgian Jesuit Nicolas Trigault, who arrived in China in 1610, published a work De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas provided a chapter on vegetable productions of China. Among the drugs produced in China he mentioned rhubarb and China root. A Portuguese Jesuit missionary, Alvarus de Semedo, arrived in China in 1613, and died at Macao in 1658. In his description of the , Semedo mentioned the rhubarb plant is found in the province of Shanxi. Martino Martini (1614-1661) and Michael Boym (1612-1659) also mentioned the medicinal properties of rhubarb and how it was widely used by physicians in China. 98 Erika Monahan, “Locating Rhubarb: Early Modernity’s relevant obscurity,” in Paula Findlen ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and their histories, 1500-1800 (London, New York: Routledge), 227-251. 99 Clifford M. Ford, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug (Princeton University Press, 2014), xvi-xvii. 90-91.

66 “The Rhubarb is an Article that if due care be taken therein may turn to a good account here [in London]. You must therefore agree with the Chinese to pick and cull it and take only what you like, which they will allow you to do, giving them the higher price for it, but take none but that which is very fine, fresh, and new, which if so is of a bright Color on the Outside and breaks of a blossom Color within. That which is dark Colored and Worm eaten is worth nothing. If it be very good we don't limitt you in the price. Pack it dose to keep it from the Air, which is best done by putting it in Shirts and covering it with Cotton on the inside of the Chests.”100

The full instructions on how to select the best rhubarb reflected the Company’s great interest in this drug. In these years of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, rhubarb

was one of the many commodities that were permitted the officers and supercargoes of the East

India Company in “private trade.” 101 The company expected that the agents could exercise great

care in selecting the root as well. Throughout the eighteenth century, physicians and botanists

made consistent efforts to distinguish rhubarb roots from other similar botanical roots, and the

True Rhubarb from lesser medicinal sorts. Drug merchants were considered as those hand-on

practitioners on identifying the True Rhubarb, and they persuaded themselves that they could

make valid distinctions for commercial purposes. They believed that: “All the surgeons &

apothecarys together with the whole College of Physicians through all Europe, are not so good

judges of the quality of [rhubarb].” 102

Despite the increasing imports of the rhubarb roots, Britain faced continuous challenges

in domesticating and naturalizing the medicinal use of the plants. One challenge is the attempt to

100 IOR, E/3/95: 325-27. 101 The private trade was not only regarded as a privilege for commanders and officers of the Company. Since the time of its establishment, the committees set up regulations to specify the amount and categories of materials that could be carried through private trade. The major commercial players who were allowed to carry items including supercargoes, commanders, crew members, and other individuals who were closed linked with and licensed by the company. The private trade was important because the private imports helped the company to finance its exports. From 1774 to 1788, the value of private trade with China took about half as much as the company’s total imports. Earl H. Pritchard, “Private Trade between England and China in the Eighteenth Century (1680-1833),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol.1, 1957, 108-137. 102 Clifford M. Ford, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug, 146.

67 identify the “true” medicinal rhubarb through botanical classification; the other one is to cultivate the rhubarb plant in British gardens for both medical and commercial purposes. Doctors and botanists in western Europe at this time were particularly interested in the possibility of cultivating exotic remedies at home. John Hope (1725–86), a physician and professor of botany in Edinburgh and the director of the newly established Royal Garden in that city, attempted to cultivate Chinese rhubarb in Edinburgh. In the 1760s, John Bell, the Scottish doctor who joined the Russian embassy in China in 1718, returned to Scotland. Bell documented the cultivation and medical practices of rhubarb among the Mongols, and he also confirmed that “the true Rhubarb has never been cultivated in any part of Europe excepting a few plants in the physic Garden at St.

Petersburg.”103 He became actively involved in Hope’s plan by contacting his correspondent

Peter Simon Pallas, a German botanist professor at the Russian Academy of Science. As it turned out Pallas himself was not very sure about the true rhubarb from China and suggested Hope and

Bell try Siberian rhubarb, which could produce “a substance so nearly resembling the Chinese

Rhubarb in color, solidity, & virtue, that it could well be employed instead of it.”104 While Hope had no difficulty raising this species of rhubarb in Edinburgh, no one had yet proven the medical efficacy of this variety (Figure 4).

103 John Bell, Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to divers parts of Asia, 2 vols., Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1763, vol. 1, 281. 104 Romaniello, Matthew P. “True Rhubarb? Trading Eurasian Botanical and Medical Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Global History 11, no. 1 (2016): 3–23.

68

Figure 4: Chinese or Turkish rhubarb (Rheum palmatum): flowering and fruiting stem with leaf. Coloured zincograph after M. A. Burnett, c. 1842. Credit: Wellcome Collection.

The increasing interests in transplanting rhubarb to Britain was not limited to botanists and physicians; the plant also drew attention from historian and traveler William Coxe, who dedicated one chapter to the plant in his work Account of the Russian discoveries between Asia and America, first printed in London in 1780, which provided a botanical analysis of the plant. In the book, Coxe provided the five species of rhubarb according to Linnaean typology for readers

69 as a mechanism for identifying the plant. He confirmed the two most common varieties Rheum palmatum and R. rhaphonticum that were sold in the British market. Coxe also demonstrated that the Chinese rhubarb (Rheum palmatum) was superior among all the species in medical effects.

Coxe’s summary of the scientific debate about true rhubarb reflected the attempt to domesticate the plant. He expected the literate public to be interested in the botanical exploration of the plant.

William Coxe’s appeal on cultivating rhubarb in Britain was echoed by William Fordyce

(1724–92), a Scottish physician and fellow of the Royal Society. In 1792, Fordyce published a treatise explaining the necessity and methods to cultivate rhubarb in Britain. In this treatise, The

Great Importance and Proper Method of Cultivating and Curing Rhubarb in Britain, for

Medicinal Uses, Fordyce first pointed out the significance of this plant to British people by saying that “it was a medical imperative because Britain suffered from ‘the most painful and dangerous diseases [which] proceed from weakness and disorders in the Stomach and Bowels,’ for which rhubarb was the ‘justly celebrated’ cure.” Then Fordyce highlighted how the growth of rhubarb in Britain would benefit the Empire in the improvement of commerce. Fordyce argued that since several varieties of rhubarb had been successfully grown in British botanical gardens, the Society needed to encourage British farmers to produce the crop commercially to “supply the market sufficiently without foreign feed and to reduce the high prices of the imports.” Fordyce points out, “I have been told, that not lest that 200,000 pound is paid annually for Rhubarb imported into this country: and it is likely to cost yet more, if not propagated by ourselves, as modern luxury daily increases.”105

In his conclusion, Fordyce expressed his gratitude to British doctors had played in importing the crop from China by mentioning the efforts of John Bell and James Mounsey in

105 William Fordyce, The Great Importance and Proper Method of Cultivating and Curing Rhubarb in Britain, for Medicinal Uses, with an appendix, London, 1792.

70 Russia, who imported the first seeds; he also praised the efforts of another Scottish physician, Sir

Alexander Dick (1703–85), and John Hope, who had successfully cultivated the crop in

Britain.106 Despite the continuous debates over the botanical properties of rhubarb, the plant was still a favorite mild cathartic of British physicians in the early modern period. It was not until the

1780s, more extensive and sophisticated clinical trials of rhubarb were conducted in Britain and throughout Europe.

2.3.3 The familiarization of exotic remedy in household medicine

The transmission and familiarization of knowledge related to exotic remedies, including rhubarb, was further promoted by domestic medical practitioners and the publication of vernacular herbal and medical works. Herbal knowledge was one of the primary sources of information for home-based medical practitioners in early-modern Britain. Like Hannah

Sheppard we met at the beginning of this chapter, many domestic medical practitioners during this time had multiple channels to receive both medicinal ingredients and medical knowledge.

They would receive prescriptions of herbal remedies from physicians and apothecaries.

Meanwhile, many of them would gather or grow medicinal herbs for self-treatment. The knowledge for identification of the curative plants was crucial for laypeople and professionals alike.107 The knowledge of herbal remedies was increasingly available by ordinary people due to publications of vernacular herbal books and hands-on dietary advice.

Vernacular books on herbs with accurate descriptions of plants and warnings of possible harmfulness played an essential role in acquainting their readers with foreign drugs. Early modern herbalists and publishers worked together to make the health care information accessible

106 Romaniello, Matthew P. “True Rhubarb? Trading Eurasian Botanical and Medical Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Global History 11, no. 1 (2016): 3–23. 19-20. 107 Elizabeth Lane Furdell, Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 155-158.

71 to lay readers. The most influential herbalist in seventeenth-century Britain, Nicholas Culpeper

(1616-1654), intended to publish an herbal work that could benefit his customers from the lower

class by introducing them with low-cost plant medicine. He compiled his herbal text, The

English Physician in 1652, which enjoyed a full reception among medical readers. The work

“sold widely at the time, and there have been over one hundred subsequent editions, including

fifteen before 1700.”108 At the same time, he also translated the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis into

English, which made those medicaments, originally in Latin and only understood by the

educated populace, available to amateur healers.

While laypeople were becoming a significant intersection in the circulation of medical

remedies at the end of the seventeenth-century in Britain, exotic ingredients, either dried roots,

powder, oil or tincture, were increasingly accessible to ordinary people through local apothecary

and druggist shops, where they could find a wide range of medicines from herbal simples to

exotic ingredients. For example, a late-seventeenth- century recipe collection recorded medicinal items purchased for the household, “June 15 pd powder of wormwood, powder of rhubarb, powder of Corolina, burnt Hartshorne of each one drachm.”109 The recipe collection lists

purchases involving 48 ingredients, and apothecaries prepared about half of them. Their favorite

items included ginger, aniseed, rhubarb, caraway, oil of almonds, and syrup of . There were

also records of compound purchasing of ingredients for preparations for stomach pain, fever, or

cough. Even though the consumption of imported drugs experienced a radical expansion in the

latter seventeenth century, foreign ingredients like rhubarb can still be costly for domestic use

and usually purchased in quantities less than an ounce.

108 Elaine Leong, “‘Herbals she peruseth’: reading medicine in early modern England,” Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies, vol. 28, Issue 4, 2014, 556-578. 562-563. 109 Wellcome Library, MS 1730, Recipe book manuscripts.

72 In early-modern Britain, laypeople not only acted as consumers of pharmaceutical

ingredients but also as creators of the knowledge related herbal remedies through planting and

gathering pharmaceutical ingredients, giving health advice, and compiling recipe books. A wide

range of remedies encountered in the household and used without calling on external medical

assistance. Historians such as Elaine Leong point out, early-modern domestic medicine was an extremely social activity, brought in knowledge, medicinal supplies, and medical services from a wide range of information network of both local and international, in which women played a significant role in creating, circulating, and preserving those home-made remedies among families and friends.110 Meanwhile, these domestic medical practitioners were keen to share their

recipes with the public as well and would send their recipes to popular magazines. Popular

periodicals in the eighteenth century, such as the Universal Magazine, the Gentlemen’s

Magazine, the Lady’s Magazine, the Universal Museum, to name a few, would include both

professional and domestic dietary advice.

Among the advice, recipes for purge were the most popular ones. It was generally

believed in the eighteenth century that as food and drink which we daily consume for the support

of our body, necessarily must deposit much useless matter, which might prove injurious were it

not removed. The daily motion of the bowels is extremely salutary, particularly in person subject

to costiveness. People also believed that the costiveness in the body would affect the nature of a

person. Besides headaches, difficult breathing, and spasms, it also produces “peevishness of

temper, general lassitude, and ultimately hypochondriasm.”111 Recipes from readers’ letters such

as “a good purge for a child very young,” “an excellent purge for children or old men,”

110 Elaine Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England (University of Chicago Press, 2018). 111 Wellcome Library, MS.1730, A Collection of medical prescriptions, accompanied by remarks and examples.

73 frequently appeared on these periodicals.

Even though early-modern physicians warned that prescribing or administering purging

to patients should be very careful, they generally agreed that rhubarb was a relatively safe and

mild purge for domestic use and recommended it in various purging compounds prepared in

powders, syrups, and pills. Meanwhile, rhubarb as a stomachic and laxative pill was extremely

popular among gourmands, whose “bowels are inclined to be indolent, when, necessarily, the

appetite must sympathize.” Physicians recommended patients to “Take Turkey Rhubarb, 15

grains, Myrrh in power, 15 grains, extract of common Aloes, 6 grains, extract of Camomille, ½

drachm, Oil of Cloves, 8 drops. Mix, and divide into twenty pills, two to be taken about an hour

before dinner.”112

Meanwhile, as a safe and accessible home-remedy, rhubarb was widely used in recipes

for gout, jaundice, dropsy, constipation, and mental disorder. In the Universal Magazine,

September 20, 1778, the editor received a remedy for child jaundice from a reader. “I esteem it a duty incumbent upon me to communicate the same in a public manner: Take Ginger grated fine,

6 grains, the best rheubarb in powder, 12 grains, white Magnesia, 2 scruples, to mixed together in a large teacupful of simple peppermint water, and taken at night before going to bed.” In another case, a physician talked about his experiences with children who suffered a chronic cough. He provided a powder to cure this, “Take rhubarb the best Turkey, 2/1 an ounce,

Anniseeds or the wood in powder 1 dram, white sugar 2 ounces. Mix and make a powder, the dose 1 dram either more or less or as much as will lay upon a six-pence in some kind of drink to be taken morning and evening for a month. It might have better effect if taken in a little spirit of

112 Wellcome Library, MS 7721, English Recipe book, 17th -18th century.

74 Anniseeds. Add one dram of the best soccatrine aloes.”113 These recipes of home remedies reflected the increasingly broader acceptance and frequent use of exotic ingredients in common ailments in daily life.

The EIC continued to expand their imports on rhubarb, tea, China roots, and camphor from Canton after they secured the right to access the port in the early eighteenth century. At the same time, individual plant collectors were hunting living medicinal plants in a small amount and managed to send them back to London alive through sea route. The plant collecting conducted by individuals was mainly for scientific purposes and had specific connections with the Royal Society in London. Unlike a large number of imports of drugs through EIC ships, the destination these living plants, seeds, or herbariums were botanical gardens or libraries, such as the Kew Garden and the Chelsea Physic Garden. These individual collectors, including physicians, surgeons, and captains, worked as employees of EIC and as plant collectors for the

Royal Society as well. They were not just intermediaries necessary to transmit botanical knowledge and commodities to London, but also served as significant conduits of knowledge in their own right.

2.4 Brokers in the transmission of medicinal plants

During the eighteenth century, physicians, surgeons, and captains of the EIC as individual plant collectors played an essential role in transferring botanical and medical knowledge from China. As first contactors with local informants in Canton, these people shared some commonalities in their backgrounds and experiences. Many of them served as physicians and surgeons for the East India Company, either on a ship or stationed at Canton and Amoy.

They equipped an excellent working knowledge of botany and held a practical view of plants.

113 Wellcome Library, MS 6956, English Recipe Book, 18th century.

75 They generally traveled extensively for their work, which allowed them to gather more plants.

They expressed above-average interest in indigenous culture and scientific knowledge, especially

their interests in local herbal remedies.114 Meanwhile, these people shared close relationships

with the Royal Society and were part of Joseph Banks’s scientific correspondence network.

2.4.1 Creating the global scientific and commercial network for botanical collecting

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Royal Society linked with the

English East India Company through overlapping membership and rivalries.115 Not only many prominent fellows of the Royal Society were shareholders in the EIC, but other minor employees of the Company also worked as agents for fellows of the Society. Both institutions shared some standard features as well. Like Royal Society, The Company had a storehouse in London for them to display specimens sent by their servants from around the world. The collections held by the two institutions often overlapped, and the objects displayed would flow freely between the two.116 With the increasing demands for exotic medicines in Britain and the strengthening of the

foreign trading networks in the eighteenth century, English E.I.C. and its employees, including

merchants, surgeons, gardeners, became another vital source of botanical knowledge in China. A

large group of employees served as collectors to the herbariums and botanical gardens in Britain,

and some of them received direct orders from Joseph Banks, who was especially interested in

useful exotic species.

Following his participation in James Cook’s voyages in 1768-1771, Joseph Banks and his

scientific network became one of the major nodes in these overlapped networks of commerce

114 David Mackay, “Agents of empire: the Banksian collectors and evaluation of new lands,” in Miller, David Philip and Peter Hanns Reill, ed., Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature, Cambridge University Press, 2011. 115 Anna Winterbottom’s book Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World, traces the connections between the Company and the Royal Society in their shared interests in global natural history. 116 Anna Winterbottom, Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World, 15-16.

76 and science. In 1772 King George III became the owner of the Royal botanical garden at Kew.

Even before he took over the garden from his mother Princes Augusta, he had already come to know Joseph Banks, who had accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage to New Zealand and

Australia. After Joseph Banks returned to London from the voyage in 1771, he became the advisor of the King at the botanic garden. In 1778 Banks was appointed President of the Royal

Society and remained at the position for over forty years. Throughout these years, Banks gradually built up his scientific networks through his correspondence with naturalists, botanists, gardeners, and collectors who traveled all over the globe.117 Through this intersection, exotic

living plants and seeds from different parts of the world were continuously imported into the

gardens in England. The herbarium collections of British botanists, naturalists, and physicians

have also mounted, thanks to the effort of those global travelers.

As the President of the Royal Society, Banks was also closely involved in the formulation

of diplomatic and economic policies toward India, China, and West Indies through his vision of

the global seaborne trade and economic botany. Through the Macartney Embassy in 1789,

Joseph Banks attempted to strengthen his ties both with the Admiralty and the East India

Company. His ultimate goal was to relieve Britain from the dependence from foreign suppliers

and to promote national self-sufficiency.118 Through these overseas collectors, Joseph Banks

created his broad scientific correspondence network to fulfill his ambition in getting economic

plants from all over the world, predominantly for the benefits of British people and for the

117 John Gascoigne, Neil Tranter, Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 130-135. For Joseph Banks’s dominant role in the eighteenth-century British world-wide exploration of new botanical resources and transferring plants, also see David Philip Miller and Peter Hanns Reill eds., Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany and the Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Meanwhile, Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan examines the links between botanical exploration and European commercial and territorial expansion. 118 C. H. Philips, The East India Company 1784-1834 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968), 8-9.

77 advantage of the expanding empire.

Even though scientific expeditions were never considered the primary agenda of the EIC, the Company did realize the advantages and potential profits brought by scientific activities such as botanical investigations carried out by some employees. For this reason, the Company encouraged people equipped with such knowledge to join in their overseas trade voyages and expected that they would discover new specimens of economic and medicinal use during the voyage. One early example is the Scottish botanist and physician James Cuninghame (ca. 1665-

1709) and his collecting at Chusan and Amoy in southern coastal China in the late seventeenth century.

James Cuninghame was considered a pioneer of British botanical exploration in China, who created Chinese botanical collections and managed to send them back to London. In 1676 a trading post and factory was established at Amoy by the East India Company. Cuninghame, a medical student from Leiden, was dispatched to China in as a physician to the English factory at

Amoy. In 1697, Cuninghame was aboard Tuscan, a private ship bound for Amoy under the command of Henry Gough. Cuninghame stayed in Amoy for about six months and made an extensive collection of herbs and animals for his sponsors James Petiver and Hans Sloans.

During his stay in Amoy, he hired a group of Chinese artists to paint nearly 800 illustrations of

Chinese plants, which were showed at a meeting of the Royal Society.119 Shortly after he got back to London, Cuninghame made his second voyage to China. This time he was appointed by the English EIC as a surgeon and was dispatched to Chusan Island. Cuninghame went from

Chusan to Amoy in 1703, because the E.I.C factory at Chusan was abandoned by the chief

119 Charles E. Jarvis, Philip H. Oswald, “The Collecting Activities of James Cuninghame FRS on the Voyage of Tuscan to China (Amoy) between 1697 and 1699,” Notes Rec. (2015) 69, 135-153.

78 supercargo Mr. Catchpole due to financial problem.120

James Cuninghame’s botanical collection benefited several botanists and naturalists back

home in London, including Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), the Secretary of the Royal Society, and

the founder of the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, botanists James Petiver and Leonard

Plukenet. Some of them published detailed descriptions and engravings based on Cuninghame’s

specimens from Chusan and Amoy. Leonard Plukenet (1642-1706), a Royal Professor of Botany,

published his Almagestum botanicum (The Great Work of plants or Cyclopedia of Plants), a

collection of botanical illustrations in 1703 and 1704. This collection included plants from

China, India, Latin America, and over four hundred Chinese plants, including some herbs, were

from Cuninghame’s collection.121 Cuninghame also developed a correspondent contact with

James Petiver, an active botanist and apothecary in London. Petiver gave Cuninghame a detailed

list of plants that he wanted to enrich his collection when Cuninghame left for Chusan Island in

1700. Even though Cuninghame never made his way back and died at sea en route to London in

1709, Petiver was able to publish an account of plants of Chusan and coastal China based on

Cuninghame’s collection of Chinese plants and water-color illustrations of plants.122

However, British botanists and collectors at home were not satisfied just receiving

collections of preserved plant specimens, and they were eager to cultivate these exotic plants in

their gardens. They encouraged their friends or connections who served in the East India

Company to bring either seeds or living plants from Canton.123 From the mid-eighteenth century,

120 Sloane MS 2376: Petiver (James), F.R.S.: 1706.includes: ff. 5-9 James Cuninghame, FRS, Physician to the E I Factory at Chusan in China: Plantæ in Insula Palma collectæ per: 1697/8. ff. 5-9 121 The collection is now included in the Sloane Herbarium, Natural History Museum, London. 122 See Add. Mss. 5292, a water-color “Book of Chinese Plants with the Chinese Names, their explication in Latin sent by Mr. Cuninghame to Mr. Petiver.” 123 Jane Kilpatrick, Gifts from the Gardens of China: The Introduction of Traditional Chinese Garden Plants to Britain 1698 – 1862 (London: Frances Lincoln Limited, 2007), 81.

79 a growing amount of both living plants and seeds were transferred through supercargoes,

physicians, surgeons, and captains from coastal China to gardens in London (Figure 5).124 People who were interested in Chinese plants in Britain were able to cultivate and examine Chinese plants in their private gardens.

Figure 5: John Ellis (1710-1776), Directions for bringing over seeds and plants from the East- Indies and other distant countries, in a state of vegetation, London: Printed and sold by L. Davis, 1770.

The Scottish physician and botanist, John Fothergill (1712-1780), cultivated a large

124 Anna Winterbottom, The East India Company and the Natural World, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 4-6.

80 botanical garden at Upton in Essex in the 1760s. In order to enrich his garden with exotic

specimens, Fothergill corresponded with people who traveled all over the world, including

captains and merchants. In this way, he obtained large numbers of plants and seeds from China,

Hindustan, and other of the East Indies.125 Fothergill was also a correspondent of the Swedish

naturalist Carl Linnaeus. In 1758, he sent Linnaeus a case of medical remedies received from the

Chinese seaport town Limpum (Ningbo), which he might find very interesting. Later, Linnaeus

named a hardy deciduous shrub with scented flowers after Fothergill, who had obtained from the

southern port of Canton. Following his steadfast aim to introduce useful vegetables into England,

in 1769, several living tea-plants from China arrived in Fothergill’s garden. He even received a letter from the Queen Charlotte’s lady asking whether he could “get Her only one of them for

Her Majesty’s own garden.”126 Other specimens that Fothergill received in the 1770s including

two decorative plants: Lychnis grandiflora, Chinese -tree, two medicinal plants:

Acanthopanax aculeatus (刺五加), Mazus rugosus Lour (通泉草), and several types of orchid.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, many employees of the English East

India Company served as plant collectors for British botanists and physicians. Thanks to their

efforts, live specimens from China, either as seeds or plants, were cultivated in botanic gardens

in Britain, including the royal gardens at Kew, the Chelsea Physic Garden, and many other

private gardens. The engagement with the scientific study of plants included both professionals

and amateur practitioners. However, those amateur collectors were not just intermediates to bring

new specimens and detailed knowledge to London. They engaged in communication with local

merchants, gardeners, and herbalists, and learned necessary knowledge in order to keep these

125 Cf. R. Hingston Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and his friends; chapters in eighteenth century, London: 1919. 126 Fothergill introduced many new plants into Britain, or cultivated them from seeds brought from their native soil. See John Fothergill, Chain of friendship: selected letters of Dr. John Fothergill of London, 1735-1780 (Harvard University Press, 1971)

81 plants alive through the long sea passage and successfully transplanted in Britain. Equally

important are those local informants who provided native botanical and medical knowledge to

British collectors.

2.4.2 Botanical collectors in the Far East

The Duncan brothers were among the earlier group who tried to send living plants to

Joseph Banks from Canton. John Duncan was born in 1757 at Brechin, Angus, in Scotland. He

was the eldest son of David Duncan, a local merchant. John Duncan pursuit his medical studies

at the University of Edinburgh. After he finished his studies in 1773, John Duncan joined the

English East India Company and was appointed as a surgeon on a ship, HEICS Bute, which took

him to Madras and Bengal. He had already visited China twice, in 1775-1776 and 1778-1779,

before he became stationed at Canton in 1781. During his short visits to China, John Duncan

noticed that acquiring a long-period posting at Canton could provide him with opportunities in

making a fortune through private trade, and most importantly, allow him to make botanical

expeditions in nearby areas, such as Macao, Amoy, and Formosa. When John Duncan learned

about the post of Surgeon at Canton was available in 1781, he immediately made his

application.127

Before John Duncan sailed for Canton, he received a direction to bring back living plants from Joseph Banks in 1782. His first letter to Joseph Banks revealed some progress in his collecting work, “I got several plants for ornament or for medical use from a gardener from Kew

who is still resident in Canton and is allowed to visit the Gardens of the merchants.” As John

Duncan pointed out in his letter, Canton is a place with a rich source of economic and medicinal

plants which they could access through different channels. Most of these plants could either have

127 Jane Kilpatrick, Gifts from the Gardens of China: The Introduction of Traditional Chinese Garden Plants to Britain 1698 – 1862 (London: Frances Lincoln Limited, 2007), 95.

82 been purchased from local markets or nearby suburban areas. Another critical channel to acquire these plants is through local gardeners and Hong merchants, who were the Chinese merchants receiving imperial license to trade with foreigners.128

In early 1783, John Duncan wrote a letter to Joseph Banks, enclosing a list of his recent collection of plants at Canton. Among his collection, several specimens were considered as common-used remedies for local people in Canton, such as the dwarf morning-glory (tudinggui

土丁桂), which was considered as an effective remedy for dysentery for medical practitioners in

Southern coastal areas. Duncan informed Banks that he would shortly make a voyage to Formosa

(Taiwan), and promised that he would send more plants of curiosities worthy the notice of

British naturalists and physicians. Meanwhile, Duncan expressed his excitement on hearing a gardener would be soon dispatched to Canton, and he was sure that this gardener would provide valuable knowledge to their work.129 The excitement of John Duncan was understandable. Since he arrived at Canton, Duncan had mostly communicated with local merchants, gardeners, and herbalists about the nature, the utility, the economic and medicinal values of plants he collected.

In his letters to Joseph Banks, Duncan sometimes expressed his distrust and doubt of the knowledge they provided.130

In the summer of 1783, John Duncan collected plants at Macao and managed to send back some plant cabins at the end of 1783 and early 1784. However, most of his plants did not survive the long sea passage due to the lack of proper care during the voyage. The situation was confirmed by Banks in his letter that his plants arrived at Kew “exhibit a melancholy picture of

128 Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1784, ff. 83. 129 Add Mss 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1 1765-1784, John Duncan: Letters to Sir J. Banks, ff. 148. 130 Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. ff. 76, 84, 112.

83 mortality.131 This situation of lacking proper persons to take care of living plants under

transferring seemed to continue for years. Later, John’s brother Alexander Duncan also

complained about the irresponsibility of the crew in a letter in 1791 that the living plants would

have a better chance to survive were those to whom they are generally entrusted paid a little

more attention during their passage. 132 However, through their letters to Joseph Banks, we did

find that sometimes Captains of the Company could play an important role in keeping alive those

plants. One of the captains, Henry Wilson (b.c. 1740), was mentioned by Banks to Alexander

that “it appears very evident that your boxes under the care of Capt. Wilson exhibit an acceptable

condition.”133 Capt. Wilson had taken care of John Duncan’s plants in 1783 when he traveled

from Canton back to England as a passenger of the ship HEICS Morse. At that time, his ship

Antelope had just suffered shipwreck on a voyage to the Pelew Islands east of the Philippines.134

In 1786 John Duncan received a list of desirable plants found by Banks in a collection of

letters written by Jesuits in Beijing to their European colleagues. Among the letters, a

comprehensive account of some ordinary Chinese plants written by French Jesuit missionary

Pierre-Martial Cibot (1727-1780) was included. In the last two years of his stay at Canton, John

Duncan worked diligently to look for plants on Cibot’s list and managed to send back both living

plants and dried specimens to London each year. Among the plants in the list, Panax notoginseng

(三七), Hypericum perforatum (連翹), and Leonurus (益母草) were effective

remedies for dizziness, stroke, and chest congestion. Local herbalists were often John Duncan's

informants in locating these plants with medicla properties. He also mentioned a local chief

131 Add Mss. 33978, Banks Correspondence, vol. 2 1785-1789, ff. 165 132 Add Mss. 33979, Banks Correspondence, vol. 3 1790-1794, ff. 69. 133 Add Mss. 33979, Banks Correspondence, vol. 3 1790-1794, ff. 84. 134 Jane Kilpatrick, Gifts from the Gardens of China: The Introduction of Traditional Chinese Garden Plants to Britain 1698 – 1862, 98. Joseph Banks trained a small group of captains in EIC, including Wilson, Hepworth, and Cumming, who were reliable men to help transporting plants and even carrying out collecting works themselves.

84 customs official in Canton, usually known as Hoppo, who noticed John Duncan’s interest in

certain local plant specimens. He promised to provide help for John’s collection.

In April 1786, the Hoppo brought him a flowering plant and three notoginseng

plants.

“I am informed that the Hoppo has one of the two Moutan plants and three notoginseng plants. As soon as I had the plant, I shall be able to procure it…. Since reporting you on the 20th of March, I received the Moutan mentioned in my letter with flower on it. I have sent the plant by Cap. Eastabrook of the London. As it seems strong and in good health, I flatter myself with hopes of your receiving it in good condition. It appears to me like the peony of Europe. I received it from a merchant as a present. It is so much esteemed here and so difficult to be procured.”135

The survival of these plants and their final settlement at Kew can be confirmed by a

catalog of Kew garden, which was considered a big triumph for transmitting living plants at the

time.136 John Duncan would attribute the success to his local informants, who provided much

practical advice on how to take care of these plants during a long voyage. He expressed his

appreciation to the Hoppo’s generosity, who showed him a few gardens owned by Hong

merchants. Duncan was able to collect several other plants that were new to his eyes.137 Even

though various plant cabinets were available on the ship, people who took care of the plant need

basic knowledge, such as its growing habit, water needs, or sun exposure. Meanwhile, he also

learned from local herbalists about medical effects and preparing methods of several plants.

John Duncan once requested a local herbalist to identify a plant that he believed was a

“lesser galangal,” a medicine in the form of dried rhizomes used widely in Southern China. His suspicion was quite understandable because there were two specimens of galangal that were

135 Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1789, ff. 87. 136 This catalog is the second edition of the Hortus Kewensis published in 1810 edited by William Townsend Aiton, the director of the Kew Garden. 137 Add Mss 33979, Banks Correspondence, vol.3 1790-1794, ff. 113

85 circulated in the British market. In Portable instructions for purchasing the drugs and spices of

Asia and the East Indies (1779), the author pointed out, “There are two species of this root

known, the greater and the smaller; of these the latter only is esteemed in Europe. Its texture is

much firmer, and of an acrid, hot, peppery, leaving a stronger impression in the mouth than the

greater ones.”138 The root had known to British physicians and botanists, “The lesser galangal

were most put in all bitter tinctures and used as warm and fine stomachic, … Headaches which

arise from disorders in the stomach are greatly relieved by this root.”139 The local herbalist

identified the plant by providing several medical properties of the plant to John Duncan, and he

also confirmed that there was indeed another specimen of the plant that mainly used as culinary

ingredients.

In John Duncan’s letter to Banks in April. 16, 1789, he informed Joseph Banks that

unlike British people planted peony for decorative purposes, the Chinese took it as a common-

used medicinal plant. They usually dug and collected the roots of peony flowers in summer and

autumn, and cooked them slightly in boiling water, and finally dried them in the sun. These roots

were best used for improving blood flow. The bark of tree peony (牡丹皮) is also used in

medical treatment to remove the abdominal mass, eliminate blood stasis, and maintain the well-

being of the five principle internal organs. Joseph Banks had received a from John Duncan a

Chinese tree peony (moutan peony) as a gift in 1787. The tree peony was among the list of plants

that most wanted by Joseph Banks because it was a native of temperate climates and would grow

well in Britain. However, it was considered a rare and precious plant in Canton due to this nature

and could only be found in the gardens of the elite class. John Duncan was a frequent visitor to

138 Henry Draper Steel, Portable instructions for purchasing the drugs and spices of Asia and the East Indies (London, 1779), 42. 139 John Hill (1714-1775), The useful family herbal. Or, an account of all those English plants, which are remarkable for their virtues, Eighteenth Century Collections Online. 158

86 the Hong merchants’ private gardens, and it was here that he received this rare flower as a gift

from merchant Puankequa.

Later that year, Duncan reported that he received an aromatic root from the Hoppo, called

Tam-coue (當歸), “they usually cut the root into small pieces, which can be easily found in

stores in Canton.” Duncan learned that this drug is good for nourishing blood and circulation,

“when decocted with other herbs, it restored blood, and especially good for strengthening the

womb of women.” The name of this medicinal root was included in the list of the most wanted

plants that Joseph Banks gave to Duncan before he left for Canton. Joseph Banks told Duncan

that a French Jesuit missionary M. l’abbé Lambert, in his “history of all peoples of the world,”

mentioned this root.140

After procuring his last shipment of living plants and seeds to Banks in 1789, John

Duncan left Canton for his homeland in Scotland due to the declining physical health. John

Duncan was only one among hundreds of other collectors around the world who actively played as part of the scientific networks centered Joseph Banks and Kew Garden in the eighteenth century. John Duncan’s younger brother Alexander Duncan followed him into service of the East

India Company and was appointed the position of a surgeon to the Canton Factory in 1788.

Alexander Duncan was also responsible for sending Banks plants of curiosity from Canton.

Before he left for Canton, Alexander Duncan received a book about plants in China from Joseph

Banks in 1789, including a list of most desirable plants from the region.141 The instruction from

Banks was made clear that Duncan should pay special attention to “plants to be useful to

140 Add Mss 33979, Banks Correspondence, vol.3 1790-1794, ff. 116, what Joseph Banks mentioned here is M. l’abbé Lambert’ s work Histoire generale civile, naturelle, politique et religieuse de tous les peuples du monde published in 1750. 141 The paintings in this book were largely reproduced from the Compendium of Materia Medica, a sixteenth-century work of medicinal plants in China written by Li Shizhen.

87 manufacture or medicine in his voyage.”142

Alexander Duncan’s formal appointment was not made official until 1790 due to his health problem.143 To express his gratitude for Joseph Banks’s positive effect during the process,

Alexander Duncan wrote in his letter that he would do his best to collect the plants to pay back

Banks’s help.144 During his stay in Canton, Alexander Duncan requested a small piece of land

from the father of Hong merchant Howqua 伍秉鑒 (1769-1843). He planted seeds that he packed

from Kew, wild plants he encountered at nearby rural areas, and seeds sent by Jesuits from

Beijing. Alexander Duncan invited local gardeners to his little nursery. These curious Chinese

gardeners were fascinated by his English plants and seemed very interested in his mission. Many

other Hong merchants, including the President of the merchants, Pan Youdu 潘有度 (1755-

1820), became his regular suppliers of unique specimens. Pan provided Alexander Duncan

several specimens of medicinal plants, including Lonicera japonica (忍冬), Glechoma longituba

(活血丹), and Leonurus Artemisia(益母草). 145

Other specimens found by Alexander at Canton and Macao included decorative plants, such as different types of Chinese , hydrangea, , and economic plants, such as

Chinese Varnish Tree. He also introduced a different variety of , and a pitcher plant called

Nepenthes mirabilis (豬籠草), cultivated at Canton and Macao for medicinal purposes.146

Alexander often mentioned to Joseph Banks his good relations with Hong merchants, who

seemed to be very interested in his plant collecting activities. In 1791 Howqua 伍秉鑒, one of

142 Add Mss 33978 (Banks Correspondence, vol. 2 1785-1789), Sir J. Banks to John Duncan, ff, 259. 143 Jane Kilpatrick, 101. 144 Add Mss. 33979, Banks Correspondence, vol. 3 1790-1794, ff. 69. 145 Add Mss. 33981, Banks Correspondence, Pan khequa to Banks, ff. 112. 146 Jane Kilpatrick, 108.

88 the most successful Hong merchants at Canton during this period, invited Alexander to his

garden. Alexander came to know a local gardener who introduced to him several plants with

medicinal properties, such as dwarf morning glory (tudinggui 土丁桂) and Melastoma

sanguineum (maoren 毛菍).147 Another merchant Mowqua 盧繼光 sent him two specimens of

notoginseng “in fine order and just arrived from up the Country.”148

With the growth of his plant collection, Alexander Duncan began to arrange voyages to

send them back to London at the beginning of 1792. Alexander Duncan packed his first group of

plants in a plant-cabin and loaded it onto HEICS Henry Addington, and Captain John Kirkpatrick

(1766-1816) offered help to take care of these plants during the voyage. Right after the shipment,

Alexander Duncan left Canton for Macao, hoping that he could encounter better things and had fewer restrictions on his botanical hunting.149

The letters revealed some disagreements and doubts that the British collectors in Canton

had over their local informants. As EIC employers noticed, even though local suppliers made

efforts to provide plants to EIC collectors, they sometimes provided contradictory information on

the nature and properties of the plants. In one of the letters to Banks, John Duncan had

complained about how he received different answers from those Chinese gardeners to his

questions about the plant. Compared to their local informants, the British collector preferred

information that provided by their colleagues back in London:

At present, I cannot procure any of the seeds of the water lily in the Capoulas; The Chinese take them out to dry as soon as they come to maturity. You cannot form any idea of the difference there is, in procuring any certain information from the Natives of the Country. Twenty different men will give you as many different answers. I have inquired at several Chinese whom I thought the most likely persons, to give me information respecting the

147 Add Mss. 33979, Banks Correspondence, vol. 3 1790-1794, ff. 89. 148 Ibid, ff. 113. 149 Add Mss, 33981, Banks Correspondence, Alexander Duncan to William Aiton, 1791, 1792.

89 management of the Hemp, and I am sorry to say, their accounts are so different that I must defer saying thing on that Subject by their conveyance. I received the list of plants you sent, as far as I can learn, a few of the specimens could be deport off here. I am much obliged for the information you provided. There are a few differences in the appearance with the plants I saw in your garden last summer. As for other plants on the list I will do everything in my power to preserve and forward them by careful persons to Europe.150

Not only did John and Alexander Duncan not trust their local informants on how to take care of these plants, but John Bradby Blake (1745-1773), an EIC supercargo stationed in Canton from 1767 to 1773, had shared the same concerns about local botanical knowledge. It seemed that the British collectors and local informants were competing with each other on botanical and medical knowledge:

“We want to inform you that we have delivered a box marked with your address, containing a few specimens of the Plants, Birds, insects and other Productions of Nature peculiar to this country; We hope you will be pleased to accept them. Our friend (a local merchant) hath promised to collect at the proper season, and to transmit them to you. As we are not sufficiently acquainted with the study of Botany and the Natives did not provide much useful information, we will wait for your confirmation of the several Plants. We shall be happy at all times to receive your command.”151

John Bradby Blake was born in Westminster, and his father was a former captain for the

English East India Company. When he was still very young, Blake had decided to follow his father’s steps to serve in the Company. He became interested in Chinese botanical knowledge several years before he entered the Company. In 1760 he wrote a proposal for the Society for the

Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce to import seeds of useful plants from

China.152 After several rounds of application, he was finally selected as a supercargo stationed at

Canton. Blake was very interested in natural science in China, especially in plants grown for

150 Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1784, ff. 165. 151 Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1784, ff. 96. 152 Jordan Goodman and Peter Crane, “The Life and Work of John Bradby Blake,” Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 2017 vol. 34 (4): pp. 231-250.

90 their medicinal or culinary quality.153 Before he left for Canton, Joseph Banks sent him a volume

of engraved illustrations of plants from China and Japan, as he may find the most willing to

make use of them. He also told Blake that, the Asparagus cochinchinensis (天門冬), “which you

were so good as to say you would search for at Canton, all I know on the Subject of it is that, as a

valuable part of the materia medica, it is in some degree a disgrace to the national character of

our medical men that we are still wholly ignorant to what family of plants it belongs. Your work

would be a valuable addition to our medico-botanical knowledge.”154

Even though foreign visitors in Canton were still not permitted to enter inner China at

that time, Blake started to create his scientific networks through correspondence with Jesuits in

Beijing, and his interactions with local Hong merchants. Meanwhile, he hired a group of local

gardeners to gather plants for him in the countryside of Canton.155 His contacts with Jesuits in

Beijing seemed to be very productive. He obtained some plant seeds that were native to the

northern part of the empire. He also received a collection of plants that were native to the

northern part of the country produced by a French Jesuit botanist, Pierre Nicolas d’Incarville

(1706-1757), who joined the Catholic mission in China in 1740.

At the same time, Blake started to work with local artists on producing a collection of watercolors of useful Chinese plants. This ambitious project intended “to form a Complete

Chinensis of Drawings copied from Nature, with a Collection of Specimen, Plants, Seeds, etc., with every necessary description relative to their Uses, Virtues, Culture, Seasons, Parts of

Fructification, and when in bloom.”156 In his letter to Joseph Banks on December 22, 1770,

153 British Library, IOR, B/82, fol. 188, 215. 154 British Library, Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1784, ff. 113. 155 Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. 27. 156 Joseph Bradby Blake to his father John Blake, December, 1772. The Spring Garden Library. This quotation is taken from Crane Goodman, “The Life and Work of John Bradby Blake,” 238.

91 Blake mentioned Mowhua 盧繼光, a Hong Merchant, sent him two local artists after learning his

plan of creating a collection of illustrations of Chinese plants. Blake seemed very much enjoyed

this good relation with Mowhua, who was not only a connoisseur of art but also a self-taught physician. Indeed, Mowhua played an essential role between Blake and his local collectors and artists, “Thanks for his mediating, I could avoid the chicanery of local nurserymen and market traders.” 157 In 1769, Mowhua invited Blake to his garden and showed him two peony trees just

arrived from up the Country. After the showing of the peony, Mowhua led Blake and other his

friends to his little nursery of medicinal plants. Blake was amazed by the diversity of the plants

cultivated by the merchant in his private garden and surprised by Mowhua’s knowledge in

materia medica.

Blake’s collection of plant illustrations was created mainly from 1769 to 1773. Besides

the great variety of specimens covered by the collection, the botanical details of the plant were

very well-represented in these illustrations. Among these botanical illustrations, over half

amount of the identified 138 species were classified as medicinal plants.158 Blake, in his letter to

Joseph Banks, described several herbal plants that he believed that needed further investigation and evaluation from British botanists and physicians. Other than medicines, this collection is also emphasizing on economic plants, such as hemp plants, cotton, dye plants, and edible fruits that are typical in Southern China.159

Conclusion

157 Add Mss. 33977, Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, 1765-1784, ff. 45. 158 John Bradby Blake collection in the Oak Spring Garden Library represents a broad range of useful plants of economic significance. 159 Hongwen Huang, “The Plants of John Bradby Blake,” Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 2017 vol. 34 (4): pp. 359-378. 374-376.

92 British interests in the materia medica knowledge from China continue to the late

eighteenth century. In 1792 Britain sent its first official embassy to China, led by Lord George

Macartney, aiming at enhancing Britain’s status and trading position in the Far East. After the

embassy, several members published their first-hand accounts on the political and cultural encounters with the Qing government, including Comptroller John Barrow, Secretary George

Staunton, Samuel Holmes, these accounts commented upon the politics, culture, religion and science and technologies, also emphasized local products and raw materials. One of the most interesting accounts is the descriptions and interpretations of medical interactions between

Britain and their Chinese counterparts. Dr. Gillan noticed that Chinese medicine seems rich in herbal remedies and recognized some of the chief remedies they use, including “rhubarb, ginseng, ginger, pepper, camphor, tea.” These records shared a generally similar idea on medical theory and herbal remedies, “their theory in general, however ancient, is yet very imperfect and unphilosophical.” However, they showed particular appreciation to materia medica in China,

“their knowledge on herbs was detailed and filled with observations, which merit the attention of naturalists, and above all of physicians and doctor.”160

The inter-cultural interests and transmission of medicinal plants between China and

Britain led to a broader investigation of medicine, diet, and health. A large number of manuscript

recipes collections proved their efforts in collecting and making medical knowledge. These

works have received an increasing amount of scholarly attention in the fields of history of

science and medicine, food history. Not only early-modern recipe books, materia medica

compendia, medical treatises, and journals are continuing to inform historians of science and

160 Hugh Gillan, “Dr. Gillan's Observations on the state of Medicine, Surgery and Chemistry in China,” in J. L. Cranmer-Byng, An Embassy to China; being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During his Embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung, 1793–1794 (Hamden, Connecticut: Anchor Books, 1963), 270-271.

93 medicine on the shifting of scientific practices and medical knowledge. Recently published scholarship on the relationship between medicine and cookery, dietary advice, cookbook, and medical receipt emphasize the role of the daily management of health that taking place in domestic space. These daily medical practices constituted a significant part of early-modern medicine.

94 Chapter 3 The Hope of Health: British medical encounters with exotic practices and remedies

The most interesting episode of Sino-British medical encounter happened at the end of the eighteenth century, when Dr. Hugh Gillan, a physician of the Macartney embassy, treated the powerful Grand Councilor in Qing court, He Shen, for his hernia and rheumatism at Jehol, the imperial resort in northern China in 1792, during the first British diplomatic embassy to China.

He Shen had been suffering from pain and swelling at the lower abdomen for a long time. The court physicians had early decided that all complaints were due to “the malignant vapor or spirit which had infused itself into his flesh.” They had tried to expel the vapor by an operation with

“many deep punctures made with gold and silver needles.” He Shen refused to undergo the operation to his abdomen.161 Since there was nothing that can be done from imperial physicians at this moment, the Grand Councilor turned to British doctors from the Embassy. He summoned

Scottish physician, Dr. Hugh Gillan, for a medical consultation. Through his diagnosis, Dr.

Gillan gave a conclusion that the Grand Councilor suffered from two distinct complaints, namely rheumatism, and a complete formed hernia. It seemed that He Shen was impressed by Dr.

Gillan’s explanations and instructions on the nature of his ailments; he not only gave him a piece of silk as a gift but also praised his ideas “so brilliant and reasonable.”162

This episode constitutes a significant account of British understanding of Chinese medicine and illness in the late eighteenth century. Several members who produced first-hand accounts on the Macartney Embassy recorded this episode, including the secretary, George

Staunton, and the comptroller, John Barrow. Both Staunton and Barrow commented on Chinese

161 Hugh Gillan, “Dr. Gillan's Observations on the state of Medicine, Surgery and Chemistry in China,” in J. L. Cranmer-Byng, An Embassy to China; being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During his Embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung, 1793–1794 (Hamden, Connecticut: Anchor Books, 1963), 280-282. 162 Ibid, 283.

95 medicine based on their observation, “They acquire a knowledge of disease by a long and tedious observation of the pulses…Besides the pulse, they consider the eyes, the tongue, and the face of the patient, but neglect all other circumstances from which the prognostics might be drawn; Most of their medicines are simple and easily prepared, such as decoctions.”163

At the end of the eighteenth century, Europeans had very contradictory perceptions of

Chinese medicine. On the one hand, they were particularly interested in Chinese herbal medicine. On the other hand, European physicians despised Chinese therapeutics because they believed that their Chinese colleagues were lack of a rich foundation of theory and were extremely deficient in the knowledge of anatomy and the human body. There was a certain degree of pragmatism and empiricism in their medicine, but their medical theory was far more inferior to Europeans. However, a large number of pharmacopeia works, and the frequent use of herbal remedies in China signified a rich source of medicinal commodities that was waiting to be exploited for medical and commercial purposes. During the transmission of the information of

Chinese medicine to Britain, the material aspect was clearly separated from the theoretic part.

The knowledge of Chinese medicine spread far more slowly than medicinal materials and commodities in Britain.

Existing scholarship argued that the reason that European consumers accepted these new exotic remedies was their accommodation in traditions of herbal medicine and dietetic treatment in the European world. However, the British encounters with Chinese materia medica proved that the story had another aspect. British narratives on Chinese medicine and pharmacopeia in the eighteenth century reflected both the idealized image of China that portrayed by Catholic missionaries and the increasing distrust of existing works about China. The suggested acceptance

163 George Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, 2 vols (London, 1797). John Barrow, Travels in China (1804).

96 and absorbing of Chinese medicine and materia medica failed to show the conflicts, suspicions,

and rivalry that came from British medical practitioners.

Despite some similarities between early-modern China and Britain in medical practices,

such as consuming plant products with curative properties, existing of a rich source of recipes,

herbals, and regimens, eighteenth-century British writings on Chinese medicine showed a

general interest in herbal commodities and suspicion on the theoretic part of Chinese medicine.

This chapter argues that the acceptance of Chinese medical knowledge in eighteenth-century

Britain was quite limited and mainly constraint in material aspects, such as medicinal plants.

Even though people showed particular curiosity towards empirical traditions, such as

acupuncture and moxibustion, it was merely described as an exotic medical oddity, and the

theoretical tradition of it was either ignored or filtered through the eyes of British professional

physicians.

3.1 Sino-British Medical Encounters in the eighteenth century

There was a long-term European interest in Chinese herbal knowledge, and medical

practices such as acupuncture, moxibustion, as well as the Chinese doctrine of the pulses. Sino-

British medical encounters in the eighteenth century were the combination of the long tradition

and the consequence of European colonial and commercial expansion. Despite the very different

perspectives on Chinese medicine at this time, there were still some positive voices claiming that

Chinese medical knowledge could be valuable to European counterparts.

In 1710, Sir John Floyer published his two-volume essay collection, The Physician Pulse-

Watch, which based on the early translation of Chinese physician Wang Shuhe by Polish Jesuit

Michael Boym and published under the name of Andreas Cleyer in 1682 as Specimen medicinae

sinicae. Floyer offered a comparative study between the Galenic medicine of Greece and the

97 medical theory in The Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor (黃帝內經) of China.164 His study on

the pulse, its diagnostic method, and preparation of medication according to the result of pulse-

reading, combined Greek medicine and medical knowledge from China. He claimed that it was

medically feasible that Chinese physicians diagnosed their patients through pulse-reading

because the correlated theory and practice could be found in the sources of ancient Greek

medicine. He was fascinated by the relation between pulse and Chinese cosmological principles

and philosophical narratives on the human body. He claimed that he “will prefer the Chinese

Practice to that of the Greeks as most obvious and certain, and short, and assert that upon that we

may build all the Practice of Physick.” He also found a theoretical basis for his method of pulse-

reading from Chinese physicians, whom he believed “have really great Knowledge in that

Practice, and that they may well build a Practice of Physick on their Art of feeling the Pulse.”

John Floyer wrote, “I suppose my readers will be pleased to practice according to the Chinese

mode, as well as to adorn their house with their curious manufactures, and to use their diet of

Thea.” 165

Floyer’s interest in materia medica was closely related to his early education in botanical

studies. He learned to identify plants with medical properties from Jacob Bobart, a keeper of the

Oxford Botanical Garden. Based on his experiments and investigation through tasting all sorts of

medicinal plants he encountered, Floyer Floyer published his work Pharmako-basanos (1687,

164 On John Floyer and Sino-British medical contacts in the eighteenth century, see B. Szczesniak, “John Floyer and Chinese medicine,” Osiris, 11 (1954), pp. 127-56; Roberta E. Bivins, “Expectations and expertise: early British responses to Chinese medicine,” History of Science, 37 (1999), pp. 459-89; and Bivins’s monograph, Acupuncture, expertise, and cross-cultural medicine (Basingstoke, 2000). A more recent article on John Floyer, Mark S. R. Jenner, “Testing Lichfield, Touching China: Sir John Floyer’s senses,” The Historical Journal, vol. 53, No. 3, 2010. Pp.647-670. 165 John Floyer, The physician's pulse-watch; or, an essay to explain the old art of feeling the pulse, and to improve it by the help of a pulse-watch. 30-33.

98 1690).166 He noticed that the Chinese described the tastes of their simple medicines, whether they be vegetables, minerals, or animals. In their descriptions of these simples, “they are as curious as Galen was.” Floyer deeply respected Chinese medical practices and herbal medicine and claimed that their four-thousand-year experience in these practices could shed light on

British medicine.167 Floyer was particularly interested in the wonderful herbal cabinet that carried by Chinese physicians all the time, which was first mentioned by the Portuguese Jesuit

Alvarus de Semedo.168 There were five drawers in the cabinet and “each of the drawers being divided into more than forty little squares; and all of them furnished with medicines ready ground and prepared.” Floyer imitated the compartment of medication to sort native plants by their tastes and proposed an English Cabinet of Medicines.169

Floyer’s positive attitudes towards Chinese medicine did not receive much resonance from his British fellows till the end of the century, at least for members of the Macartney

Embassy, which led to a few medical encounters between China and Britain. Sir John Barrow, the comptroller of the Macartney Embassy, described his encounter with a local physician and described pulse-reading in his accounts of the mission entitled Travels in China. During their stay at Chusan, Barrow was severely attacked by cholera morbus due to unrestraint eating unripe fruit from the local market. After physicians of the Embassy requested the governor for a little opium and rhubarb, the governor immediately dispatched one of his physicians to treat Barrow.

Instead of bringing the two herbal remedies they requested, the physician first diagnosed Barrow by pulse-reading. “He fixed his eyes upon the ceiling, while he held my hand, beginning at the

166 The full title of the work is Pharmako-basanos: or, the touch-stone of medicines: discovering the vertues of vegetables, minerals, and animals, by their tastes and smells. 2 volumes, 1687 and 1690. 167 Floyer, The physician's pulse-watch, 245. 168 Alvarus de Semedo, Relatione Della Grande Monarchia Della China, 1643. The English translation, entitled The History of that Great and Renowned monarchy of China, appeared in 1655. 169 Floyer, The physician's pulse-watch, 252-253.

99 wrist, and proceeding towards the bending of the elbow, pressing sometimes hard with finger, and then light with another, as if he was running over the keys of a harpsichord.” After the diagnosis, the physician “let go my hand and pronounced my complaint to have arisen from eating something that had disagree with the stomach.” 170 Barrow concluded with a suspicion that he had no idea whether the judgment made by the physician was based upon his reading of the pulse, or from the medical properties of the remedies that he prescribed for himself.

This episode of the medical encounter between Chinese physician and British patient was also recorded by another member of the Embassy George Staunton, secretary of Lord Macartney.

Even though in Staunton’s account of the scenario, the Chinese physician’s treatment had “some momentary relief to the patient,” his description of diagnostic procedures by the physicians had similar skepticism like John Barrow.171 Both of them reported the pulse diagnosis as a kind of strange performance and had the suspicion that the conclusion from the physician was from the information he received before he came and the two medicine they requested.

In the early eighteenth century, Sir John Floyer optimistically predicted that Chinese medical practices would be as popular as Chinese commodities like tea and rhubarb and would be widely adopted by his British fellows. However, it seems that the members of the Macartney embassy did not share Sir Floyer’s passion and enthusiasm, at least for pulse diagnosis and acupuncture that they witnessed by themselves. Even though they did admit the empirical and pragmatic aspects of Chinese medicine, the theoretical interpretations of the techniques remained ignorant to the British eyes. Both Dr. Gillan, George Staunton, and other members hold a strong preference for tea than the medical techniques they encountered at the treatment of the Grand

170 John Barrow, Travels in China (1804), 231-232. 171 George Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, 2 vols (London, 1797);

100 Councilor. The compatible medical practices in early-modern England and China, such as the general interest in herbal knowledge and dietetic medicine, did not lead to a response from

British intellectuals that Floyer expected.

3.2 Herbal medicine in early-modern China and England

In both China and England, there was a well-established medical tradition of using plant- based remedies in the early modern period. In early-modern England, herbal medicine was often described as a form of accessible medical knowledge that needed to be interpreted by learned medicine before reaching out to ordinary people. Many herbal works at this time reflected the emergence of a medical culture that “was based on the transformation of learned medicine into a popularly accessible medicine.”172 Physicians and medical writers endeavored to transmit

medical knowledge through educating lay practitioners. Elaine Leong demonstrates that

gentlewomen in early-modern England used herbal works by contemporary authors such as John

Gerard and Nicholas Culpeper as the starting point of their pursuit of medical knowledge. In both

China and England, herbal works were considered as an import source for vernacular medical

knowledge. In the mid-sixteenth century, a great boom of commercial publishing stimulated the

growth of various types of popular literary readings, pharmaceutical works and collections of

prescription seemed to be the most popular imprints. Between the 1640s and the 1660s, eighty

percent of medical books published in England was written in vernacular. In both contexts,

learned medical practitioners played the role of conduit in the knowledge reception of ordinary

people.

In pre-modern China, bencao (herbs, or materia medica) had become an essential genre

of pharmaceutical literature, and its content covers from medical drug therapy to dietetics. The

172 Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4.

101 application of materia medica and dietetics or dietary therapy (食療) was intimately related, and

the primary purpose was to replenish and refine the body without over-rely on prescribing

medicine. This perspective can be found in several early pharmacopeias in China, which have a

strong emphasis on dietary therapy, and was classified separately as components of materia

dietetica.173 The earliest pharmaceutical work, The Classical Pharmacopoeia of Shennong (神農

本草經), was compiled between the second and third century. The original text was no longer extant, but later the Taoist scholar Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (452-536) used the fragments of early texts as a basis for his own pharmaceutical work, Collected Commentaries on Shennong’s

Classics of Pharmaceutics (神農本草經集注), Additional Notes of Renowned Medical Men (名

醫別錄). Tao collected more than seven hundred herbs and divided them into upper, middle, and lower classes according to their properties. He also compared the use of drugs as governing the state, and some drugs are like rulers, and some are ministers, which should be combined according to their mutual usefulness.174

The first herbal work that systematically introduced the knowledge of medicinal plants to

England is the Herbarium of Apuleius Platonicus, which might have been put together from

Greek material around 400 CE. An Anglo-Saxon translation of the work was made for King

Alfred the Great in the late ninth century. This manuscript provided the classical and Anglo-

Saxon names of plants and also included a brief description of herbal virtues. However, many of

the descriptions are magical nature and related to spells and charms rather than medical recipes.

The earliest book printed in England containing information of botanical and medical characters

173 Huang Hsing-tsung, Science and civilisation in China, vol. 6, Biology and biological technology, part 5, ‘Fermentations and food science’, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 134-139. 174 Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 18-19.

102 is the Banckes’ Herbal publishing in 1525. Soon after its publication, a large number of editions

appeared and circulated, and the contents are slightly different from each other depending on the

readership.175 “Great Herball,” a translation of early French herbal work, printed by Peter

Treveris in 1526. This work introduced a utilitarian idea of herbal knowledge to England at this

time, such as the methods of distillation.

Herbal works in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England reflected the challenges

of new medical theories and the initial stage of incorporating exotic remedies. William Turner

(1509-1568) was considered as a milestone in English herbal medicine. His significant botanical

contribution, A New Herbal, was printed in three parts from 1551 to 1568. Turner intended to

publish a vernacular work on practical botanical and medial knowledge that was accessible to

both professionals and amateurs. His work revealed the combined influence of traditional

Galenic medicine and the new Paracelsian theory.176 In his recipes, people could find those

stones and mineral products that very popular in the medical recipes of the period. Meanwhile,

he remained a committed follower of Galen, who would examine individual illness based on

humoral theory and prescribe medicinal herbs to his patient. A New Herbal provided straightforward and reliable descriptions of both native and foreign materia medica, which were a regular part of physicians’ prescriptions and home remedies. Turner’s herbal work received good acceptance, especially among English wives and mothers. During the early modern period, women were expected to take care of the well-being of their families and were considered as major practitioners and consumers for home remedies.

John Parkinson, an apothecary, and gardener lived in London in the early seventeenth

175 Agnes Arber, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 1953), 24-46. 176 Anne Stobart, and Susan Francia ed., Critical Approaches to the History of Western Herbal Medicine: From Classical Antiquity to the End of the Early Modern Period (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014), 211-213.

103 century, was especially interested in exploring the influence of new botanical specimen to local

medical and botanical knowledge. He compiled a collection of useful materia medica in 1640

entitled Theatrum Botanicum: The Theatre of Plants, which included “plants that are frequently

used to help the diseases of our bodies,” and “many hundreds of new, rare and strange plants

from all parts of world.”177 These two great herbalists intended to have more practical experiments with living samples of new plants. With the introduction of these new specimens, botanists and physicians were no longer satisfied with knowledge from antiquity and medieval

times. The consistent interests of herbal medicine in early-modern Britain reflected the transformation of botany and medicine under the influence of new plants and exotic herbs.

The flourishing bencao works during late imperial China were an outcome of the

development of natural history in the early modern period. For literati class, food and drugs

have been intertwined topics in classic Confucian learning for a long time, such as natural

history and pharmaceutical literature本草. The development of dietetic materia medica

(食療本草) in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China reflected the increasing interests

in natural history during this period. Knowledge of medicine and herbs, along with the related

encyclopedic research, constituted an integral part of natural knowledge in seventeenth- and

eighteenth- century China.178 Bian He points out the close interconnection between medicine

and natural history in China. The pharmaceutical knowledge本草 in China in the early modern

period was an accumulation of “naturalistic description of creatures.”179 The Ming physician

177 John Parkinson, Theatrum botanicum: The Theater of Plants, or, an Herball of a Large Extent (London: Tho. Cotes, 1640) 178 Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2005), 59. 179 Bian He, “Assembling the Cure: Materia Medica and the Culture of Healing in Late Imperial China.” Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2014. 10-11.

104 and naturalist Li Shizhen (1518-1593) compiled the most well-known pharmaceutic work in

China, the Compendium of Materia Medica (本草綱目,1596). Several historians have explored

the taxonomic classification used by Li Shizhen in Bencao gangmu and conclude that Li’s

investigation on the materia medica tradition showed the innovation on natural history study in

late imperial China.180

In this monumental work, Li Shizhen consulted more than 40 books from the past and

combined with his own empirical experiences. This work not only innovated in its structure and

style as pharmaceutical literature, but also pointed out the fundamental question concerning the distinction of food and medicine, or the relationship between culinary and medical texts.181 Li

Shizhen provided a comprehensive description of the medical properties of foodstuffs, along

with their accompaniment and prohibitions, which illuminated the interrelations between

medicine, food, and natural history in late imperial China.182 Meanwhile, Li Shizhen provided

knowledge related to culinary skills and descriptions of the flavor, texture, and fragrance of the

food, especially in the categorization of edible vegetables, which made the descriptions

“transcends medical significance.”183 In his prescriptions, dietary and medical recipes were often

recorded side by side. For example, in his entry for “chive,” Li Shizhen listed around forty

diseases that can be cured with prescriptions involving chives.

180 Georges Métailié, “The Bencao gangmu of Li Shizhen: an innovation on natural history?” in Elisabeth Hsu ed., Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 221-258. For the development of natural history in early modern China, see Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China, 22-25. 181 Vivienne Lo, Penelope Barrett, “Cooking up Fine Remedies: On the Culinary Aesthetic in a Sixteenth-Century Chinese Materia Medica.” Medical History, 2005, 49(4), 395-422. 400. 182 On the discussion of Bencao Gangmu and natural history see Georges Métailié, “The Bencao gangmu of Li Shizhen: an innovation on natural history?” in Elisabeth Hsu ed., Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 221-258. Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2009) 183 Vivienne Lo, “Pleasure, Prohibition, and Pain: Food and Medicine in traditional China,” in Roel Sterckx ed. Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

105 Following the steps of Li Shizhen, literati-physicians continued to applying empirical methods into their studies of pharmaceutics. The eighteenth-century witnessed the publication of several practice-oriented vernacular texts emphasized on the individual effort of non-experts in the practice of making medicine and performing self-care. Zhao Xuemin 趙學敏(1719-1805), a collector and writer of pharmacological works from the early Qing period, wrote Supplement to

Materia Medica （本草綱目拾遺, 1765）. He contradicted contemporary critiques against those itinerary barber-surgeons or vendors who sold herbs in market places and collected over

400 folk recipes produced by this kind of surgeons on streets. He believed that these recipes were worth further investigation because they were accessible for domestic practitioners and were proved effective in actual treatment. He points out in the introduction, “the study of materia medica conducted by different schools varied from each other. I will not follow any of their ideas before I have planted the plants in my garden and tested them myself. I dare not to deceive people who would consult this book.”184

Zhao Xuemin also noticed that the environment of growth had a significant influence on the medical effects of a plant. He pointed out that the effect of the same plant could be different if they were from different regions. His contemporary physician Wu Yiluo 吳儀洛(1704-1766), who compiled the New Compilation on Materia Medica (本草叢新, 1751), shared a similar perspective with him. Wu Yiluo believed that medicinal plants found in the open wildness could be more effective than homegrown species.185 He also prioritized his own medical experience in treatment than following earlier teachings without questioning. Both of these works much emphasized personal experience in collecting and testing with medicinal plants. Both Zhao

184 Zhao Xuemin, Supplement to Materia Medica, Introduction. Zhongyiyao chubanshe, 1998, 3-4. 185 Bian He, “Assembling the Cure: Materia Medica and the Culture of Healing in Late Imperial China.” 203-205, 210-212.

106 Xuemin and Wu Yiluo intentionally structured their works on materia medica as a daily –used

handbook for practitioners and aimed to provide a simplified description and more hand-on

advice.

The mid-seventeenth century witnessed the flourishing of vernacular medical publishing.

Physicians like Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) dedicated to popularize herbal knowledge and

encourage domestic medical practice. He published one of the most popular medical writings in

early modern times, The English Physician, in 1652. Unlike William Turner’s work, the English

Physician mainly introduced common herbs that could be found in household gardens, and did

not include “outlandish foreign herbs whose provenance, authenticity, and suitability were

unknown to English bodies.”186 Culpeper claimed that medical professionals at his time kept remedies in their secret languages that inaccessible to ordinary readers. He translated

Pharmacopoeia Londinensis into English in 1649. The original Latin version of the work was

published by the College of Physicians and mainly used as a professional reference book only for

learned physicians.

Even though learned physicians were responsible for producing herbal works, herbal

medicine in early modern England was quite often related to domestic medicine, especially those

female practitioners. As Nicholas Culpeper pointed out, “All the nation are already physicians. If

you ail anything, everyone you meet, whether a man or woman, will prescribe you a medicine

for it.”187 This comment reflected the popularity of self-treatment in England during this period.

Not only herbal works, cookbooks, and medical recipes that targeted lay people were most

popular among all medical books. Ingredients used in these popular medical works were

186 Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physitian: Or, an Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of This Nation (London: Printed by Peter Cole, 1652), 76 187 Ibid, 87.

107 common herbs and plants that were either home-grown in gardens or collected from nearby fields.

Herbal knowledge in both early-modern China and England reflected an encounter of

learned physicians and lay practitioners. Meanwhile, it was also a form of medical knowledge

that emphasized pragmatism and empiricism. In both cultural contexts, practitioners intensely

engaged in personal experiences in cultivating, collecting, and testing medicinal plants. In the

early modern period, herbal work was a significant way to learned physicians to transfer medical

knowledge to the general public. This form of knowledge transmission influenced the

introduction and spread of exotic herbal remedies in early-modern England.

3.3 Medicalization of food in early-modern China and England

3.3.1 The development of dietetic treatment in ancient and medieval period

Since ancient times people began to associate daily diet to the health of the human body.

The origins of Western humoral physiological theory can be traced back to the ideas of Greek

physician Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 B.C.), who was commonly considered the first to connect the

balance of humors to daily consumption of food and drink. According to Hippocrates, the human

body was influenced by four different fluids or humors: blood, which is hot and moist, yellow

bile, which is hot and dry, phlegm, which is cold and moist, and black bile, which is cold and

dry. Diseases and disorders were reasons for an imbalance among these humors. Hippocrates and

his followers believed that such imbalances could be corrected through daily diet. People

believed that food and drinks have qualities that corresponded to the humors and therefore, could

offset the imbalance. For example, depression was believed as the result of an excess of black

bile, and physicians may prescribe beef to the patient, which was thought to be hot and moist.

As a significant successor of Hippocratic dietetic theory, Galen (129-200 A.D.), the

108 Greek physician of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, believed that the field of dietetics is the most valuable field of medicine.188 Galen built his ideas broadly on Hippocratic writings and further developed his humoral theory. He associated four temperaments, including hot, cold, dry, and wet, with individual humors, and he believed that health is the state of the right balance between these two. He continued to make the connection between regimen and health. In his most significant dietary treatise, On the Powers of Foods (c. 180 A.D.), Galen expounded effects that specific food has on humors and the human body as well as individual differences resulting from age, sex and temperaments. The six non-naturals and the humoral system of Galenic medicine would continue its influences into the early sixteenth century.189

During the Renaissance period, physicians believe that both nutritional and culinary combinations should base on humoral principles. It was prevalent for physicians to offer people culinary advice on how to prepare their food. Renaissance physicians believed that adding a small amount of condiments in a dish could balance its influence on one’s humors. For instance, heavy spices were usually added to cold dishes, and acidic sauces should balance viscous food.190 Baldassare Pisanelli (1517-1587), a physician from Bologna, represented the influence of the Galenic system over medicine during this period. Pisanelli wrote a lot of dietetic regimens commenting on the values of food and how they improve health. His work was mainly based on the Galenic theory, which claimed that specific environmental factors, including air, physical activities, sleep, diet, purging, and emotions, were intimately related to health improvement.191

188 Owen Powell, Galen: On the properties of foodstuffs, Cambridge University Press, 2003, K524, p. 57 and K639, p. 106. W.H.S. Jones, Hippocrates with an English Translation, “Ancient Medicine,” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923) 189 Owen Powell, Galen: On the Properties of Foodstuffs (Cambridge University Press,2003) 190 Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (University of California Press, 2002), 245-248. 191 Galenus, Claudius, and Ian Johnston, On the constitution of the art of medicine; The art of medicine; A method of medicine to Glaucon (Mass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).

109 Even though the Galenic theory remained influential throughout the early modern period, there

were constant challenges among medical practitioners who were exploring new explanations to

the natural world and the human body.192

In China, the idea that food can be useful to eliminate some diseases can be traced back

to the time of the Warring States (475 B.C.—221B.C.). The Rites of the Zhou Empire (周禮)

recorded various kinds of physicians during the period, and a physician specialized in dietetics (

食醫) is one of them. When they were preparing dishes for kings and noblemen, they should

consider the appropriate combination of different ingredients, in order to maintain a dietary

balance between grains, vegetables, and meat. Another medical treatise that composed between

the first and third centuries, “The Basic Questions,” one chapter from The Inner Canon of the

Yellow Emperor (黃帝內經•素問), also mentioned the potential medical properties of food.

Sun Simiao (581-682), the most significant medical practitioner and philosopher in the

seventh century, was known for his vast collection of herb formulas and dietetics.193 He pointed

out, “after we understand the real cause of the disease, first treat it with proper aliments.

Physicians should prescribe medicine if only the dietetic methods did not work on the patient,

because properties of drugs are often very violent that like commanding an army. The military

force is very aggressive that one cannot command it randomly. If you apply medicines

inappropriate, it would cause unexpected harm to the patient.” 194 In his work Essential

192 David Gentilcore, Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine, and Society, 1450-1800 (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 11-18. 193 Sun Simiao’s life could be found in the official history of , The New Book of Tang. Sun spent the latter part of his life in seclusion as a hermit. He was interested in medicine, mathematics, cosmology and natural history. He refused several invitations to serve as medical advisor for the court before he finally accepted to be an advisor for Emperor Taizong (598-649) of Tang dynasty. 194 Sun Simiao, “Dietetic Therapy” (食治) in Essential Prescriptions for Urgent worth a Thousand (備急千金方). 夫為醫者當須先洞曉病源，知其所犯，以食治之；食療不愈，然後命藥。藥性剛烈，猶若御兵；兵之猛 暴，豈容妄發。發用乖宜，損傷處眾；藥之投疾，殃濫亦然。

110 Prescriptions for Urgent worth a Thousand (備急千金方), he recorded his practical experiences and herb formulas he collected throughout his treatment, which was regarded as epitomizing medical theories and practices since the Han dynasty.

Before the early modern period, both China and England experienced the medicalization of food and the development of materia dietetica. Both contexts showed the preference for gentle remedies and preventive techniques based on their particular lifestyle and rich medical culture.

The revival of the dietetic regimen based on Galenic medicine in the sixteenth century led to the prosperous production of medical and culinary recipes in England. A similar situation appeared in China, as well. The idea of nourishing life (養生), a series of diet and therapeutic techniques related to health-preserving, led to the flourishing of the regimen literature published by literati class.

3.3.2 Comparison on the dietetic advice in early-modern China and Britain

The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed a transition in European medicine, which was marked by the division in European medicine between the disciples of Galen and

Paracelsus. In contrast to Galenic “six non-naturals,” Paracelsus claimed that the human body was supported by a chemical system, in which sulfur, mercury, and salt were the most basic principles. The new Paracelsian medicine rejected the Galenic theory that diseases were caused by the imbalances of human bodily humors and employed both herbal and chemical remedies.

His followers proceeded to expound Paracelsus’ theory, declaring that food contains both nutrition and poison, and diseases were caused by poisonous substances taken into the human body while eating food.

Paracelsian doctrines won a group of supporters in England in the late sixteenth century due to its re-emphasize of the procedures for distilling vegetable substances that had known

111 during the time of Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides.195 English physicians in the late sixteenth

century shifted their attention to vegetables, roots, and herbs again for both diet and medical

purposes. Several works that introduced the significant effects of garden herbs to health were produced and circulated at this time in England. John Hester, an apothecary and chemical practitioner from London, published in 1575 a treatise on distilling from vegetables for medicinal use.196 Most of herbs and vegetables used for distilling were garden produced. In the 1580s, John

Partridge wrote hands-on guidance for housewives on how to grew and collected herbs in fields

and gardens and gave rules on how to distill herbs in their kitchens.197

English physician Andrew Boorde (1490-1549) was the author of the first medical work

written in English. He was one of the most prominent early-modern physicians who provided

dietetic advice to his patients. Andrew Boorde acknowledged that diet, exercise, and

environment are more significant in health maintenance than medicine. He encouraged his

patients to tailor their everyday regimen according to their humoral temperaments before they

turned to medicine.198 In his health advice treatise, the Dyetary of Health (1547), Boorde listed

the health-giving qualities of different kinds of food and drink, and most of his prescriptions

were just recommendations of particular foods as treatment. He claimed that there is something

in common between medicine and food in treating diseases, “A good cook is half a physician.

For the chef physic (the counsel of a physician except) does come from the kitchen.”199 He

195 P.H. Kocher, “Paracelsian medicine in England: the first thirty years (ca 1570-1600),” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 2, Number 4 (1947), pp. 451-480. 452-456. 196 John Hester, The True and Perfect Order to Distill Oils out of all Manner of Spices, Seeds, Roots, and Gums, London: 1757. 197 John Partridge, The Treasuire of Commondious Conceites and Hiidden Secrets Commonly Called the Good Huswives Closet of Provison for the Health for Her Household. 198 Andrew Boorde, The Breviary of Helth (1574). 199 Vivienne Lo, and Penelope Barrett, “Cooking up Fine Remedies: On the Culinary Aesthetic in a Sixteenth- Century Chinese Materia Medica,” Med Hist, vol. 49; 2005. 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,

112 commented not only on what people should eat to preserve health, but he was also concerned with problems that came with the Englishman’s excessive consumption of food, especially meat.

In contrary to Andrew Boorde, Thomas Cogan, a sixteenth-century English physician in his work Haven of Health, first published in 1584, claimed that food and medicine had different functions when applied to the human body, “And now shall I speak of herbs and fruits I mean of those appertain to diet as they be used for meate (food) and not for medicine. For that belongs to another part of physicke, though I know that there may be as Hippocrates says medicinable meate.” Cogan mentioned some basic ideas on how to differentiate food and drugs, and discussed the relation between diet and preserving health. He complaint that people paid little attention to advice on staying healthy, and they only turned to medicine when they got sick.200

Cogan’s idea was supported by J. B. Van Helmont, a Flemish physician in the early seventeenth century, who claimed that “curing is not subject to the dietary part of medicine, …and that cures were the effects of medicines, but not of meats.”201

During the sixteenth century, Chinese medicine also witnessed a renewal that resulted from the reinterpretation and criticism of classical orthodox medicine from lay medical practitioners. Gao Lian 高濂(1572-1620), a late-Ming writer, dramatist composed a well-known manual on nourishing life in the Ming dynasty, Eight Treatises on the Art of Living (遵生八箋,

1591), a collection of advice and recipes, shows how to maintain physical well-being and achieve longevity through daily practices. The work was an outcome of Gao Lian’s concerns about his own health problems, which led him to consult both learned physicians and lay

Early English Text Society, 1870, p. 277; Also see Andrew Wear, Knowledge and practice in English medicine, 1500–1680, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 170. 200 Thomas Cogan, The Haven of Health, 36, 38. 201 J. B. Van Helmont, Oriatrike or Physick Refined, English translation of Ortus medicinae (London, 1662).

113 practitioners to obtain various practices related to health preservation. Meanwhile, as a book collector himself, medical and pharmaceutical works had always been part of his collection. In

Eight Treatises, there was one treatise, Notes on the Use of Foods & Drinks (飲饌服食箋), specifically dedicated to maintaining health through daily drinking and eating. Gao Liao believed that foodstuffs prepared the best support and nourishment to our internal organs because “the movement of yin and yang, and the mutual production of the five phases in our body are all depending on daily drinking and eating.”202 Gao Lian pointed out that eating and drinking remained the normal metabolic functions of the stomach and spleen, which were responsible for transforming food and drink into the vital essence of qi. However, Gao Lian’s dietetic advice should be understood in the context of the flourishing material culture in the late Ming period.

As he emphasized that both eating and drinking are beneficial when people consume moderately.

The ultimate goal of a literati is to achieve a balanced harmony between these material goods and individual circumstances.

Even though dietetic advice in early-modern England and China rooted in their own medical and cultural practices, we could identify the clear emphasis on the medicalization of regimens in both contexts. There were multiple reasons for the transition, including increasing food availability and the changing on diet habit, the introduction of new food ingredients, foreign influence on culinary skills, shifting understanding on the physiological impact of foodstuffs, the intensified inter-regional intellectual exchanges, the booming voices of amateur medical practitioners in producing and circulating knowledge related to health preservation, and more professionals were willing to share their knowledge in vernacular forms with ordinary people.

202 Gao Lian高濂, Notes on the Use of Foods & Drinks (飲饌服食箋, ), in Eight Treatises on the Art of Living (遵生八 箋,1591).

114 3.3.3 “Let thy food be thy medicine”: health preservation in medical discourse

Most people in early-modern Europe relied on domestic and other types of amateur medical services. Medicine related publishing, including all sorts of herbals, hands-on manuals, and cookbooks, provided vast numbers of recipes for illness from colds to the plague. Dietetic advice was the medical knowledge that most accessible to laypeople and could be traced back to the time of Hippocrates and Galen. The balance of the humors of the human body could be achieved by changing the conditions of life and habits, including diet and drink. Food and drink potentially affected what humors produced in the human body. Therefore, physicians often prescribed a dietary regimen to restore or maintain the balance of humors.

Early-modern physicians preferred to rely on dietetic advice rather than medicine in preventing and curing diseases. In his dietetic treatise, An Essay on Regimen, the seventeenth- century physician George Cheyne claimed that “it is Diet alone, proper and specific Diet, in

Quantity, Quality and Order, that continued in till the Juices are sufficiently thinn’d, to make the

Functions regular and easy, which is the sole universal Remedy.” Cheyne believed that the essence of the human body was various liquors and fluids that were running and circulating consistently through channels and pipes in the complicated machine of the human body. In order to stay healthy, we need to “keep the Blood and Juices in a due State of Thinness and Fluidity, whereby they may be able to make those Rounds and Circulations through the animal Fibers, wherein Life and Health consist, with the fewest Rubs and least Resistance that may be.”203

Even though drugs and bloodletting could clean the blockages in our body, changing one’s diet habits was the most effective method for long-term improvement. George Cheyne pointed out that “our distempers generally arise from oils, salts, and spirits, carried into the habit

203 George Cheyne, The Essay of Health and Long Life (1724)

115 by our food; nothing else but these having force enough to produce the distempers. When the juices are too viscid or acrimonious, or the obstructions are many and great, diet offers us one the surest means to cure these ill qualities.”204 Cheyne’s dietetic therapy, which encouraged people to trust the advice from their physicians and manage their own health through moderation of what they eat and drink, illuminated the entangled relation of nourishment and medicine in the early modern period. Most importantly, learned physicians took dietetic medicine as a way to popularize medical knowledge among ordinary people.

William Cullen (1710-1790), who became the president of the Royal College of

Physicians of Edinburgh in 1773, was one of the most influential practitioners of dietetic medicine in the eighteenth century. In his Treatise on the Materia Medica, Cullen explored how aliments and drugs had different functions in preventing and curing diseases. He used the term nutrientia to refer to everything used by human being in their daily food, all the nutrient substances, “more strictly nutrientia are such substances as are fitted by the vital power to be converted into our fluids and solids, in order to sustain their growth and repair their daily waste.”205 Cullen believed that diet functioned to prevent illness because it could keep the balance of fluids and solids that need by our bodies. He prescribed minimal medicine to his patient and “depend as much or more upon his regimen than upon medicine.”206 Cullen believed that paying strict attention to the regimen was always better than taking medicine. For most of his patients, their illness was “owing to the neglect of Regimen as to the impotency of medicine.”207

204 George Cheyne, The English Malady, 169-170. 205 Ibid, 168-169. 206 The Cullen Project, The Consultation Letters of Dr. William Cullen (1710-1790) at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. March 14, 1782, DOC ID: 209 207 Ibid. Aug. 21, 1784, DOC ID 4899.

116 Dietetic writers in China echoed the idea of prioritized dietary manipulations in the

preservation of health. In early-modern China, nourishing life (養生), the idea and techniques

related to health-preserving that once profoundly shaped by medical and religious discourses,

was becoming part of educated discourse through daily manual, household guides, and recipe

books produced by literati class. The art of nourishing life (養生) became an intrinsic part of the

literati lifestyle, accompanied by the production of a rich source of medicinal and culinary

literature. According to Huang Hsing-tsung, there were approximately some seventy works that

related to the food canon and diet therapy traditions published before 1800.208

Like George Cheyne, who emphasized the role of professional physicians in spreading

medical knowledge in vernacular forms, Ming dietetic writers emphasized the authority of

professional physicians to provide advice on how to consume remedies properly, which would

significantly improve the effects of what we eat and drink. Even though the remedies that have

been tested and proved to be effective, there should be proper ways to use them. It is the

obligation of people who prescribe it to understand its characters and use them wisely to help

cure diseases and prolong one’s life.

The advice on how to live a healthier and longer life became part of an interesting

phenomenon in early modern medical culture in early-modern China as well. Besides medical recipe books and works of materia medica, cookbooks also offered health guides and therapy for home use. From the mid-sixteenth to eighteenth-century China, the flourishing of printing culture, the increasing emphasis on material culture led to a dramatic change in the production

208 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. This body of literature is called Shijing or Shifang, culinary classics or culinary remedies, and they are often categorized under medical literature in imperial China.

117 and consumption of books related to nourishing life (養生), which became a favorite topic for literati class. Nourishing life in this context did not limit to dietetic advice, but also included pragmatic skills, such as medicine, cooking, gardening, and agriculture.

Early-modern literati in China often expressed their perspectives on health preserving by compiling culinary recipes. Li Yu 李漁, a prolific writer of plays and fictions in the seventeenth century, produced a collection of casual essays entitled Casual Expressions of Idle Feelings (閒

情偶寄,1671), on various topics arranging from drama performing, dwelling, decorating to food and drinking, gardening, and preserving health. This work reflected his perceptions of nourishing life, defining by advocating simplicity and opposing extravagant and wasteful living. The chapter on food and drink(飲饌部) reflected Li Yu’s viewpoint on a natural diet. As a dramatist, Li Yu’s primary aesthetic pursuit was naturalness and simplicity.209 This artistic attitude directly

influenced his perspective on health and eating. Li Yu was an advocate of a low diet, which

means living altogether on vegetable food and pure element. He believed that people should

avoid greasy food like meat and consume vegetables and fruits because plants combine the

essence of the mountain and forests, which hugely benefits to the human health.

He pointed out that foodstuff that was prepared in the simplest and most natural ways could

benefit the human body the most. People should minimize and simplify the cooking process as

much as they could in order to retain the original flavor and nutrition of the ingredients.210

Even though works on dietetic practices were an essential phenomenon in early-modern medical culture in both China and Britain, the understanding of diet and health were quite different in these two contexts. The dietetic knowledge and nourishing life (養生) became part of

209 Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988) 210 Li Yu, “On Vegetables,” Casual Expressions of Idle Feelings.

118 the educated discourse in early-modern China. Not limited to the medical discourse, literati regarded keeping a healthy lifestyle and nourishing life as a way to express their literati status, self-improvement, and also showing their aesthetic taste. The works on nourishing life should be understood in both medical and cultural contexts, which illuminates how self-improvement came to entangled with medical thoughts and expressed through the tradition of collecting, reading and compiling works of materia medica and dietetics. In early-modern Britain, dietetic advice was mainly provided by the learned physicians and was considered as a way to communicate learned medicine with other popular treatments. Learned physicians primarily concerned with the prevention of illness rather than curing.211 Even though learned physicians were few comparing to lay medical practitioners during this time, the influence of learned medicine was enormous.

They actively engaged in debates of incorporating exotic medicinal plants in European medicine, even influenced consuming habits of medication in the eighteenth century.

3.4 Incorporating exotic medicinal and culinary ingredients in dietetic advice

During the antiquity and again in medieval times, European consumers had already consumed a broad range of fascinating spices from East Asia, including pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and ginger. Most of these spices were not considered as food, beverage or entertainment at first, but instead categorized as valuable medicinal herbs by merchants and physicians. According to the classical humoral framework of Galen, the properties of food should be matched to the individual patient’s state of imbalance and thus helps to maintain the balance of the four bodily humors.

During the early modern period, while physicians and medical writers tried to accommodate these exotic herbs in European medicine, one crucial question that they

211 Andrew Wear examines dietetic advice as preventive medicine in his book, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Chapter 4.

119 encountered with was still how to fit exotic ingredients, such as coffee, tea, chocolate, and many

other spices from all over the globe into the predominant humoral theory that dominated

European medicine since the Ancient Greeks. Medical authorities debated with each other on the

exact humoral affiliations of these new ingredients. Some of them claimed that the humoral

properties of coffee and tea are hot while the property of chocolate should be cold. Some others

claimed that three of them belonged to hot and dry properties because they intended to make the

human body colder by drying up the radical moisture and weakening us.212

Early modern consumers invariably provoked their own traditional reactions towards

foreign commodities. Some historians have argued that new attitudes toward the value of exotic

goods, and consumption in general, were adopted from the East. The values and meanings

attached to the introduction of European commodities in early modern period were derived from

the knowledge and symbolic meanings prevalent in the non-European cultures. Tea, coffee, and chocolate all carried knowledge and meaning from outside of Europe with them: from medicinal and meditative qualities ascribed to tea by Chinese literati, to the herbal knowledge of chocolate transmitted from Mesoamerican priests.

The curiosity about foreign lands and goods had been stimulated due to the long-term

overseas exploration and trade since the early sixteenth century. At this time, exotic medicinal

and culinary ingredients received very well by Europeans, and they incorporated these items into

their nutritional theories.213 Early examples of foreign ingredients incorporated into European

dietary manuals included sugar and spices. Spanish physician Nicolás Monard’s work was the

first descriptions dealt with the benefits and risks of foodstuffs from the New World. He even

212 Ken Albala, “Superfood or Dangerous Drug? Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate in the Late 17th Century”, EuropeNow. 213 Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (University of California Press, 2002), 232-234.

120 tested some new remedies on his own patient at Seville, including guaiac, sarsaparilla, and jalap.

An English translation of the work, Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde World, began to

circulate in London in 1577 and received a warm welcome among English physicians due to its

emphasis on promoting the pharmaceutical value of New World plants.214 In 1597, English

botanist John Gerard had included tobacco in his Herball and incorporated it in his recipe for

wound oil. The efforts to introduce New World remedies reflected a mixed objective, an

expectation of remedies for incurable diseases, and anticipation for high economical profit.215

Even though numerous herbals, botanical works, medical compendia, and recipe books published and circulated in the European world in the early seventeenth century started to include an increasing amount of foreign botanical ingredients, some people began to defend native remedies and dietary habits.216 At this time, followers of Paracelsus attempted to use his

argument of local remedies to challenge the universal remedy of Galenic medicine.217 Paracelsus

claimed that “each land to be sure gives birth to its own special kind of sickness, its own

medicine, and its own physician. I really have to laugh at those who wanted to prepare medicines

from across the seas, where there are better remedies to be found in front of their noses in their

own gardens.”218 Followers of Paracelsians continued to advocate the superiority of local

products, and they saw no need to use herbs or spices that were expensive and often arrived at a

214 Nicolás Monard, Sevillana medicina, que trata el modo conservativo y curativo de los que habitan en la muy insigne ciudad de Sevilla. Seville: Enrico Rasco. 1545. The English version was translated by John Frampton in 1577. Nicolas Monardes, Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde Worlde, John Frampton, trans., 2 vols. (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1925) 215 J. Worth Estes, “The European Reception of the First Drugs from the New World, Pharmacy in History,” Vol. 37, No. 1 (1995), pp. 3-23. 216 For the debate on local and foreign ingredients, see Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and David Gentilcore, Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine, and Society, 1450-1800 (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), chapter 4 and 7. 217 Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 70-75. 218 Bruce T. Moran, The “Herbarius” of Paracelsus, Pharmacy in History, vol. 35, 99-127. 104.

121 bad condition from remote areas.219 They believed that local diseases should only be treated by

local remedies, and “each land gives birth to its own special kind of sickness, its own

medicine.”220

With the introduction of new exotic ingredients, medical writers divided into two

different groups, supporters of native ingredients and advocators for exotic products. Some

physicians promoted exotic ingredients as a medicine for all illnesses that suitable for all people;

some, from the dietary perspective, hold a more cautious attitude and reminded people to

consume it moderately due to the corruptive nature of these foreign ingredients. While the public

debate on the merits and vices of foreign spices and remedies became ever more intense, many

people still relied on the judgment of medical authorities. The encounter with new exotics

offered European medical practitioners a chance to break the restriction of traditional medical

theory and to explore new chemical and mechanical theories through empirical methods. As a

result, they all explored their own way, including medical and culinary, to fit new ingredients in

the European medical system.221

William Vaughan, a Doctor of civil law in early seventeenth-century England, introduced

one particular effect of chocolate, tobacco, and tea to his readers; when people consume these

ingredients moderately, they could “refresh the heart and spirits, temper the humors, engender

good blood, break phlegm, conserve nature, and make it merry…nourish the body and cause a

good color.” These three ingredients were later known as the new intoxicants and stimulants that

219 Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-1760 (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), 78-81. 220 Henry E. Sigerist, Paracelsus: Fourth Treatise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941), 29. 221 For the encounters of New world remedies and spices and European medical theory, see Ken Albala, “The Use and Abuse of Chocolate in 17th Century Medical Theory,” Food and Foodways, 2007, 15:1-2, 53-74. Rudi Matthee, “Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco, coffee, cocoa, tea and distilled liquor, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries,” in Roy Porter ed. Drugs and Narcotics in History (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

122 conquered the European stomach and mind. 222 Henry Stubbe, an English physician and a

member of the Royal Society, made his first comment on cacao based on Galenic theory that it

was “bitterish and astringent,” therefore “none of the most pleasant to those that are not used to

it.” After some experiments made with cacao beans, including soaking, grinding, and burning, he

found the beans were very nourishing and good for digesting. He claimed that it was a fantastic

beverage for its nourishment and its properties to “allay splenetique fumes and drowsiness, to

generate good blood, and a very great remedy for inflammation.” However, he suggested that

people mix it with pepper to make it supportable to their stomachs.223 Some other exotics were also accepted due to their capabilities to balance body humoral condition after taking cacao,

“achiote, orichelas, and vaynillas, were not ordinary ingredients, but occasionally put in, as people’s stomachs could not bear the common composition, it being too cold to persons of a more than ordinary debility of stomach.”224

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical practices in the European

world were still under the influence of the Galenic humoral concepts. Meanwhile, other medical

theories that emerged during this period provided broader propositions and possibilities for

physicians to discuss the human body and treatment. Dietary remedies continued to be

challenged and revised with the development of chemical and mechanical medicine. In

considering these dietetic ideas, the regimen for health in the early modern European world

generally emphasized the possible medicinal properties of food, different functions of foodstuffs

and materia medica, and how preparation and cooking would influence the effects of food. Most

of the advice aimed at both preservation of health and curing diseases. As many early modern

222 William Vaughan, Natural and artificial directions for health: derived from the best philosophers, as well modern, as ancient. London: Richad Bradocke, 1610. 223 Henry Stubbe, The Indian Nectar, Or a Discourse Concerning Chocolata, 30-35. 224 Ibid, 78

123 physicians had claimed, “the cure of disease is doubtless a matter of great importance, the

preservation of health is of still greater.” 225

3.5 Medical theory and pharmaceutical practice: the vices of exotic remedies

Since the sixteenth century, European physicians had concerned whether it is necessary to incorporate plants from the new world to their medical system.226 With the popularization of

Paracelsus’s theory and introduction of chemical substances in remedies, the dominant Galenic

medicine was facing a challenge in the early sixteenth century.227 The accommodation of exotic

remedies in British medical culture aroused a harsh debate on whether those ingredients from the

furthest part of the world would have any positive influence on English bodies. Andrew Wear

points out that various perspectives generated the discussion during the early modern period.

Many people hold the idea that only local substances could treat local diseases; some others

doubted whether exotic drugs would be useful on European bodies and concerned commercial

threats of importing foreign substances to domestic economy; meanwhile, to incorporate these

ingredients into European medical theories was also a problem.228

For those who opposed the use of exotic drugs, their reasons ranging from religion,

economy, to a European-centered bias. One of the widely accepted reasons for the rejection of

foreign remedies is that they were not suited for European bodies. Early in the sixteenth century,

225 William Buchan, Domestic Medicine or the family physician; being an attempt to render the medical art more generally useful, by shewing people what is in their own power both with respect to the prevention and cure of diseases. Chiefly calculated to recommend a proper attention to regimen and simple medicines, 1774. 226 Andrew Wear, “The early modern debate about foreign drugs: localism versus universalism in medicine,” Lancet, 1999 July 10, 149-151. 227 Paracelsus, (1493-1541), who was also known as Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, was a physician from Einsiedeln, Switzerland. He was the major challenger to the dominance of Galenic theory in early modern Europe. 228 Andrew Wear, “The early modern debate about foreign drugs: localism versus universalism in medicine,” The Lancet, Volume 354, Number 9173 (July 1999), pp. 149-151, and Andrew Wear, “Making sense of health and environment in early modern England,” in Andrew Wear ed., Medicine in society: historical essays (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 119-147.

124 some European physicians believed that “in respect of the constitutions of our bodies they do not

grow for us, because that God hath bestowed sufficient commodities upon every country for her

own necessity.”229 This argument won broad support in England as well. English physician

Edmund Gardiner, in his treatise The Triall of Tobacco (1611), believed that “English bodies,

through the nature of the region, our kinde of diet and nourishment, our custome of life, are

greatly divers from those of strange nations, whereby ariseth great varitie of humours, and

excrements in our bodies from theirs.” Thus, he believed that the medicines which help

foreigners must be hurtful to us.230

English physician Timothy Bright (c. 1549-1615) wrote an extended English critique of

foreign remedies in his A Treatise, Wherein is Declared the Sufficiencie of English Medicines

(1580), in which he made the similar argument that local herbs are best for local diseases. For

Bright, foreign remedies were “things rather superfluous pleasure than necessary reliefs and

serving rather for a certain pomp than for maintenance of life.”231 Most of all, the English should not “be dependent on supplies of drugs from heathen and barbarous nations who, in any case, often corrupt or counterfeit them.”232 Theoretically speaking, every individual has different temperature and complexions, so does every nation. “The humours and excrements are so different with the English due to the difference on diet. The remedies to balance the humours have also to be different.”233

Timothie Bright blamed European merchants for presenting as unlearned and incapable

of giving the right directions for the picking and storing of plants. “When these plants are

229 William Harrison, Description of England, 1587. 230 Edmund Gardiner, The Triall of Tobacco, 1610. 231 Timothie Bright, A Treatise, Wherein is Declared the Sufficiencie of English Medicines (1580), 21 232 Ibid, 23. 233 Timothie Bright, A Treatise, Wherein is Declared the Sufficiencie of English Medicines, 18-19.

125 gathered to ye Merchants hand, who shall tell him how they grewe, or who shal inquire but the

Philosopher that knowth what may come thereby to these simples, neither is the daunger lesse in

the manner of laying them up, and keeping them over long: besides the just time of gathering

being either overpassed, or prevented, greatly diminished the virtue of the Medicines… ”234 In his opinion, merchants did not possess the necessary practical knowledge of plants like philosophers and physicians. He also blamed merchants for keeping these plants too long, and they had lost potency when they arrived in Europe. Bright believed that the expertise that came from the literate medical tradition that based on both Galen and Paracelsus. The local materials and knowledge from remote areas could be appropriated and transformed by this learned medicinal tradition.

Meanwhile, Bright’s critique of foreign drugs mostly came from a Christian-centered

perspective. He made the argument, “God had provided food and clothing, so also he provided

medicines, as the preservation of the creature was part of the goodness of the Creator.” It is

totally against God’s providence if we depended too much on the “adventures of merchants for

health.” He pointed out that the disease of one part of the world had the medicine of their own.235

He believed that it was very absurd, “that the health of so many Christian nations should hang

upon the courtesie of those heathen and barbarous nations, to whome nothing is more odious

then the very name of Christianities? And who of malice do hold from us such medcines as they

knowe most for our use.”236

The religious perspective of the exotic products was echoed by a Parisian physician and

apothecary Jean de Renou in his Dispensatorium Medicum (1609), and the English translation

234 Thomas Short, Medicina Britannica: or, a Treatise on such Physical Plants, 13-14. 235 Thomas Short, Medicina Britannica, 11. 236 Thomas Short, Medicina Britannica, 12.

126 was published in 1657. De Renou pointed out, “The all-seeing providence of God hath thought

good to bless the remotest part of the East with better Medicaments than Physicians; Plants of

such rare worth, and admirable virtue that Medics of a more polish life and conversation, of

greater learning and experience than those rude Barbarians, have to their perpetual renown,

demonstrated their virtues and operations, and by long use and observation, have found them

fortunately successful in many desperate distempers.”237

The discussion on the vices of exotic goods continued into the eighteenth century.

Thomas Short, a physician from Sheffield, England, expressed similar concerns on the excessive

imports of exotic medicinal plants. In his treatise written in 1746, Short points out, “The neglect

and contempt of a great part of our own plants has made way for a farrago of exotics imported,

and palmed on us; which, being neither of our own growth, soil, nor climate, may probably not

be so well suited to our constitutions, as these produced in the same soil and climate with

ourselves.”238 Short strongly advocated the use of local products. He claimed that the heavy

dependence on foreign drugs would lead to a neglect of botanical simples and fostered “our

fondness for compounds,” which would only “result to the heavy use of chemical preparations in drugs.” The cost of importing exotic remedies was another reason for concern. He mentioned the adverse effects on domestic economy of foreign drugs importation. Foreign drugs “in too great a measure deprives the poor of the benefit of the gifts of kind Providence, to their too frequent loss, and often danger…… It lies too hard on many Parishes, who have abundance of poor, but little or no trade; especially when so few now know the common virtues of our own herbs.”239

237 Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680, Cambridge University Press, 2000. 66- 67. De Renou, Medicinal Dispensatory, 270. 238 Thomas Short, Medicina Britannica: or, a Treatise on such Physical Plants, as are Generally to be found in the Fields or Gardens in Great-Britain. London: R. Manby &H. Shute Cox, 1746. Vii. 239 Thomas Short, Medicina Britannica: or, a Treatise on such Physical Plants, viii-ix.

127 Some British naturalists believed that they could change the nature of some plants to make them useful in medical treatment. Many of the new exotic remedies that were introduced to the European world was associated with disorderly intoxication, which remained an object of intense curiosity for English virtuoso in the seventeenth century. Robert Boyle claimed that they could decoct these plants into effective medicine. “The naturalist may add to the materia medica, not only by investigating the qualities of unheeded bodies, but also by gaining admittance for divers, that, though well enough known, are foreborn to be used upon the account of their being of a poisonous nature: through skillful ways of preparation, the philosophical spagyrist may so correct divers noxious, nay poisonous concretes, unfit in their crude simplicity for the physician use. We make them useful and effectual remedies.”240

Conclusion

In 1795, William Winterbotham, an English Baptist minister, published An Historical,

Geographical and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire, which was occasioned by the diplomatic mission of Sir George Macartney undertook in 1793 to China. This work was published at a moment when the general public in Britain was disappointed with the failure of the Embassy. Winterbotham’s work tried to bring some positive meanings to the embassy,

“These hopes have been frustrated and disappointed for the present, but the Embassy has given rise to a laudable spirit of inquiry concerning the Chinese empire, which we have no doubt will ultimately prove advantageous to British commerce. To aid the inquirer in his pursuit, and to furnish the public at large with the meanings of obtaining a general knowledge of China, this volume was compiled.” This advertisement of Winterbotham’s work ascribed the failure of the embassy to its lack of proper knowledge about China.

240 Robert Boyle, Some considerations touching the vsefulnesse of experimental naturall philosophy propos'd in familiar discourses to a friend, by way of invitation to the study of it. 124-125.

128 In order to avoid the same mistake in future encounters with this Empire, Winterbotham pointed out, he would introduce various aspects of China to English public, literature, arts, religions, science, and manufactures, including medicine and materia medica. Winterbotham mentioned, “Their physicians were never skillful anatomists, or profound philosophers, nor will their most respectable theories bear the scrutiny of the practical anatomist. But the most useful and most esteemed production of the country are plants used in the Chinese medicine. The medicinal plants of China form a rich and extensive branch of its natural history.”241 This comment reflected one of the common European attitudes toward Chinese medicine during this time. Even though Europeans appreciated the Chinese materia medica tradition, most of them thought the Chinese were lack of knowledge of anatomy and the human body. The European physicians believed that their medical theory is much more superior to that of China.

Both China and England experienced the medicalization of food and the development of materia dietetica before the early modern period. Both shared the rich tradition of herbal medicine and regimens and showed the preference for gentle remedies and preventive techniques based on their particular lifestyle and rich medical culture. Dr. John Floyer’s works on pulse- watch and materia medica published in the eighteenth century highly praised Chinese medicine as pragmatic and expertise. He presented some practices as worth the imitation of British physicians. Although Chinese materia medica received consistent attention and the rich botanical sources was considered a natural source that could be exploited for medical and commercial purposes. The medical encounters between China and Britain in the eighteenth century were still dominated by skepticism and distrust, and British physicians and intellectual audiences did not consider Chinese medicine as an alternative treatment worthy of their further pursuit. In the next

241 William Winterbotham, An Historical, Geographical and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire, 1795. 422- 423.

129 chapter, we will see the commodification of tea in British society, from a luxurious medicinal plant to a popular beverage of daily consumption, facilitated the acceptance of Chinese medical ideas by British consumers. The preparation of tea provided them opportunities to create a link between their own body and an exotic beverage based on their own consuming experience.

130 Chapter 4 Legitimating Tea Drinking in British culture

Europe’s earliest encounters with tea came through the descriptions of missionaries to

China in the sixteenth century. The Dutch East India Company started importing the first

shipment of tea from China and Japan to Europe in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

However, more regular tea supply did not occur until the English East India Company gained

direct access to the port of Canton at the end of the seventeenth century. From that time, the

European market witnessed the growing demand for tea and a steady increase in imports. During

this period, tea went from a luxurious curative beverage only limited to the European elite class

to a daily necessity that was consumed by a mass population. Even though a critical reason for

the acceptance of tea in the European world was its claim to have significant health benefits, tea

drinking was gaining particular popularity in Britain also due to its significant role in social and

domestic space, as a symbol of civilizing life, and its stimulant effect as an exotic intoxicant.242

The increasing appreciation and suspicions on tea rituals and luxury equipage came to change the

British consuming habits and even had a significant influence on modern consumerism.243

The commercial and cultural success of tea in eighteenth-century Britain allows us to trace the trajectory of the commodification of exotic herbs in the European world. Tea, first considered as an exotic beverage and a universal remedy, was accepted by a broader market that crossed over boundaries of culture, class, and gender, and appealed to a large group of consumers that lend their interpretations to tea drinking. It suggests that consumers’ personal

242 Discussion of tea as modern intoxicant see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Jordan Goodman, “Excitantia: or, how enlightenment Europe took to soft drinks,” in Goodman, Jordan, Paul E. Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt. Consuming Habits: Global and Historical Perspectives on How Cultures Define Drugs. London: Routledge, 2007. Phil Withington, “Intoxicants and society in early modern England,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Sep. 2011), pp. 631-657 243 John E. Willis, “European consumption and Asian production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in John Brewer, Roy Porter ed. Consumption and the World of Goods (London, New York: Routledge, 1994), 133-147.

131 experience with exotic beverages like tea enhanced its social and cultural accommodation in

Britain. Tea was becoming a civilizing drink that articulating one’s identity rather than a curative

medication that previously constructed in medical discourse. Meanwhile, for many consumers,

tea as a stimulant and intoxicant was part of the reason that made it attractive. It was related to

sobriety, order, respectability, and politeness that have social and significance.

Tea, like coffee and cacao, was an exotic beverage introduced to the European world at a

time of colonial expansion and global commerce. There was an extensive body of literature on

the incorporating of these new ingredients in the European dietary system and their scientific and

cultural influences in European society. Jesuit missionaries, who came to China in the late

sixteenth century, had written about this beverage that “always sipped hot” by the Chinese. Their

narratives on tea, including collecting and processing tea leaves, preparing the decoction, and tea

wares, had reached their readers in Europe in the early seventeenth century. Moreover, tea leaves

had already available to purchase in a small amount at coffee houses in London but only

circulated among imperial and upper-class consumers before the English East India Company began to import tea in great quantities in the 1750s. Tea was first introduced as a luxurious medicinal ingredient. However, medical authorities could not agree with each other on the particular virtues of the beverage. Some physicians promoted tea to the public for commercial

and colonial profits, and others denounced tea for its exotic origin, its possible conflicts with the

classical humoral theory, and the side-effects of overdose tea.

When the British were consuming tea as a medical and social item, they consumed the

knowledge transmitted by Jesuit missionaries and explorers from China simultaneously.

However, the prerequisite knowledge of tea from Jesuit missionaries, explorers, and merchants

required a reinterpretation through a collective effort of British consumers in order to deepen,

132 extend, and internalize tea drinking in British culture. The process of reinterpretation included

naturalists, physicians, intellectuals, and every individual consumer, who were required to

participate in the experimental enquiry of how to frame tea in the British context. The consuming

experience of tea, including debates on its botanical characteristics and therapeutic effects, the

social and cultural construct of tea drinking in literary works, was utterly British.

There are very vibrant studies on the introduction of tea into British society in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Historians focus on the shifting ways that tea-drinking is understood; how it transforms British diets, cultural practices, and politics through its trade and consumption; how tea consumption created social and gender distinction in British society and the trajectory of tea consumption from a luxury good to a daily necessity. Many recent studies associate the popularization of tea drinking with demand for luxury that occurred in Great Britain during the eighteenth century and focus on how consumerist ideals facilitated the rise of tea drinking and the establishment of a social and material culture based on tea drinking.

Luxuries were becoming necessities during the consumer revolution that took place in

Britain during the 1700s, and people were buying goods with foreign origins for the sake of fashion.244 Maxine Berg argues that novelty and variety were central elements of fashion, and

oriental goods, including tea, offered the English middle-class family an opportunity to access a more civilized and fashionable living. According to her, tea consumption as a daily necessity in the mid-eighteenth century was due to the “great variety of new objects associated with tea drinking.”245 James Walvin explores how new exotic edibles, including tea, coffee, cocoa, and

sugar, were at first “the expensive luxury of the wealthy” but became “the cheap commonplace

244 Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) 245 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005), 150-152.

133 pleasure of the masses.”246 In the past few years, historians continue to build on the influence of

tea on the making of global consumer society. Erika Rappaport traces how tea developed into a

mass-consumed commodity in Europe against the background of globalization and imperial

network from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.247 Markman Ellis’s Empire of Tea provides a detailed discussion on how tea conquered the British public, primarily through merchants and savants, inspired scientific, political, and cultural debates, and finally became the symbol of British culture and identity.248

There are vibrant English sources on the interferences of tea in British commercial,

medical, and cultural domains, including tracts on natural history and medicine, literature works,

paintings, poems, and satires. Medical writers contested its pharmacological effects; poets

praised tea as a magical fountain for inspiration, literary works, and social commentators debated

whether it would lead to deleterious social consequences. As the origin of tea leaves and tea

culture, ancient China developed a vibrant social and cultural deposits with tea drinking. Even

though tea was becoming a beverage consumed by people from all levels of society after the

eighth century, the cultural practice of tea connoisseurship was still dominated by elite voices to

show their wealth, status, and good taste. The massive expansion of literary works on tea during

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave rise to a unique literary genre, tea books 茶書,

which dealt with everything related to tea from planting, collecting, processing to tasting and

evaluation. These tea books provide us a lens to explore the development of tea culture of

imperial China.

246 James Walvin, The Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660-1800 (Basingstoke, 1997), ix. 247 Erika Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2017) 248 Ellis, Markman, Richard Coulton, and Matthew Mauger. Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf That Conquered the World (London: Reaktion Books, 2018)

134 Current studies on the introduction and expansion of tea consumption emphasized on the

British side, how this Asian leaf “inserted itself within Britain’s social and economic life.”249

British consumers and physicians may know little about China or tea, but they enjoyed the beverage for its foreignness and exotic nature, which may add prestige to their taste. They were also quite aware of the curative nature of tea that could expel their physical discomforts and mental dullness. However, James A. Benn informs us that the tea culture of imperial China contained some “glimmering of a modern consumer society” as well. Besides the idea of consumption, it would also be beneficial for comparing the development of tea culture in China with the rise of taste in eighteenth-century England.250

4.1 Introducing and spread of Tea drinking in British society

The introduction of tea to the European world was mostly in textual form in the mid- sixteenth century. Before Europeans started to appreciate the unique flavor of tea, the narratives related to Chinese tea had already brought back by Jesuit missionaries who came to China in the sixteenth century. Taking cultural accommodation as their initial strategy of transmitting the religious message, Jesuits started to cultivate a close relationship with Ming scholarly class since

Matteo Ricci arrived at Zhaoqing, Guangdong, in 1583. Jesuits’ perspectives on tea come from a variety of sources, either from their direct observation, their Chinese literati friends, or their translation of Chinese medical texts. Matteo Ricci lived in China for almost thirty years and spent most of his time with Ming literati. He recorded the nature of tea plants, the way that

Chinese process tea, and local tea-drinking habits. He was well informed about the rituals of tea consuming among the elite class. While Jesuits were discussing Western scientia and Confucian

249 Markman Ellis, Empire of Tea, Introduction. 250 James A. Benn, Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), 2-4.

135 philosophy with Ming literati, they accommodated themselves to local rituals and perceptions of

tea-drinking, learning Chinese understanding of the medical and spiritual efficacy of tea. In the

interactions between Jesuit missionaries and Ming literati, tea had become “an agent of

intercultural transformation.”251

4.1.1 Positioning tea in Chinese medical knowledge

Tea had been widely known and used as a medicinal plant since very ancient times in

China. The benefits of tea were also well documented in Chinese sources, including its positive

values in countering inflammation, constipation, obesity, anxiety, and depression. In a word, it

was the medicine for all diseases in classic medical texts in China. Europeans had accumulated

considerable knowledge in Chinese medicine, including materia medica, acupuncture, and pulse-

reading. From the late sixteenth century to the seventeenth century, information on Chinese

medicinal plants, including ginseng and rhubarb, had reached the European audience and aroused

lively interest among physicians and naturalists (Figure 6). Jesuit scholars, such as Alvarus de

Semedo, recorded local specialties, including medicinal substances, in different parts of China in

their works on the general information of the Empire. During the early stage of the transmission

of information about Chinese tea, the beverage was closely related to medical knowledge and a

widespread daily ritual. Dutch merchants were also among the early informants of tea in China

and Japan. In their narratives, tea was an effective remedy for over-consuming meat. They also located tea-drinking in a literati discourse.252

251 Markman Ellis, Richard Coulton, Matthew Mauger, Empire of Tea: the Asian Leaf that Conquered the World (London: Reaktion Books, 2015), 23-24. 252 John Huyghen van Linschoten: His Discours of Voyages into the Easte & West Indies (1598).

136

Figure 6: Tea bush, Athanasius Kircher, China Illustrata, Amsterdam: 1667.

According to the introduction of Jesuits, tea was considered a panacea and universal

remedy in China since very early times.253 Both Jesuits and Dutch merchants tirelessly listed numerous therapeutic effects of tea in their works. In the seventeenth century, its curative properties were recorded in pharmaceutics, literature works, dietary treatises in the European world. The beneficiaries of tea were generally divided into two categories, mental and physical.

253 Alexander de Rhodes, De l’Vsage du Tay, qui est fort ordinaire en la Chine, in Divers voyages et missions du P. Alexandre de Rhodes en la Chine et autres royaumes de l'Orient (Paris, 1653). English translation of the work entitled Rhodes of Viet Nam: The Travels and Missions of Father Alexandre de Rhodes in China and Other Kingdoms of the Orient (1666).

137 One is to disperse drowsiness and dullness, to dispel hangover, to keep one’s mind clear and, most of all, strengthen one’s intellectual power. The other one is cleansing and invigorating one’s body, recovering from physical weakness, promote digestion, relieve constipation, detoxify, even promote longevity. Those remarkable effects of tea described in early modern medical works illuminate how people acquired, authenticated, disseminated, and represented medical and botanical knowledge in the early modern period. Many different communities of practitioners, including physicians, literary men, missionaries, naturalists, and merchants, were engaged with sources with various origins in an ongoing exchange of knowledge about tea.254

The medical properties of tea had been understood and explained by medical practitioners in China for a long time. Tea was first included in a pharmaceutic work in China in the sixth century when the Taoist scholar Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (452-536) placed tea under the section of vegetable (菜部) in his Collected Commentaries on Shennong’s Classics of Pharmaceutics (神農

本草經集注). Tao Hongjing divided medicine into three levels: upper, middle, and lower.

Medicines that belong to the upper level are considered non-poisonous and can be taken regularly and over a long time without any side effects on the human body. According to Tao, tea belongs to this group. However, Tao Hongjing confused tea with another plant, the bitter vegetable (苦菜), which many other scholars believed that it was tea. It was not until a century later, in the revised edition of Shennong’s Classics of Pharmaceutics compiled in the early seventh century, this misunderstanding about tea with the bitter vegetable was corrected. In the

Revised Edition of Materia Medica of Tang (唐新修本草, 659), tea was moved from section of vegetable to the section of the tree (木部), “Ming 茗 had a bitter taste, as it is cold in medical

254 Markman Ellis, Richard Coulton, Matthew Mauger, Empire of Tea: the Asian Leaf that Conquered the World (London: Reaktion Books, 2015), 14-30.

138 character. It was said to cure skin ulcers, eliminating diuresis, reducing phlegm, relieving fatigue.

Tea was also good for digesting disorders, which relieve the stagnation of the stomach. It is

usually collected in the spring, adding cornel, spring onion, and galingale makes it a better

beverage.”255

Two pharmacopeia works from the early Tang period described tea as a panacea that can deal with various illnesses and discomforts. One is Materia Medica for Diet Therapy (食療本草) by Meng Shen 孟詵 (621-713), and the other one is Supplemental pharmacopeia (本草拾遺,

739) by Chen Cangqi 陳藏器 (681-757), a medical practitioner and writer in early Tang, who was also known as the master of tea therapy. Although the original work of Chen has lost, some texts about his tea therapy were kept by later medical writers. Chen highly praised tea as the

“medicine for all illness” (萬病之藥).256 Tea leaves were said to be suitable stock for congee,

which had the properties of dispelling heat, dissolving phlegm, and promoting bowel

movements. “Tea was very effective in reducing the fat of the human body. People become slim

if they consume tea regularly.”257

In the Ming dynasty, the medicinal effects of tea had been well discussed and understood

in both pharmacological works and various kinds of treatises on tea. The Ming physician and

naturalist Li Shizhen (1518-1593) gave a detailed description of the benefits and harm of tea in

his Compendium of Materia Medica. As he pointed out, the character of tea leaves is yin;

therefore, its medical character is bitter and cold; tea is beneficial to reduce our inner heat, which

is the leading cause for most illnesses. However, we should differentiate different types of heat.

茗，苦茶， 茗味甘苦，微寒，無毒，主漏瘡，利小便，去痰熱渴，令人少睡，令人少睡。春採之。苦茶主下氣，消宿食，作 飲加茱萸，蔥，姜良。 256《諸藥為各病之藥，茶為萬病之藥.. 257 Tang Shenwei唐慎微, 《經史證類備急本草》(1108). 久食令人瘦,去人脂,使不睡｡

139 If someone is young and robust, and his stomach is healthy, his inner organs are very likely to accumulate heat. Drinking tea is suitable for this type of person. Warm tea would make inner heat descend; hot tea would make inner heat rise and disperse due to the warm air. In general, tea can detox the body from wine and greasy food. People who belong to this type would feel refreshed and energetic after drinking tea. These are all effects of tea.258 At the time of Li

Shizhen, people no longer regarded tea as a “drug for all illness.” The curative effect of tea worked differently according to different bodies.

Since the early Ming period, some medical practitioners noticed various types of tea provide different medical properties, due to the differentiation in their original places, the time they were picked, and ways they were produced. Zhang Lu 張璐, a physician who lived in the late seventeenth century, noticed in his materia medica work (本經逢原, 1695) that most of the tea could disperse the heat that accumulated in your body and clear the vapor in your mind. He identified curative properties of various types of tea base on their origins. Those tea leaves that were stored throughout the cold winter, known as Tea of Early Spring 腊茶.They were effective medicine for hematochezia. Songluo, which was produced in Anhui, was best used in promoting one’s digestion. The most precious tea was produced in Zhejiang is Rizhu 日铸, which was known as the most potent medicine in diffusing cumulated heat. Jiancha 建茶 produced in Fujian can be used to treat diseases caused by miasma. Kuding tea from Liuhe, Anhui was especially powerful in relieving dysentery. Pu’er produced in was both excellent for digestion and dysentery.259

4.1.2 Early European encounters with tea

258 Li Shizhen, The Compendium of Materia Medica 本草纲目vol. 32 果•茗 fruit/tea 259 Zhang Lu 張璐, Exploring the origin of the classic on materia medica 本經逢原, 1695.

140 One of the early Western sources on Chinese tea was recorded by Portuguese Dominican

friar Gaspar da Cruz of Évora in his treatise on Chinese commodities in 1569. He mentioned, tea

was herbal drink consumed by the Chinese to preserve health. At that time, the Portuguese were

already granted permission to establish a permanent trading post at Macao. Gaspar da Cruz

arrived at India in 1548, and spent most of his years there and then at Malacca. Around 1556, he

spent a few months on the island of Lampacau at the Pearl River delta. The tea he mentioned was

probably a variety of Bohea tea that he got at Canton. He also mentioned that tea was served hot

whenever visitors came to one’s house.260

Jesuit missionaries compiled fascinating observations during their stay in China in the

sixteenth century. They made significant contributions to the intellectual traditions of Chinese

medicinal botany and medical practices. Their detailed description of the tea plant and tea-

drinking was part of their encounters with Chinese understandings of illness and healing. The

Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who lived in China from 1583 to 1610, talked about Chinese tea in his diary, which was translated into Latin by Nicholas Trigault in 1615. “there is a shrub from the famous leaves of which is brewed that beverage of the Chinese, Japanese and neighboring

peoples, which is called Cia….. They harvest the leaves in the springtime and dry them in the

shade, and then utilize them in their daily beverage.”261 He also noticed that Chinese people

always drink their tea hot no matter it is winter or summer. He believed that it is for this reason

that none of the Chinese are troubled by kidney stones, and their life expectancy is longer than

theirs.262

260 George L. van Driem, The Tale of Tea: A Comprehensive History of Tea from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day (Brill, 2019), 269-271. 261 Matteo Ricci, Nicolas Trigault, On the Christian Mission among the Chinese by the . China in the sixteenth century: the journals of Matteo Ricci, 1583-1610, translated from Latin by Louis J. Gallagher, 1953. 16-17 262 George van Driem, The Tale of Tea, 279-280.

141 French Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660) joined the Cochinchina mission in 1624

and then the Tonkin mission and Macau. In his 1654 account of his experiences in Cochinchina,

Rhodes devoted a chapter to tea, entitled De l’Vsage du Tay, qui eft fort ordinaire en la Chine.

According to Rhodes, sometimes he drank excellent tea in Tonkin, where tea was prepared in

Chinese style. He reported that “One of the greatest effects of Tea is to drive away the gross vapors in your head, which give you discomfort. Tea is not just good for relieving headaches, but also shows an amazing effect on alleviating problems with stomach and digestion. Due to this reason, I found so many people love to enjoy tea after dinner as their daily routine. However, if you want to have a good sleep, you may not take it after dinner. I could stay awake all night without feeling drowsy. And the following day I would be just as fresh as if I had just slept as usual.”263

Jesuits’ introduction seemed to be the first-hand and most convincing witnesses of the

miraculous effects of tea on the human body. Italian Jesuit Martino Martini (1614-1661), who

traveled in China from 1642 to 1651, spend several years in Hangzhou, the most well-known

provider for green tea, Songluo 松蘿 in the country. Martini’s Chinese atlas entitled Novus Atlas

Sinensis, published in 1655, talked about tea in the section of the Chinese city, Hoeichev 杭州.

“The tea leaf is nowhere superior to what is found here.” 264 In this section, Martini, based on his

observation, gave a detailed description of how local people fried and preserved tea leaves, and

how tea was served. As for the medical properties of tea, he pointed out, “such a great potency is

attributed to the leaves that the Chinese know neither gout nor stones. Tea alleviates indigestion

263 Alexander de Rhodes, De l’Vsage du Tay, qui eft fort ordinaire en la Chine. The translation is from George van Driem, The Tale of Tea, 340. 264 Joannis Blaeu, Theatrvm Orbis Terrarvm five Novus Atlas. Pars Sexta. Novus Atlas Sinensis a Martino Martinio S.I. descriptvs, 1655

142 and heartburn. It facilitates digestion and alleviates drunkenness, reinvigorates and restores new

powers to those who drink it, relieves hangovers, acts as a diuretic and expels unwanted vapors,

wards off drowsiness in those who wish to remain alert, and banishes sleep in those who wish to

continue studying.”265

French Jesuit Louis-Daniel Le Comte (1655–1728) arrived in China 1688 with Jean de

Fontaney’s mission aiming to transmit western innovative scientific knowledge to China. In his

Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine (New Memoirs on the Present State of China),

published in London in 1696, Le Comte mentioned tea in the section about Chinese herbal

medicine. According to Le Comte, the leaf of thee was so admired in China for its effects in

curing various diseases. It is certain that thee is of a “corrosive nature, for it attenuates hard

victuals.” However, he believed that its virtues were not so universal as people imagined. He

gave a detailed description of cultivation of tea plantation he witnessed and identified two

varieties of tea leaves: Soumlo’松蘿, a kind of green tea with a fleeting ‘pleasant’ taste and a

scent ‘a little of Violets’, and Thee Voüi’武夷岩茶 generates a ‘delicious’ infusion ‘inclining to black’.266

Jesuits’ descriptions of tea reflected their general interests in botanic variety and

medicine in China. They also noticed the social and cultural context of tea drinking, such as

rituals and customs of serving tea. These early reports arrived at a time when hot beverages such

as tea were still not that familiar to Europeans and led to a widespread curiosity among European

consumers.

265 Novus Atlas Sinensis a Martino Martinio S.I. descriptvs, 1655, 106-107. Translation from George van Driem, The Tale of Tea, 343-344. 266 Louis-Daniel Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations made in a late journey through the Empire of China (London: printed for Benjamin Tooks, at the Middle Temple-Gate in Fleetstreet, 1699) 218-220.

143 4.1.3 Introducing Tea drinking in British society

Some early English records about tea can be traced back to the beginning of the

seventeenth century, even before the English fleet first appeared in the southern coastal area of

China in 1637. Most of the tea on the English market during this time was imported through

Dutch merchants. According to Birdwood’s Report on the Old Records of the India Office, on

June 27, 1615, Mr. Eaton, an agent for the East India Company at Macao, China received a letter

from Mr. R. Wickham, an agent of the Company at Hirado, Japan, asking him “to send a pot of

the best sort of chaw.”267 In the four-volume travel stories collection published by Samuel

Purchas in 1625, he mentioned, “Chia an herb used in warme water in all entertaynments in

Japon and China.”268 As he noticed, tea was not only a medicinal decoction, but also served as recreational beverage in entertaining occasions in the East.

One of the earliest records of tea in the market in England can be found in the Mercurius

Politucus, September 1658. Thomas Garway’s Coffee House in London started to sell the beverage publicly in the 1650s. This advertisement introduced tea to its reader in the following words, “The excellent and by all phyiscians approved China drink called by the Chineans Teha, or Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head, a cophee-house by the Royal Exchange, London.” Since

then, it became a commercial strategy for coffeehouse owners to highlight the Oriental origin

and medical properties of the beverage to attract consumers.

Many English people regarded tea as a commodity of curiosity and luxury in the

seventeenth century, and its consumption was mainly appealing to the wealthy and upper class.

Tea-drinking was established and expanded as a fashion and increasingly gained its social

267 Birdwood, George C. M., Report on the Old Records of the India Office: With Supplementary Note and Appendices. 2d reprint. (London: W.H. Allen & co., limited, and at Calcutta, 1891), 26, 52. 268 Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage: or Relations of the World and the Religions in All Ages and Places discovered, from the Creation unto this Present (1625), Cambridge University Press, 2014, 267.

144 function among the English aristocracy after the marriage of King Charles II and Queen

Catherine of Braganza in 1662. At this time, tea could be purchased from the Coffee House at

the Exchange Alley at a price up to 60 shillings a pound. In 1664, the Directors of the Dutch East

India Company brought 2 pounds of tea as a present to Queen Catherine, which showed the

awareness of the esteem and influence of tea among royal circles.

In 1667, the imperial house issued their first order to their agent at Batam and asked him

to send one hundred pounds of the best tea to London. After that, tea was imported year by year,

from Bantam, Surat, Ganjam, and Madras. In 1689 appeared the first record of importation of tea

from China, specifically Amoy.269 At this time, Samuel Pepys had introduced the beverage into his household, “Home, and there find my wife making of tea; a drink which Mr. Pelling, the apothecary, tells her is good for her cold and defluxions.”270 It was not till about eighteen years after that a large shipment as 4,713 pounds of this plant was imported into England by the East

India Company.

The market for tea was transformed with the EIC dominating tea imports to England in the mid-eighteenth century. Tea imports had remained sporadic and uncertain before the1720s when the Company first gained direct access to the Canton tea market. Meanwhile, the Company had to face the competitions from the growing presence of commercial interlopers and smugglers from both England and other European nations. In order to take as much tea from competitors and secure the tea market at home and whole Europe, the EIC developed a strategy to monopolize the Chinese market that between 1720 to 1740 the Company allowed its supercargoes to purchase as much tea as possible. After that, the amount of tea imports

269 Morse, Hosea Ballou, and Patrick Tuck. The chronicles of the East India Company trading to China: 1635-1834; Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 9. 270 Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol 8, 302.

145 experienced a swift increase: from an average of 900,000 pounds annually in the 1720s to 3.7

million pounds in the 1750s.271

Despite the Company’s attempt to monopolize the Chinese market during this period,

they were still not able to satisfy the expansive tea consumption at home. The first half of the

eighteenth century witnessed the quick shift of tea from a luxury beverage enjoyed only among

the upper class in the society to an ordinary daily commodity available to the vast majority. The

reasons for the expansion of tea drinking in English society were complex and multifarious.

However, the pharmaceutical effect of tea was one of the primary facilitators of the spread of tea

consumption.

In the early eighteenth century, there were different varieties of tea available for English consumers. A Dissertation upon Tea (1730) by Scottish physician Thomas Short recorded names, flavors and characters of various types of tea imported from China. According to Short, consumers already had multiple options available in the market, including bohea or boui or tcha bou, (武夷岩茶, 烏龍), congou (工夫茶), souchong (小種), songluo (松蘿綠茶), hyson (熙春綠

茶), byng (貢茶). Some of these European names were originated from Mandarin Chinese, such

as songluo and hyson, and others were taken from local dialect in Fujian, such as bohea,

souchong, and congou.272 According to Short, there are three types of oolong Bohea, Pekoe

(excellent tea made from leaf-buds), Congo (from the Chinese gongfu meaning skill); and

Common Bohea. Alongside these are four main greens: Hysson, the most delicate and expensive

grade; Imperial (or Bing); Common green (or singlo); and Ordinary green. Short also lists two

other green teas that he had never tried: “Dutch Bloom,” and the “rough, coarse, unpleasant

271 Jane T. Merritt, The Trouble with Tea: The Politics of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century Global Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017) 22-28. 272 Yong Liu, The Dutch East India Company's Tea Trade with China, 1757-1781 (Brill, 2006), 164, n. 15.

146 Green Tea” of the northern Tartar people.”273 The information on tea categorization was

transmitted through merchants who had contact directly with local Hong merchants.

During the seventeenth century, the British encountered tea as a botanical specimen,

alimentary commodity, and social requirement through missionaries, travelers, merchants, and

physicians. Particularly, tea as a pharmaceutical remedy became an established discourse that led

to widespread discussions and discrepancies concerning its dietary, medical, social influences.

These discussions also signaled the ambiguous European attitude on the reception of tea, whether

to emphasized its exotic origins and healthful benefits or to foreground it as a fashionable

commodity that appeals to wealthy, upper-class consumers.

4.2 Debating pharmaceutical functions of Tea in European world

When tea was first introduced to the European world, its incredible medical properties

were considered as the gateway to the local market. European physicians were fascinated by the

versatile medical effects of tea. They claimed that “Tea is the delicious nectar that has all the

good effects of wine without the ill, a liquor that warms without inflammation, and exhilarates

without intoxicating, and if drank according to the directions which will be given, is preferables to all mineral waters, being an unspeakable benefit to most chronical diseases.”274 Dutch

physician Jacob de Bondt (1592-1631) used to sail with the VOC ship to Batavia in 1627 and he

did a lot of research on tropical medicine during his stay there. In his book entitled “About the

herb, whose bush the Chinese call The, and from which an infusion is brewed by this same

name” (1658), he mentioned the universal usage of tea in curing diseases in China, “It may be of

some use in our enquiries to consider its effects where it has been long used, and universally. Of

273 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea (1730) 274 Nahum Tate, Panacea. A poem upon tea: with A discourse on its sovereign virtues, 1706. 37-38.

147 their (Chinese) diseases we know but little. We know that they never bleed on any account. The

late Dr. Arnot, of Canton, a gentleman who did his profession and his country honor, and was in

the highest estimation with the Chinese. I am informed was the first person, who could ever

prevail upon any of the Chinese to be blooded, be their maladies what they might.”275 Another

Dutch physician Nikolas Dirx had an influential introduction on the medical benefits of the

Oriental beverage in 1641. According to Dr. Dirx, a wide range of ailments suffered by

Europeans, such as colds, headaches, asthma, indigestion, and constipation can be cured through

regular tea-drinking. He claimed that people who take tea-drinking as a habit would be “exempt

from all maladies and reach an extreme old age.”

Tea was highly praised for its magnificent effect in curing chronic diseases, such as

indigestion and constipation, and its non-toxic nature. Dutch medical writer Steven Blankaart

(1650-1704) even denied all the possible injury over the stomach “even as far as two hundred

cups a day.” According to another Dutch physician Jacob de Bondt, “They brew this herb with

boiling water and then sip the hot infusion to benefit their health. In China, they praise this herb

so highly and regard tea as a sacred plant good against all manner of ailments, affording comfort

against diseases. I admit that it is an effective medicine for eliminating phlegm and catarrh from

the chest. It affords dryness and heat. It is also good against consumption, asthma, and swelling,

and is a most effective remedy to combat kidney stones since it is a strong diuretic.”276 In 1686, a treatise entitled “The Qualities and Operations of the Herb Called Tea or Chee” appeared and circulated in the Royal society in 1686. In this treaty, the author listed twenty benefits from tea-

drinking and claimed that this was translated directly from a Chinese source.

275 Jacob de Bondt, About the herb, whose bush the Chinese call The, and from which an infusion is brewed by this same name (1658). 276 George van Driem, The Tale of Tea, 321-323.

148 4.2.1 Tea as medicine for all sickness

As an increasingly familiar imported, sober, and healthful beverage, tea first established its credentials among London’s apothecaries, physicians, and their clients. In the 1650s, the great thinker and educator Samuel Hartlib (1600-1662) learned about tea from Dutch physician

Nicholaes Tulp’s medical treatise, Observationes medicae. Hartlib wrote “Note on Tea”, “The or

Te the herbe which is used as a Universal medicine in China and Japan curing fumes indigestions stone and gout. It is bought from thence to Amsterdam but very dear one lb. for 6 lb. sterling. My

Lord Newport uses it with great success. It tastes a little bitterish.”277 In order to attract more consumers to purchase this beverage, the medical effects of tea became a competitive advantage in the advertisement of tea traders. Samuel Price of Newgate Street in London, probably an apothecary, printed an advertisement for his own business, entitled The Virtues of Coffee,

Chocolate, and Thee or Tea in 1690. He stressed specifically on the pharmacological virtues of these beverages, which suggested his professional background in medicine. The section “Of

Thee, or Tea,” though relatively shorter than the introductions of coffee and chocolate, praised tea for its effects in releasing all common diseases and preserving in perfect health till very old age.

When Mr. Garway’s broadsheet advertisement for tea first appeared outside his coffee house at Exchange Alley, near the Royal Exchange, London, in 1660, the general public still had minimal knowledge about the origin of the beverage from the Orient. Garway particularly emphasized the curative character of tea in the advertisement, “The said leaf is of such known virtues, that those very nations so famous for antiquity, knowledge and wisdom, do frequently sell it among themselves for twice its weight in silver, and the high estimation of the drink.”

277 Samuel Hartlib, Ephemerides, No. 254, 4 August 1654.

149 Following that, he pointed out that the medical virtues of tea had been confirmed by European

physicians, “The Drink is declared to be most wholesome, preserving in perfect health until extreme old age. Virtues and Excellences of this leaf and drink is evident and manifested by the high esteem and use of it among the physicians and knowing men both in France, Holland and other parts of Christendom.” In the advertisement, tea leaf was described as possessing remarkable qualities on preventing and curing most of the physical disorders, such as purifying blood, opening obstructions of the spleen, and preventing dropsies. It also “prevents sleepiness in

general, eases the brain, and strengthens the memory, so that, without trouble, whole nights may

be spent in study without hurt to the body.” 278

In 1699, John Ovington in his An essay upon the nature and qualities of tea (1699) explicitly describing tea plant, including its origin, history, and its curative effects, aiming to popularize the beverage among English people, to satisfy the curiosity of people who were already interested in tea, and also to assist the tea trade of the East India Company (Figure 6).

Ovington gained his knowledge of tea during his service as the Chaplain to the EIC factory in

Surat from 1689 to 1692. He dedicated this work to Henrietta van Ouwerkerk, Countess of

Grantham, who was known for her excellent taste and pursuit of oriental fashions, “Tis from your innate goodness only, and that condescending temper which is so remarkable in you, that this foreign leaf dares presume to court your favor, and hope for a welcome entertainment.”

Ovington further pointed out, “to be both Pleasant and Medicinal, at once to delight the Palate and correct the Disease, and to heal the Distemper without giving any Disturbance to the

Stomach.” Ovington claimed for the medical benefits of tea went beyond the treatment of gout

278 Thomas Garway, “An Exact Description of the Growth, Quality, and Virtues of the Leaf Tea.” London: Thomas Garway in Exchange-Alley near the Royal Exchange, in London, Tobacconift, and Seller and Retailer of Tea and Coffee. 1660.

150 and kidney stones. He praised tea for its mentally stimulating power. He pointed out that tea-

drinking had become a universal custom in England, and people would soon discover that “men

might be cheerful with Sobriety, and witty without the Danger of losing their Senses.” They

could even “double the Days of their natural Life, by converting it all into Enjoyment, exempt

from several painful and acute Diseases, occasion'd very often by a pernicious Excess of

inflaming Liquors, which render it rather a Burthen, than a Blessing to us.”279

Figure 8: Front piece of An essay upon the nature and qualities of tea by John Ovington (1653- 1731), London: 1705.

279 John Ovington, An essay upon the nature and qualities of tea: wherein are shown, I. the soil and the climate where it grows, II. the various kinds of it, III. the rules for chusing what is best, IV. the means of preserving it, V. the several vertues of which it is fam'd. London: Printed for John Chantry, 1705.

151 Some European physicians even noticed that the medical effects of tea were different

according to different kinds of tea. In general, black tea is favored by most physicians. Sir John

Sinclair recommended black tea in preference to green ones. “for they (green tea) disagree with

numbers of people, and even a single cup will occasion sickness and other unpleasant symptoms.

In a view to wholesome diet, those sorts of tea, the infusions of which are of a dark, and not of a

green color, and which go under the general name of Bohea, are certainly to be preferred.”

Furthermore, he suggested several herbal teas from English gardens, including berries,

, coriander, rosemary, which are made after the same manner as tea. These herbal teas had

the similar curative effects as green tea with fewer side effects for the weaker people, “It is far

from being improbable, that, among the variety of herbs which our gardens produce, a substitute

to green tea might be found.”280

These discussions on the medical virtues of tea followed the health guides and regimen

texts on the doctrine of “naturals” that derived from Galenic medicine. Meanwhile, the authors

also made use of mechanical and chemical theories of physiology that emerged during the early

seventeenth century. Thomas Short noticed, “The infusions of all sorts of tea are restringent, and their greater or lesser degree of restringency, is in proportion to the weakness or strength of the liquor drunk, and the elasticity or laxness of the drinker’s fibres. But tho’ all these infusions act as astringent, yet some astringe more powerful than others; all kinds of Bohea astringe is a lesser degree than those of Green, and common Green tea more than the Hysson.”281 He not only differentiated the medical use of Bohea and Green tea but also pointed out the medical properties

280 Sir John Sinclair, The Code of Health and Longivity: Or, A Concise View of the Principles Calculated for the Preservation of Health, vol. 1, 295-296. 281 Thomas Short (ca 1690-1772). A Dissertation upon Tea: Explaining its Nature and Properties by Many New experiments ... to Which is Added the Natural History of Tea and a Detection of the Several Frauds Used in Preparing it. London: by W. Bowyer for Fletcher Gyles, 1730, 40.

152 of tea functioned differently according to different bodies. Green tea is useful in diseases arising

from the “thickness of the blood, or its abundance of earthy Particles which make it grumous. If

diseases proceed from an inflammatory thickness of the blood, discoverable by a sharp, constant

fever, a chronick and violent inflammatory pain of the head, then small Green tea drunk

plentifully, after sufficient evacuation by bleeding, thins the blood, and lessens its resistance

against vessels, causes it to move easily. It brings solids and fluids nearer to an equilibrium.”282

Green tea drink once or twice a day, after bleeding and vomiting, will be very serviceable in removing vertigo, because of its diluting, attenuating, cleansing, stimulating, and invigorating nature.

Whereas Bohea tea is suitable for the patient “Whose perspiration is too great, the force

of the fibres and vessels to strong, and the circulation rapid, the blood ground down, and the

body always lean and thin, because it adds fresh Sulphur, or fine oil to the juices, which

lubricates, softens and relaxes the fibres and vessels…the blood’s circuit therefore is not so

rapid, and hence the body is better nourished.” Thomas short pointed out, “these or whatever else

increase the Quantity, Acrimony or Velocity of the Blood, and withal determine the same to the

Lungs, with a Force superior to their Resistance.”283

The vibrant medical debates accompanied the introduction and spreading of tea aroused

increasing curiosities among potential consumers at the end of the seventeenth century. As we

will see, the ongoing medical controversies on tea led to new inquiries and debates into its

effects not only on the human body but also in society. Among all the debates built around the

282 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea: Explaining its Nature and Properties by Many New experiments ... to Which is Added the Natural History of Tea and a Detection of the Several Frauds Used in Preparing it. London: by W. Bowyer for Fletcher Gyles, 1730, 44-45. 283 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea: Explaining its Nature and Properties by Many New experiments ... to Which is Added the Natural History of Tea and a Detection of the Several Frauds Used in Preparing it. London: by W. Bowyer for Fletcher Gyles, 1730, 49-50.

153 medical effects of tea, there was a group of physicians claimed that tea was not a remedy for all sickness, and most of all, it was not suitable for the European body.

4.2.2 “This damn’d Exotick, or outlandish Liquor” – Debating the foreign origin of tea

After the publication of John Ovington’s An Essay upon the Nature and Qualities of Tea in 1699, it arose not only public debates and discussions on the medical properties of tea but also different dissenting voices. While John Ovington utilized the foreign origin of tea leaves to attract potential consumers, for many others, the exoticness of tea became a focal point for their disapproval of tea drinking. The early British reception and concerns on exotic goods were greatly related to its foreign origin. Some contemporary spectators at this time, such as Thomas

Rugg, a barber at Covent Garden, noticed that there were several drinks with exotic origins had established a foothold in British market, “at this time a Turkish drink to be sold, almost in every street, called coffee, and another kind of drink called tea, and also a drink called chocolate, which was a very harty drink.”284 Its unfamiliar taste and way of preparation brought curiosity and doubt in the same time.

On the one hand, the British were excited about all the exotic drinks that satisfied their curious appetite; on the other hand, they were also concerned the stimulant nature of these exotic ingredients would conflict with their body and corrupt the society in general. John Waldron wrote A Satire against Tea, in which he attacks claims made by Ovington on the qualities of tea.

Waldron claimed that the current demand for tea on the market was not due to the healing qualities of the beverage, but merely its exotic origin and high expense. “Our Ladies have a foreign Taste; they glory in excessive Waste. And take great pride, and vast Delight, to send their

Money out of Sight.” He claimed that the taste and properties of tea was not that unique as most

284 W. L. Sachse, The Diurnal of Thomas Rugg, 1659-1661, Camden 3rd series, 91 (Camden Society, 1961), 10.

154 people believed and he compared tea to chopped hay, “For after all your Praise of Tea, Tea is

inferior to Chopt-hay; Chopt-hay unlac’d, refines the Blood, but Tea, unlac’d will do no good;

Chopt-hay unlac’d, will please the Palate, but Tea, unlac’d, will rather pall it; Chopt-hay unlac’d,

has sweeter Smell, This must be own’d by ev’ry Belle, That, to get Tea, wou’d go to Hell.”285

Then he further attacked Ovington’s claims on the health benefits of tea and demonizing the drink as effeminizing British men in general.

While its nature of exoticism and the promise of extraordinary bodily improvement were drawing an increasing number of consumers, the debates over the possible pernicious effects of tea to health never deceased. Simon Pauli (1603-1680), a physician and botanist from

Copenhagen, pointed out that tea was not a “remedy for all sickness” as its detractors attempted to propagate. 286 He publicly declared against tea-drinking for this Oriental decoction was unsuitable for the European body. “As to the virtues they attribute to it, it may be admitted that it does possess them in the Orient, but it loses them in our climates, where it becomes, on the contrary, very dangerous to use. It hastens the death of those what drink it, especially if they have passed the age of forty.”287 Dutch physician Cornelis Bontekoe (1645-1685), a medical

student from Leiden, mostly well known as a great propagandist for tea-drinking. He wrote

several treatises on tea, which dedicated to correct some misunderstandings on the medical use

of tea, especially the extravagant of its effects on the human body. He attempted to dismantle the

myth of tea as a universal remedy. According to Cornelis Bontekoe, “I do not claim to attribute

anything to tea, or try to elevate tea to the status of a panacea or universal remedy against all ills,

285 John Waldron, A satyr against tea: Or, Ovington's essay upon the nature and qualities of tea, &c. Dissected, and burlesq'd. 1733. 286 Simon Pauli, “A treatise on tobacco, tea, coffee and chocolate.” 1746. 287 Simon Pauli, Commentaries on the abuse of tea, first published in Germany in 1635.

155 for that too would be nothing more than a common type of folly that people fall for.”288

In the early eighteenth-century, more periodical essays publicly denounced the medical

effects of tea and the social influences of the tea-table. Nathaniel Mist, a journalist, critic tea as

an exotic import deleterious to health and corrupting British body. He claimed “Surely both Men

and Women, must be intoxicated with Folly and Madness, to be bigoted to a Liquor, which

insensibly enervates their Vigor, fills’em with dropsical Humours, and at last will throw’em into

dangerous Paroxysines, and Shakings of the palsy.”289 He published four periodical essays on a

London weekly newspaper in the 1720s. Mist pointed out, tea was not only an expensive “baleful

drug,” but also corrupt our health and happiness. “Nor does the body suffer alone, the soul also is

hindred in the free performance of its function, and has its share of the disorder.” Drinking tea

without constraint would lead to peevishness, melancholy, “unaccountable fancies and

groundless fears” for individuals. Ultimately, the drug would cause the corruption of the nation,

“the greatest Honours and Estates in England may not only possess by those of effeminate

unhealthy constitutions, but by fools and madmen.”290

As eighteenth-century physicians discovered, the pernicious effects of tea were not only

due to its exotic origin. Many other physicians attributed the harms of tea to the ways people

prepared the beverage. For instance, tea should be drinking without either milk or sugar, and

especially after meal or wine. “The Chinese often drink the beverage very hot. Drinking tea too

hot or with large addition of milk or sugar was proved pernicious to stomach.” Dr. John

288 Cornelis Bontekoe, Tractaat van het excellenste kruyd Thee (Treatise on Tea, the Most Excellent Herb), 1678. 289 Discourse II. “Of the Expensive Use of Drinking Tea”, in Whipping-Tom: or, a Rod for a Proud Lady, bundled up in Four Feeling Discourse, Both Serious and Merry. In Order to Touch The Fair Sex to the Quick (London: printed for Sam. Briscoe, at the Roll-Savage on Ludgate-Hill), Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England, vol 1, 70. 290 Nathaniel Mist, Letters for and against Tea-drinking, in a collection of miscellany letters: selected out of Mist’s Weekly Journal, 5 volumes (London, printed by Nathaniel Mist, 1722-1727), vol. 1, letter 70, pp. 207-210, letter 75, pp. 225-227.

156 Fothergill (1712-1780) claimed that “it is the quantity, and the degree of heat with which it is drank by the more numerous class of tea-drinkers, which causes the bad effect of tea to our delicate stomachs.” The debate over the ways to prepare and drink tea reflected the influence of exotic ingredients on the English dietary habits in general.

Sir John Sinclair also pointed out that the “pernicious nature of tea” might come from the contamination of long-term transportation. Since tea was “closely packed in wooden chest and lined with a composition of lead and tin, and exposed to be affected by the corrosion of the metals.” Sir John Sinclair offered some practical advice on how to decrease the intake of harmful ingredients while we could still enjoy the beverage. The first thing is to “avoid the high-priced and high-flavored tea, which generally own their flavor to pernicious ingredients.” Then, we should make sure that only “a moderate quantity of tea was infused.” It is also of great importance to use the best quality of the water in a boiling state when the infusion is made. The last thing is that we should always take tea with “solid nourishment” in order to decrease the injuries to our stomach.291 Most of all, he believed that it was a good idea to increase the taxes

on tea to avoid the overconsumption of the product.

Many other voices urged English physicians to conduct more research on the plant.

Thomas Short, in his tea treatise in 1730, questioned that “Whether Tea throw some persons into

vapors, affect their complexions, spirits, nerves, so as to apprehend themselves either dying, or

dangerously ill?”292 He claimed that the misunderstandings about tea were due to insufficient knowledge about the plant and appealed to conduct more inquiries on the plant. “I hope to prove that the various considerations which have been offered, are not sufficient in respect to the plant itself, much less to the people, the different nations and constitutions that have accustomed

291 Sir John Sinclair, Code of Health and Longevity, 78-80. 292 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea, Explaining its Nature and Properties by many New Experiments, 1730.

157 themselves to it; and since the infusion hereof is become a liquor so universal, it is reasonable the

knowledge of its nature and virtues should be so too. It has so singularly prevailed in England,

for these forty or fifty years passed, among all persons, and has been so taking with the fair sex,

that it was a shame our examination and understanding should not bear some proportion to the

use and preference we have made of it.”293

Even though the foreign origin of tea became the target of condemnations, the accusation

that tea would corrupt the European body and mind did not prevent the dissemination of tea

drinking in the European world. The controversies of tea in medical and social discourses in

Europe facilitated the transition of tea from an exotic medicinal luxury with universal effects to a

recreational beverage that was addictive and habitual use might lead to healthy and social problems.294 The medical and social evaluations of tea in the European world provided

opportunities for intellectual debate, which eventually led to a broad range of consumption of the

beverage. Physicians encountered challenges from consumers, who would judge the value of tea

based on their consuming experiences. Ultimately, medical debates of tea, from a commodity

limited for medical use to a drug for all illness, assisted the transformation of tea from a luxury

medicinal ingredients to a commodity for daily consumption.

4.2.3 “Those shameless tea drinkers”: concerns on overdose of tea

A long-term debate over the medical and social influence of tea in the European world was the psychoactive substance it has. The mild stimulating effects of tea, coffee, and cacao led

to a significant shift in social and cultural practices in the early modern period.295 These

beverages kept people awake for long hours and they were able to deep concentrate on their

293 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea, Explaining its Nature and Properties by many New Experiments, 1730 294 Ken Albala, “Stimulants and Intoxicants in Europe, 1500-1700,” 295 Ross W. Jamieson, “The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine Dependencies in the Early Modern World,” Journal of Social History, vol. 35, 2001, pp. 269-294.

158 works. Therefore, many writers claimed it as a source for literary creativity and inspiration, and a

catalyst for social life and in-depth intellectual conversations.

Meanwhile, British physicians often had a quite contradicted attitude towards tea. They

began to concern about side-effects that came with these new ingredients. They informed people

that many side-effects of tea were due to long-term intemperate consumption. Physicians claimed that drinking too much tea was similar to a slow poison which would lead to numberless disorders in the human body. Writers who consider tea as Muse’s friend gradually realized that they had to pay the price for all the creative thoughts and inspirations that came from the beverage. Some others provided possible solutions for tea-drinkers to avoid the side effects from the beverage while they could still enjoy it.

In the British context, tea in literati discourse usually related to addiction. One of the most well-known tea drinkers and a complainant was John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder and important leader of Methodism, who advocated a strict diet and regular exercise in his whole life in order to keep good health. Wesley seems to have a very complicated feeling of tea. His diaries confirmed him a regular consumer of tea during his stay at Oxford. The beverage was a significant part of his daily social life and dietary habit.296 However, his attitude toward tea

seemed a little contradictory. On the one hand, he was a regular consumer of the beverage, which

contributed significantly to his social and private life. On the other hand, he was known as a

harsh critique of tea-drinking in his letters and dietetic works. He quitted tea-drinking in 1746 and did not pick up the habit, follow the direction of Dr. Fothergill until twelve years later.297

In the preface of his work on daily treatment in 1747, Wesley pointed out that “tea and

296 Samuel J. Rogal, “John Wesley takes Tea,” Methodist History, 1994, 297 Samuel J. Rogal, “John Wesley Takes Tea,” Methodist History, 32:4, 1994.

159 coffee are extremely hurtful to persons who have weak nerves,” and tea would bring people to

the “chamber of death.”298 John Wesley, in his “A Letter to a friend, concerning tea,” pointed

out, tea gives rise to many disorders, particularly those of the nervous kind. It is no other than a

slow poison.299 He said that “I could not imagine, what should occasion that shaking of my hand; till I observed it was always worst after breakfast, and that if I intermitted drinking tea for two or three days, it did not shake at all. Upon inquiry, I found tea had the same effect upon others also of my acquaintance; and therefore, saw that this was one of its natural effects (as several physicians have often remarked), especially, when it is largely and frequently drinking; and most of all for persons of weak nerves, it is no other than slow poison.” He claimed that those symptoms disappeared after he stopped consuming the beverage, “When I first left off tea, I was half asleep all day long. My head ached from morning to night. I could not remember a question asked, even till I could return an answer. But a week’s time all these inconveniences were gone,

and have never returned since.”300

Even though it was generally agreed that drinking tea would benefit one’s physical

health, keep one mind clear and sober, many writers in imperial China also realized that drinking

tea could be addictive, and people should be temperate with it. In the eighth century, people had

realized that tea was not “medicine for all illness,” over drinking the beverage could cause

discomfort, both physically and mentally. Even though the Revised Edition of Materia Medica of

Tang (唐新修本草) confirmed many benefits of tea, it was moved from upper-level medicine to

a middle-level, which means tea was no longer considered safe as a medicinal plant.301 Most of

无毒有毒斟酌其宜。Wesley, Primitive Physick: or an easy and natural method of curing most diseases, 1761. 299 John Wesley, “A letter to a friend, concerning tea,” 1749, 14. 300 John Wesley, “A Letter to a Friend, concerning tea.” 1749. 4-9. 301 无毒有毒斟酌其宜。

160 the concerns were focused on the overdose of tea decoction. Qi Muying 綦母煚, a scholar from the eighth century, criticized the obsession of tea at his time. “The benefits of tea, such as helping digestion, dissolving phlegm are only temporary effects. It will ultimately consume our qi and energy if people consume the drink over a long time.” In “Debate between Mr. Tea and

Mr. Alcohol” (茶酒論), a short text from the same time, personified alcohol and tea competed to show why one is the better beverage than the other. Mr. Alcohol warned the consequences of overdosing of tea, “Drinking too much tea one will be sick in the stomach. If someone drink over ten cups a day, his intestines will be like a drum.”

According to the Ming pharmacologist Li Shizhen, for someone’s constitute is already weak and cold, tea would do the opposite. Drinking tea as a daily habit, cold air would accumulate in his stomach and spleen. Generally, his energy and blood would be deficient by the cold air. It would induce vomiting, stomach ache, diarrhea. Many people who were addicted to tea would drink it day and night. Feeling their pulses, floating and tight, I can tell their inner organs have greatly hurt by cold. Looking at their physical appearance, wan and sallow. That is the harm of tea. However, drinking tea as a daily habit generally grows on them. It is really hard to notice by themselves.302 In his Understanding Tea (茶疏, 1597), Xu Cishu 許次紓 pointed out that people should be restraint when they drink tea. “We should drink tea regularly but not excessively. Drinking tea is good for cleansing one’s thought, and relieving depression, however, the medical character of tea is cold, overdrinking would hurt our inner organs, especially spleen and kidney. These two organs rely on each other and regulate our metabolic rate. It is good to

302 Li Shizhen, The Compendium of Materia Medica (本草綱目)vol. 32 卷.

161 keep them warm and dry.”303

4.2.4 Ritualizing the consumption of tea in British society

Despite the existence of very contradictory views over tea, tea drinkers could hardly

refuse to drink the beverage. To avoid the potential harms of tea, some physicians, who hold a

more positive affirmation on the medical effects of tea, prescribed specific ways to drink the

beverage. Eventually, these suggestions came to legitimate and to ritualize the consumption of

tea in the British context.

In the eighteenth century, the most significant impact of tea drinking on the British diet

was probably on breakfast. Before the introduction of tea, a typical English breakfast for most

people was based on a grain porridge, beer, or wine.304 English physician John Coakley Lettsom

(1744–1815) in his Natural History of the Tea-tree alerted his readers in 1772 to the change in

breakfast habits which had occurred recently: “before the use of tea, breakfasts were more

substantial; milk in various shapes, ale and beer, with roast cold meat, and other additions.” Now

people would have a sugared hot drink with bread. Some physicians ordered the tea to be infused

in hot water and consumed in the morning for breakfast and assured that this way would produce

less disagreeable nervous complaints as usual. John Ovington asserted that “tea possesses a

fragrant volatile principle, which in general tends to relax and enfeeble the system of delicate

persons, particularly when it is drank hot.”305

According to Lettsom, drinking tea hot was exactly how Chinese consume it, and this

specific way enhanced the medicinal properties of tea. Lettsom reminded his colleagues, “The

303 Xu Cishu 許次紓, Understanding Tea (茶疏 , 1597), Zhu Zizhen 朱自振Zhen Peikai 鄭培凱 (ed.) A Collection of Tea Treatises in China 中國歷代茶書匯編, 2 vols., (Hong Kong: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆, 2007), vol. 1, 275. 304 Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashion, 1500-1760 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2007), 213-215. 305 John Ovington, An Essay upon the Nature and Quality of Tea, 1705. 55.

162 Chinese likewise prepare an extract from tea, which they exhibit as a medicine dissolved in a

large quantity of water, and ascribe to it many powerful effects in fevers, and other disorders,

when they wish to procure a plentiful sweat.”306 He pointed out that drinking large quantities of any warm water would enhance the speed of circulation in the human body, “and pass off as

speedily by urine or perspiration, or the increase of some of the secretions.” Its effects on the

solid parts of the constitution would be relaxing, thereby enfeebling. If this warm aqueous fluid

were taken in considerable quantities, its effects would be proportionable, and still greater, if it

were substituted instead of nutriment. That all infusions of herbs, may be considered in this light.

However, Lettsom admitted that the infusion of tea has some particularities. “It is not only

possessed of a sedative quality, but also of a considerable astringency; by which the relaxing

power ascribed to a mere ascribed to a mere aqueous fluid, is in some measure corrected.”

Lettsom also remarked that tea had its impact on the afternoon meal as well.307 Before the

introduction of the exotic beverage, English people usually served afternoon guests with “jellies,

tarts, sweetmeats, wine, cider, strong ale,” which keep up the natural inflammatory diathesis as

the result of vigor and rich blood. Lettsom claimed that this change on the afternoon diet was

reasonable because their generation had a more sedentary lifestyle compared to their

ancestors.308

The combination of tea and sugar was a critical component of diet and ritual in the

eighteenth century. Sir John Sinclair believed that green tea disagreed with most people. If

people had to drink green tea, he suggested that it should be mixed with much cream and sugar.

306 John Coakley Lettsom, Natural History of the Tea-tree, 28. 307 Jordan Goodman, “Exitantia: or, How Enlightenment Europe Took to Soft Drugs,” in Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt ed., Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (Rougledge, 1995), 126- 147. 136-137. 308 J. C. Lettsom, The Natural History of the Tea-Tree, London, 1772, 52-53.

163 The initial fashion of adding sugar to tea can be traced to the 1650s. Since the sixteenth century,

Europeans treated sugar as a medicine that could keep the balance of humors in the human body by generating the choler. However, physicians increasingly concerned about the excessive use of sugar for health reasons. Some people believed that the medical properties of tea could balance the harmful properties of sugar. English writer Thomas Tryon (1634-1703), who produced many popular health treatises, claimed that by adding sugar to tea, people could avoid the physically harmful effects of sugar without giving up the taste of sweetness. By the early eighteenth century, the practice of drinking tea with sugar became a widely accepted ritual throughout the middle and upper classes of Britain.

Other physicians suggested adding other spices into tea would enhance its positive effects. Among all of the spices, ginger had been highly recommended, especially for gouty cases; Galingale was considered an effective treatment for gout; it is contended that ginger tea would be preferable to Chinese tea at present taken. This receipt was recommended by Dr.

William Wright, who received a letter from Joseph Banks in 1784, giving the following account of the effect of ginger tea upon him. 309 Banks said that he would take two tea-spoon ginger power in his tea for breakfast for more than a year, which works well for his gout. Another author claimed that his disordered stomach entirely recovered by the use of lemon or orange peel infused in the tea.

Physicians noticed that excessive consumption of tea was the main reason for many physical disorders at this time. William Buchan, in his Domestic Medicine, advised tea to drink with restraint. “Much has been said on the ill effects of tea in diet. They are, no doubt, numerous; but they proceed rather from the imprudent use of it than from any bad qualities in the tea itself.

309 Sir John Sinclair, The Code of Health and Longivity: Or, A Concise View of the Principles Calculated for the Preservation of Health, vol. 1, 83.

164 The morning is surely the most improper time of the day for drinking it. If people drink four or

five cups of tea without eating almost any bread, it must hurt them. Good tea, taken in moderate

quantity, not too strong, nor too hot, nor drank upon an empty stomach, will seldom do harm.”310

The attempts to legitimate consumption of tea in eighteenth-century Britain had a profound effect on the diet in general and the nature of meals in Britain. By its incorporation within British alimentary structures, their consumption became acceptable to broader consumers.

Meanwhile, by ritualizing the consumption of this beverage within a domestic context, such as at breakfast or afternoon occasions, and highlight the role of sobriety in domestic life, or tea’s advantage over wine as a sober substitute as well as a hangover cure, further enhanced tea drinking as a daily habit.

4.3 Constructing Intellectual discourse of tea

In both Chinese and British contexts, drinking tea had profound social and cultural impacts, including the taste and material culture. Tea treatises and essays produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in both China and Britain sought to establish sites of social differences through consuming things.311 Tea connoisseurship in China became flourishing from

the ninth to the eleventh century. By the sixteenth century, literati class involved in even more

refined tea culture. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there was a period of intense

publication of tea literature. These works included every aspect of tea-drinking, from cultivation,

selecting, tasting of various kinds of tea, to the appreciation of porcelain tea wares, tea-drinking

companions, which exposed part of consumption habits of Ming literati. From the late

seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century, the consumption of exotic food and

310 William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 66-67. 311 Craig Clunas, Superfluous things: material culture and social status in early modern China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). In this work, Clunas explores the cultural discourse of material consumption in late Ming society. He also parallels Ming China with early modern Europe on the rise of consumer society.

165 beverage, such as tea and coffee, in Britain were associated with fashion, luxury, and politeness of the elite class. The beverage not only provided the elite class with an opportunity to display their taste but also a magnificent collection of tea wares. During this period, numerous literary texts were published aiming to re-interpret tea in British culture and define British ways of tea consumption. These works linked tea with a wide range of cultural expressions, such as civilizing lifestyle, social politeness, domestic consumption, female commerce, and moral education.

The history of consumption in China, particularly the fashionable consumerism in Ming and Qing, becomes an increasingly intense studied field. Historians have proved that material dynamism in urban areas from the late Ming to through the Qing was quite vibrant.312 The culture of tea drinking and connoisseurship during this time revealed the taste and patterns of consumption of elite class. Meanwhile, we should also contextualize the understanding of the curative properties of tea in China in the broader ideas and practices of “nourishing life” 养生.

Drinking tea was and still is considered as a practice to promoting health rather than curing diseases. Meanwhile, Chinese sources that claimed the adverse effects of tea were equally as much as those praised it.

One of the fascinating intellectual effects of tea is keeping sobriety of one’s mind, which was broadly celebrated by man-of-letters in both China and the European world. In imperial

China, literary men highly praised the remarkable force of tea in animating intellectual powers.

Cao Ye (曹鄴 816-875), a late-Tang poet, composed a poem after a wonderful tea-drinking with

312 Craig Culnas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991), Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998), Trentmann, Frank, and Craig Clunas. “Things in Between: Splendour and Excess in Ming China.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (Oxford University Press, 2012), Daria Berg ed., The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations Beyond Gender and Class (Routledge: 2006)

166 his friends “(the tea is so fragrant) that for several days my ideas in writing poems are swift and clear. I have to cherish the rest of the tea cake, and will only brew it when I need to write.”313

Literati often hosted tea gatherings for both literary and socializing purposes. Those gatherings, often drinking tea and reciting poems, were considered as refined fashion appreciated by literati class.

Literati in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) was interested in collecting and publishing various writings on tea. The flourishing of tea treatises was a result of the booming of commercial printing and the general interests in collectanea and encyclopedias. Zhu Quan 朱權

(1378-1448), a direct descendent of the founder of Ming dynasty Emperor Hongwu, was one of the most prominent tea aesthetes in the early Ming period, who spent his whole life writing poems, drinking tea in seclusion. He wrote a treatise in 1440, Tea Discourse (茶譜), which reflected his attitude towards a simple lifestyle through tea preparation and tasting. This work included almost every aspect people could think about tea, from selecting, storing, and scenting the leaves, tea preparation implements, to how to choose a water source to make good tea. Zhu

Quan also discussed how tea-drinking could benefit one’s mental and physical health, cultivate one’s artistic taste, and improve academic accomplishments. “Drinking tea not only could increase your bowel movement, disperse the heat that accumulated in your body, resolving phlegm and cough, but also could eliminate recurrent sleepiness, relieve a hangover, help digestion, relieve one’s depression. Moreover, it could increase the literary grace of the intellectual writing.314 Late Ming scholar Xu Cishu 許次紓 (1549-1604) also acknowledged the

魔，倍清谈，茶之功大矣曹鄴, 故人寄茶 Receiving tea from my old friend, “六腑睡神去，数朝诗思清。月余不敢费，留伴肘 书行。” 314 “食之能利大肠，去积热，化痰下气，醒睡，解酒，消食，除烦解腻，助兴爽神。”“ 可以助诗性，伏睡 魔，倍清谈，茶之功大矣。

167 effect of tea in keeping lively thoughts, “For it keeping the eyes watchful and clear, maintains or

raises lively and brisk ideas, excites and sharpens thoughts, gives new vigor and force to the

invention, awakens the senses, and strengthens and clears the understanding.”315

After tea was introduced to the European world, the drinking of tea has obtained a

universal popularity. Its functions on cleaning one’s thoughts and awakening senses received

immediate attention among literary circles. John Ovington claimed that “It justly claims an

interest and share in the affections of all man of fanciful and sprightly thoughts, of all that would

animate their faculties without disturbance, and maintain their idea lively and bright, in that it

actuates and quickens the drowsy thoughts, gives fresh vigor and force to the wearied

intentions.”316 Due to its distinct virtues in stimulating intellectual and cultural exchange, tea was

especially sought after by literary people in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

4.3.1 Tea as Muse’s friend

The Dutch were among those Europeans who had early contact with tea drinking. Since

Jan Huygen van Linschoten, who joint the sail to the East Indies with João Vincente da Fonseca

from 1583 to1589, gave a detailed description of Japanese matcha in his account published in

1596, followed by an English translation in 1598, small quantities of tea from both China and

Japan gradually infiltrated into their daily life in a steady stream. After the establishment of the

Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1602, tea became one of the major commodities in the

company’s global trade.

Soon this beverage attracted the attention of the cultural and literary circle of the

Republic. Tea was served alongside wine in their gatherings. Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687),

朱自振，Xu Cishu 許次紓,Explaining Tea 茶疏, Zhu Zizhen 朱自振 Zhen Peikai 鄭培凱 (ed.) A Collection of Tea Treatises in China 中國歷代茶書匯編., 商 316 Ovington, John, An essay upon the nature and qualities of tea (London, 1705).

168 a prominent Dutch poet and composer, praised tea in his letter to a friend in 1640, “I do not know how easy it will be for you to wake up. I am awake here now, and this resurrection from drowsiness I attribute to the powers of the divine Tea, which we have often experienced together.

I worship it and with an even greater veneration.” He also mentioned several other his literary fellows who he called “illustrious tea drinkers.”317

Scottish physician Thomas Short (1690-1772) provided a detailed and more balanced investigation on medical properties of tea and also praised the social, economic, and cultural benefits of the beverage which promotes business, conversation, and intelligence. He confirmed some of the benefits of tea, such as releasing headache, drowsiness, dizziness, increasing bowel movement, and relieving hangovers. “The infusions of all sorts of tea are restringent, and the degree of restringency, is in proportion to the weakness or strength of the liquor drunk, and the elasticity or laxness of the drinker’s fibers.” They also discovered that different vehicles could extract different principles from tea. Sugar not only makes the liquor more palatable, by qualifying its bitter astringent taste, but is also an excellent cleanser of the lungs, and a gentle stimulator of the kidneys.318

Thomas short praised tea as “the Muses friend,” which does our fancy aid, repress those vapors which the head invade, and keeps that palace of the soul serene, fit on her birthday to salute a queen.”319 According to Thomas short, “Another thing which mightily ingratiates the use of this liquor to men of a sprightly genius, who court the continuance of their lively and distinct ideas, is its remarkable force against drowsiness and dullness, damps, and clouds on the brain and intellectual faculties.” He explained that the beverage could dilute the blood through

317 George van Driem, The Tale of Tea, 316-318. 318 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea, 38. 319 Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea, 48.

169 resolving salts in it. It cleanses and clears the glands of the brain, increases the “secretion and

distribution of animal juices,” which compensate for the loss of spirits, whether spent on

intellectual or physical activities. Tea invigorates the fibers and vessels, takes off that laxness

and sluggishness, which causes the necessity of sleep. Since it promotes a smooth circulation of

the blood, which gently deterges and comforts the brain, there is no load, slow circulation, or

stoppage in any of its vessels and glands. People who frequently drink tea, is not disturbed by

nightmares.

James Boswell (1740-1795), a Scottish lawyer and the author of the renowned biography

of Samuel Johnson, was also a tea devotee who claimed that “I am so fond of tea that I could

write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on

spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a safer

inspirer of social joy.” In his London Journal, Boswell described how green tea relieved him

from discomfort and upset, “For here now in the space of a few hours I was a dull and a

miserable, a clever and a happy mortal, and all without the intervention of any external cause,

except a dish of green tea.” He was especially fond of green tea, which he thought to be “indeed,

a most kind remedy in cases of this kind.” He also described how he frequently visited coffee-

house himself on the weekend, “As I walked back again to the Poultry, I went to drink tea at

Child’s Coffee-house, my constant resort every Saturday during the winter that I lived in

London.”320

Boswell’s best friend, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), One of the most prominent intellectuals in the eighteenth century, was also an eminent devotee and defender of tea. As a heavy drinker of tea, Johnson believed that frequent informal sociability with tea was very

320 Boswell, James, and Frederick A. Pottle. Boswell's London Journal: 1762-1763. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 189, 169.

170 productive and easily led to rational discussion. He used to describe himself as “a hardened and

shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only tea.”321 When

Samuel Johnson’s friend David Garrick, a great actor and playwright, achieved the height of his

popularity in the mid-eighteenth century, Johnson was still obscure and poor. They used to drink

tea together, and Johnson would say, “David, I do not envy you your money nor your fine

acquaintance, but I envy you your power of drinking such tea as this.” “Yes,” said Garrick, “it is

very good tea, but it is not my best, nor that which I give to my Lord this and Sir somebody the

other.”322

For Samuel Johnson, drinking tea was part of his daily routine for both health and

religious reasons and a necessity for keeping spiritual clearness. James Boswell noticed that “It was perfectly normal for him to drink sixteen cups in very quick succession, and I suppose no person ever enjoyed with more relish the infusion of that fragrant leaf than did Johnson.”

Throughout his life, Samuel Johnson took fasting as a common practice for both health and religious reasons, which he wrote in his diaries regularly. Johnson mentioned he abstained from eating intentionally from time to time. During this period, tea was the only thing he took throughout his day, “On this whole day I took nothing of nourishment but one cup of tea without milk; but the fast was very inconvenient. Towards night I grew fretful and impatient, unable to fix my mind or govern my thoughts.”323

James Boswell wrote, On Friday, April 14, “being Good Friday, I repaired to him in the

morning, and breakfast with him. I observed that he fasted so very strictly, that he did not even

taste bread, and took no milk with his tea.”324 Three weeks later, at his usual fast before Easter,

321 Johnson’s Works, vi. 21, 1757, 120. 322 Post, April 1, 1778, 362-364. 323 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1998. 245. 324 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1998, 403-404, 498.

171 Johnson recorded in his diary, “In the morning, I , I drank very small tea without milk, and had nothing more that day…I felt myself very much disordered by emptiness, and called for tea with peevish and impatient eagerness.”325 Boswell noticed that his friend ate very less and sometimes only drink tea for dinner, “Twenty years later, when he was lodging in the Temple, he had fasted for two days at a time; he had drunk tea, but eaten no bread; this was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a literary life.”326

Tea was praised by intellectuals as a sober substitute as well as a hangover cure, and compared repeatedly with alcoholic drinks. According to Ovington, “wine so frequently betrays men into so much mischief, and so many follies. This admirable tea endeavors to reconcile men to sobriety, when their brains are overcast with the fumes of intemperance, and disordered with excess of drinking; by driving away the superfluous humors that cloud the rational faculty, and disturb the powers of the minds.”327 By highlighting the therapeutic value of tea on ease the brain, increasing alertness and creativity, and countering the adverse effects of alcohol, the consumption of tea became legitimated in intellectual discourses.328

4.3.2 Flourishing of the writings on tea in late Imperial China

The earliest literary work entirely dedicated to tea in China appeared in the eighth century during the Tang dynasty. The publication of The Classic of Tea (茶經) (c. 760) by Lu Yu (陸羽) constructed a comprehensive narrative for the early cultivation and cultural development of tea.329 Most importantly, due to his Buddhist and literary background, Lu Yu emphasized a lot on the cultural practices of tea, including locating the best-quality tea leaves, various steps to

325 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1998, 159. 326 James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Henry Baldwin, 1785. 351- 352. 327 John Ovington, An Essay upon the Nature and Quality of Tea, 1705, 46-47. 328 Jordan Goodman, “Exitantia: or, How Enlightenment Europe Took to Soft Drugs,” 136-137. 329 James A. Benn, Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History (Hong Kong University Press, 2015), 170.

172 process tea, where to find the best water sources to make tea, appreciation of ceramic tea wares,

and the delicate rituals of preparing tea. In this encyclopedic compendium, Lu Yu tried to bring

together all those early literary references about tea in his book. As he pointed out, tea was most

suitable for people who act correctly according to the rules of propriety.330 He also provided some early assessment on medical effects of tea.

By the end of the thirteenth century, writings on tea in China had developed into a significant corpus of literary genre. With the innovating of techniques of processing tea, the expansion of tea planting areas, and the imperial promoting of tea trade with neighboring minority groups, the content of tea treatises also became increasingly diversified, such as techniques on tea planting, processing, tasting tea, classification of different varieties of tea, regulations on the tea trade, and short essays of literati on the appreciation of tea.

The manufacture and consumption of tea and the development of tea culture experienced a significant period during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The literary elite developed a rich culture on tea connoisseurship on both literary expression and material practices.331 The

popularizing of genres like random notes 筆記, informal short essays 小品 among literati to express their sensibility on material objects encouraged the flourishing of the publication of tea writings.

During the Ming period, voluminous works on tea were written, published, and circulated among literati class.332 Several factors contributed to the prevalence of treatises related to tea-

330 “茶之為用，味至寒，為飲，最宜精行儉德之人” 331 Livio Zanini, "Chinese writings on tea: classifications and compilations,” Ming Qing Yanjiu, pp 45-57, 2017 332 Some tea treatises that appeared during this period including two works entitled Tea Discourse (茶譜), one wrote in 1440 by Zhu Quan 朱權(1378-1448), and the one published in 1539 by Gu Yuanqing 顧元慶 (1481-1565), Tea Hut Notes (茶寮記，1570) by Lu Shusheng 陸樹聲, Talks on Tea (茶說,1590)by Tu Long 屠隆, Eight Treatises on the Art of Living(遵生八箋,1591)by Gao Lian 高濂, Comments on Tea (茶考,1593) by Chen Shi 陳師,and Compliments to a True History of Tea (茶董補,1595) by Chen Jiru 陳繼儒.

173 drinking. Part of the reason could be attributed to the literary and philosophical trends during this period. The return to antiquity movement (復古)started in the sixteenth century, which rejected morality as the primary consideration of literature; instead, it made aesthetic pursuits the fundamental standard of literary works. Meanwhile, it was also a consequence of flourishing urban life and thriving commercial publications during the late Ming period. As Timothy Brook points out, “the recycling of a common body of knowledge in different forms signals a reading public eager to consume books that addressed noncanonical matters.”333 Literati class sought a way to express their cultural pursuit and interacted with the changing commercial life and material culture. Meanwhile, the activities of leisure and enjoyment came to be appreciated by literati class, such as writing poetry, horticulture, and culinary arts. It was typical for the literati who shared interests in similar leisure activities to form certain clubs and gather together periodically.

Tea connoisseurs in the Ming dynasty emphasized the spiritual aspect of tea drinking. In his treatise, The Talk of Tea 茗譚, Xu Bo 徐勃(1570-1645) mainly talked about tea drinking as an elegant gentlemen’s pleasure. As he put it,

“sipping and tasting tea is the most elegant and the cleanest thing in my daily life, burning a refined incent would be more quiet and tasteful. Sitting here alone in my study, with fine and beautiful outside the window, I can hear the whispering of birds and watch the falling flower petals. As the newly picked tea leaves were just brewing in my teapot, the delicate scent slightly touched my nose. The chaos in my head and the feeling of drowsiness suddenly disappeared. What a pleasure it is! It is so important to have the right companions when I drink my tea. I would rather have someone who looks lean and spare, behaved elegantly, that is exactly the nature of tea.”334

333 Timothy Brook, Denis C. Twitchett, and Federick W. Mote, “Communication and Commerce,” Chapter 10, The Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),8: 579-707. 334 Xu Bo 徐勃, The Talk of Tea 茗譚,,Zhu Zizhen 朱自振 Zhen Peikai 鄭培凱 (ed.) A Collection of Tea Treatises in China 中國歷代茶書匯編, 2 vols., (Hong Kong: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆, 2007), vol. 1, 413-416.

174 For some Ming literati, tea was not only a commodity to be consumed or enjoyed. They associated tea with a highly refined and straightforward lifestyle. They appreciated the peaceful, secluded, and elegant space where they could temporarily leave the restriction of official responsibilities and enjoyed the company of their friends. The “pure and clean” taste of tea allowed them to pursue one’s true nature.

Some literati opposed complicated techniques used in processing tea for destroying its pure and natural flavor. During the Tang and Song period, the tribute tea exclusively for royal was made into tea cakes. Through processes like steaming, drying, grounding, and finally molded into different delicate shapes and patterns. However, some literati realized that the processes that made tea cakes actually destroyed the original flavor and texture of tea leaves (天

趣), and especially against their pursuit of simple and natural qualities in human nature.

Zhang Qiande 張謙德 (1577-1643) A Treatise of Tea (茶經•造茶) , asked people to preserve the natural taste of tea. Zhang compiled his tea treatise based on the works of former writers. According to Zhang Qiande, even though tribute tea cakes in Tang and Song periods were exquisitely molded and looked delicate and pretty, the natural flavor of tea leaves had been destroyed in this process. Meanwhile, he opposed producers to add additional fragrance to tea leaves, such as flower, Borneol, which would take over the original scent of tea. Zhang

Qiande divided the treatise into three parts, and each dedicated to one specific aspect of tea, the production and the quality of tea leaves, preparing hot tea, and tea wares. He pointed out that the techniques of processing tea leaves had changed so much, and so with how we prepare tea. That is why he wanted to compile this work despite rich sources on tea from previous dynasties. He provided some suggestions on how to make the natural flavor of tea more distinct, such as keeping tea leaves away from herbs with strong scent and humidity, boiling tea with fresh spring

175 water, washing the leaves a few times before brewing, and keeping tea wares clean. 335

Some tea connoisseurs in the Ming period believed that only through proper growth and

process, tea drinkers could prepare a bowl of satisfying tea decoction. They were able to

incorporate their practical experience in tea cultivation along with knowledge from previous

writers. Luo Bing 羅稟, a hermit who lived at Cixi, Zhejiang during the reign of Jiajing (1522-

1566), wrote a treatise entitled Explaining Tea (茶解, c.1609), in which Luo Bing described his

experience of traveling around in order to learn how to plant and make a tea of the best quality.

After his tour, he lived in seclusion at his hometown and put his knowledge on tea in practice. As

he wrote, “I spent several years visiting places where the best tea leaves were produced. After I

recorded all the different methods and compared them with each other, now I felt I understand

the nature of tea and the planting method more. Then I spent ten years lived in seclusion and

dedicated all my time in planting tea.”336 His friend Tu Benjun 屠本畯, a local official turned

naturalist, wrote a short preface for Explaining Tea. Tu pointed out, “everything my friend Luo

Bing wrote in this work has been verified from his own visiting and practice, also his words are

concise and comprehensive. I have already read so many books about tea, such as The Classic of

Tea (茶經), Understanding Tea (茶疏), Tea Discourse (茶譜). Now I read the book wrote by

friends along with these works, my understanding of tea had been deepened.” This work from

the late Ming period allowed us to see how the obsession with tea led people to explore the

practice knowledge of tea planting and making.

335 Zhang Qiande 張謙德, Treatise of Tea 茶經•造茶, Zhu Zizhen 朱自振 , Zhen Peikai 鄭培凱 (ed.) A Collection of Tea Treatises in China 中國歷代茶書匯編, 2 vols., (Hong Kong: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆, 2007), vol. 1, 263. 336 Luo Bing 羅稟, Explaining Tea 茶解, c.1609。“周游产茶之地，采其法制，参互考订，深有所会，遂于中隐 山阳栽植培灌溉茈且十年。” Zhu Zizhen 朱自振，Zhen Peikai 鄭培凱 (ed.), A Collection of Tea Treatises in China 中國歷代茶書匯編, 2 vols., (Hong Kong: The Commercial Press 商务印书馆, 2007), vol. 1, 342.

176 Another connoisseur from this period was Xu Cishu 許次紓 (1549-1604). Even though

Xu Cishu’s father succeeded in imperial examination and made his official career to the governor of Guangxi, Xu himself never participated in any level of the imperial exam or received any official title due to his physical disability. Xu spent most of his time reading Confucian classics, writing poetry, and collecting. Due to his sole obsession with tea, most of his friends were tea planters or scholars addicted to tea like him. They would get together regularly and trying to obtain knowledge about tea. The only work that exists today is his Understanding Tea. Xu Cishu befriended several experienced tea planters, such as Yao Shaoxian 姚紹憲 from 吴兴. Yao had a little tea garden at Guzhu Mountain , Changxing , where used to be the imperial tea plantation during the early Tang period. He wrote a preface for Xu’s treatise,

“it is said that the tea from my hometown Guzhu Mountain is the best during the time of Lu Yu (陸羽).Now I open up my own tea garden here. A close of mine, Xu Ranmin from Wulin, was also addicted to tea drinking. He would come and visit me each year during the time of harvest. We would collect spring water from Jinshan and Yubao to make tea, and we would sit and talk about the quality of tea from this year.”337 In his writing, tea drinking was regarded as a gentry pleasure that even the mood that people were possessing would affect the flavor of the tea. His work reflected the mind of gentlemen of leisure like himself, who were preoccupied with neither official tilt nor fortune.

From these works on tea, it seems that appreciating tea was part of scholarly cultivation.

Furthermore, they took tea, tea wares, not only as art and artifacts, but it was the acquisition of practical knowledge through planting and making tea, then apply what they learned to textual knowledge.

許次紓Xu Cishu 許次紓朱自Explaining Tea茶疏 Zhu Zizhen 朱自振 Zhen Peikai 鄭培凱 (ed.) A Collection of Tea Treatises in China中國歷代茶書匯編,.

177 Xu Cishu’s tea treatise was highly praised by later tea connoisseurs. A scholar from early

Qing period, Li E (厲鄂，692-1753), wrote about Xu Cishu, “He is a true tea lover, who had an

amicable character. He knows everything about harvesting and processing tea leaves and even

more an expert on brewing tea. He was prolific poetry and essay writer, unfortunately, most of

his works were lost. I used to possess a copy of his Understanding Tea, and I believe that his

knowledge on tea was broad and profound. I would compare his work to The Classic of Tea (茶

經) by Lu Yu (陸羽).”338 Increasing attention to technical details, including information regarding proper tea

cultivation, reflected that the gentry class took tea drinking as a venue for self-cultivation. Tea lovers took a keen interest in the specifics of growing and harvesting, realizing that every part of production had to be refined if tea were to achieve its ultimate potential, which corresponded to the trajectory of their spiritual pursuit.339 Meanwhile, what made a real connoisseur of tea was not just about identifying the good tea leaves but acquired all those practical details to brew tea properly.

4.4 Tea and the shifting consumer sentiment

The eighteenth-century witnessed the increasing regular imports of tea to England. Began

in 1717, The English East India Company was able to provide regular shipments of tea and

allowed the price to drop and was acceptable to most people. The expanding market of tea also

provided the impetus for new public spaces like coffee houses, a new taste for tea equipage like porcelain teapots and cups, and new social rituals defined by gender. Through tea-drinking,

consumers not only expressed individual social status but also offered their own interpretations

338 Li E 厲鶚 Miscellaneous notes from the Eastern City 東城雜記. 339 Bret Hinsch, The Rise of tea culture in China: The Invention of the individual (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 75.

178 of tea drinking.

4.4.1 The Trouble with Tea-consuming—debates on the consumption of tea

British consumers in the late seventeenth century have noticed the profound cultural discourse constructed by Chinese literati class. Some writings indicated the direct link of tea- drinking with those elegant practices of an aristocratic class of the most civilized culture in the

Far East. John Chamberlayne’s work The Manner of Making of Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate

(1685) provided an elaborate description of the whole set of making tea in the Chinese context.

The decoction, as yet very hot, they present afterwards very courteously to those being invited to their home. This drink they make with so great care and so nice an application of their mind therto; …they take great pride to make with their own hands the decoction of this herb for their friends…wherein there are little ovens made of the most precious stones, and of the most equisite wood, reserved particularly for the preparation of the decoction, keeping also curiously in the room the pots, trivets, funells, bowls, porringers, and other vessels belonging to this sort of occasion.340

Chamberlayne’s interest in tea was relevant to his fascination with China. This description of Chinese mode of consumption by Chamberlayne not only showed the British awareness in the material part of tea-drinking and the elements of high status and exoticness related to the tea ceremony but also reflected the positive European perceptions on China under the influence of Chinoiserie at this time, which was in contrast with the view that regarded China as an origin of instability which posed dangers on British identity after the 1700s.341

Since the early years of the eighteenth century, leading public figures expressed their increasing concerns on physical, moral, and social troubles causing by tea-drinking, which led to consistent debates over tea destroyed British body and society. One of the most frequently mentioned criticisms of tea was related to luxury consumption, “tea sucks up our very blood, by

340 John Chamberlayne’s work The Manner of Making of Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate (1685). This is a direct translation of Simon Paulli’s text in 1665. 341 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 133-137.

179 exhausting our treasure, weakens the nerves of the state.” The indulgence of upper and middle

classes in this fashion related to a foreign origin was considered as a threat to British identity.

Other writers, such as English novelist Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), saw tea and tea equipage from

China as threats to English commerce, and simply as “not necessary to the being of mankind, nor

for their well-being either.” Defoe was also an early advocate of cultivating tea in territories

under the control of England. Defoe’s criticism of tea drinking reflected his particular animosity

towards China.342

Jonas Hanway (1712-1786), one of the most well-known moral reformers in the early

eighteenth century, drew widespread social attention in 1757with the publication of his book A

journal of eight days journey from Portsmouth to Kingston upon Thames, in which he included

an essay on effects of tea. In this essay, Jonas Hanway claimed tea as pernicious to health and

attributed the national fever of tea drinking to the mass craving for luxury. According to

Hanway, many people consumed tea with sugar, which made tea the cause of many distempers,

including scurvy and weak nerves. Meanwhile, it prevented sleep and harmed the teeth, as well

as weakened digestion. He attributed the reason for the prevalence of nervous disorders to tea

due to its foreign origin. Hanway pointed out that consumption of tea as a luxury would cause

adverse impacts to British society, it would drain British economic and military resources, “I

have long considered tea, not only as a prejudicial article of commerce; but also of a most

pernicious tendency with regard to domestic industry and labor; and very injurious to health.”343

Hanway claimed that he “would abolish the custom of sipping” and allow “no liquids

342 G. A. Starr, “Defoe and China,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 43, No. 4, 2010, 435-454. 343 Jonas Hanway (1712-1786), A Journal of Eight Days’ Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston Upon Thames, to Which is added an Essay on Tea. 204.

180 used hotter than they could be drank, in small quantities, without least pain.”344 He believed that luxurious items like tea would intoxicate with desires, “Tho’ I am no friend to luxurious superfluity, yet in hopes to abolish the use of tea, I would have it pretend on a salver with glasses of cold water, milk and water, lemonade, and such like: for my own part, I like to sip these rather than tea.”345 He suggested his readers, especially female tea drinkers to use herbs that were growing in their own garden to substitute the foreign leaves, “I would turn botanist or gardener, to discover herbs healthier in quality, and more delicious in taste, than the choicest produce of

China.” He believed that sage could be a perfect substitute for tea, “It is reckoned admirable as a cordial, and to sweeten and cleanse the blood: it is good in nervous cases, and is given in fevers with a view to promote perspiration.”

In the same year, Samuel Johnson immediately rose to defend tea and wrote a response to

Hanway’s Essay on Tea. As Johson points out, the whole mode of life is changed, whereas we only impute to tea all the diseases we have. “That the diseases commonly called nervous, tremors, fits, habitual depression, and all the maladies which proceed from laxity and debility, are more frequent than in any former time, is, I believe, true, however deplorable. But this new race of evils, will not be expelled by the prohibition of tea. This general languor is the effect of general luxury, of general idleness.” In Johnson’s response, he did not exaggerate the medical qualities of tea. He admitted that this watery luxury is an insipid entertainment, “Tea, among the greater part of those who use it most, is drunk in no great quantity. As it neither exhilarates the heart, nor stimulates the palate, it is commonly an entertainment merely nominal, a pretence for

344 Jonas Hanway, A Journal of Eight Days’ Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston Upon Thames, to Which is added an Essay on Tea. (1756), letter 21. 345 Jonas Hanway, A Journal of Eight Days’ Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston Upon Thames, to Which is added an Essay on Tea. 257.

181 assembling to prattle, for interrupting business, or diversifying idleness.”346

Many literary texts at this time questioned the expansive consumption of tea and potential

influences on society in general and, in particular, on women. Since the early expansion of tea

drinking in the late seventeenth century, the beverage was depicted as essential upper-class

consumption for women. The civilizing tea-table became an eternal scene in literary works and paintings that came to define the character of British tea consumption.

4.4.2 Tea table as the origin of “luxurious vices”

As the habit of tea-drinking spread throughout Britain in the eighteenth century, social

debates related to tea consumption, especially aspects of luxury and novelty, were increasingly

associated with the consuming habit of women. Thomas Tryon, a physician and a writer for

popular medicine, indicated that “tis a pretty innocent harmless liquor,…but chiefly for novelty-

sake, and because ‘tis outlandish, and dear, and far fetcht, and therefore admired by the multitude

of ignorant people, who always have the greatest esteem for those things they know not.”347

According Tryon, women were most likely the “victims” of tea due to their ignorant and craving

for exoticness.

In the eighteenth century, female consumers were associated with tea for their enthusiasm

in imported luxury, expensive equipage, and the exposure to gossips and scandals. Satirical

essays on tea-drinking could be seem as a response to the public enthusiasm towards the

beverage. Several periodical letters against tea drinking published in the Weekly Journal in the

1720s. Nathaniel Mist, a journalist, attacked tea drinking as being an expensive luxury and an exotic imported commodity that was deleterious to health. “This damn’d Exotick, or outlandish

346 Samuel Johnson, Review of A Journal of Eight Day’s Journey, The Literary Magazine 2, no. 13 (1757). 347 Thomas Tryon, The Good House-wife Made a Doctor; or Health’s choice and sure friend, being a plain way of nature’s own prescribing, to prevent and cure most diseases. (London, 1692)

182 Liquor, call’ed Tea, is so highly pernicious to England, that since it has come in Vogue with us,

the Women have made a sad demolishing of Mankind; for what with the daily Consumption of

that insignificant Commodity, and the Charge of Utensils to set off the drinking it with a great

Decorum and State, unknown to our wife Ancestors, the Charges are so great that our London

Gazettes were never fill’d with more Bankrupts than now.”348 Mist further denounced tea and tea

equipage as symbol of social malaise. The habit of tea-drinking was listed among several other

extravagant things, such as snuff, scarlet cloaks and hoop petticoats, as fashionable corruption.

According to Mist, the gathering of women around tea-table exposed them to luxurious consumption that unknown to their ancestors. He claimed that tea was not only expensive, but deleterious to health and happiness. Mist particularly denounced female tea consumption,

“Among Beaus and Women, Fans and Mechlin Lace. Chief seat of slander! Ever there we see thick scandal circulate with right Bohea.” Tea drinking caused the vice of greediness and gossip,

“It is most notorious aggravation to Heaven, to behold how horribly exorbitant we are, in the voluptuousness of eating and drinking…. But to still add to this luxury, there is a new whim come up of late call’d tea; which because it is far fetch’d, and dear bought it is therefore drink for

Beaus.” He claimed that female gathering around tea-table produced nothing but malicious gossips and slanders. “And so common is it become amongst us now, that every servant-wench before she handles her Mop and Pail, must have forsooth a dish of this Indian or Chinese liquor.”349

348 “Melancholy Considerations of the Universal Poison, or the dismal Effects of Tea”. in Whipping-Tom: or, a Rod for a Proud Lady, bundled up in Four Feeling Discourse, Both Serious and Merry. In Order to Touch The Fair Sex to the Quick (London: printed for Sam. Briscoe, at the Roll-Savage on Ludgate-Hill), Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England, vol 1, 72. 349 Discourse II. “Of the Expensive Use of Drinking Tea”, in Whipping-Tom: or, a Rod for a Proud Lady, bundled up in Four Feeling Discourse, Both Serious and Merry. In Order to Touch The Fair Sex to the Quick (London: printed for Sam. Briscoe, at the Roll-Savage on Ludgate-Hill), Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England, vol 1, 61-62, 68.

183 Meanwhile, some people associated tea drinking with a more positive domestic female

image and claimed that tea drinking had the function of moral education for women. In contrary

to Mist, Dr. James Bland wrote a treatise about female manners and education in 1733, in which

he defended tea as a beverage comfortable to a life of temperance; he believed that the liquor

was harmless, innocent and led to wise and pleasant conversation. It also possesses a morally

improving quality. “What is so pleasant and grateful to the taste as a dish of tea, sweetened with

fine loaf-sugar? What more innocent banquet could ever have been in use than this? And what

more becoming conversation than the inoffensive, sweet, and melodious expressions over an

entertainment so like themselves, and so much preferable to all others?” Right management of

tea table was considered a morally valuable domestic employment of women. “The tea table is a

promoter of almost all trades in general. A tradesman’s wife that can manage her tea table well,

will in all probability render it very advantageous to her family.” 350

Conclusion

Early modern colonial expansion and global trade introduced several mild intoxicants to

European dietary structure, including tea, coffee, and cacao. This chapter examines the constant

medical, commercial, and cultural debates around the accommodation of tea in seventeenth- and

eighteenth-century Britain. Medical literature during this period repetitively described the virtues

as well as side-effects of tea. Some physicians and pharmacists recommended tea drinking for its universal curative property and its functions in promoting sober and civil society. Some detractors denounced tea-drinking due to its foreign origin that would cause destructive effects on the British body and society. Some debates centered on the growing suspicions about the

350 James Bland, “Of her Temperance, An Essay in Praise of Women: or, a Looking-Glass for Ladies to See their Perfections in,” London: Printed for the Author, 1733. Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England, vol 1, 107-108.

184 social and moral implications of the consumption of luxury. Tea and tea equipage were considered a foreign luxury that would impoverish the empire. All these debates could either stimulate or discourage the consumption of tea. When tea enjoyed significant popularity in

Britain in the eighteenth century, people could hardly refuse to drink the beverage, even though the medical properties of tea were still largely debatable, and its image as a threat to British commerce and society. With the increasing consumption of tea by the mass population, accumulated knowledge about the plant and individual experiences with the beverage provided consumers a sense of credibility. They might not fully understand the therapeutic details of tea, or they might even agree with social critics on tea drinking. These medical writers and intellectuals, either as adherents or opponents of tea, helped successfully to create the link between the exotic commodity and local customers. The consumption of tea had been legitimated in British culture. From a luxurious exotic medicine to a habitual consumption for the mass population, tea already had a profound impact on British society. The exotic hot beverage became a critical component of diet, social rituals, concepts of fashion and respect, material culture in eighteenth-century Britain.

185 Conclusion

Medicinal commodities flowing through seventeenth- and eighteenth-century global trade networks were not merely goods in exchange; their making, transferring, and consumption reshaped modern material and intellectual life. The medical commodities, including rhubarb, tea, ginseng, and coffee, infiltrated the quotidian medicinal and culinary culture of English people.

Among all the influences of exotic medicinal commodities in the English society, the increasing demand and consumption for intoxicants and narcotics, particularly opium, emerged as a significant phenomenon in nineteenth-century English medical culture. With the British colonial and commercial ventures in India and China, the British found that the extraordinary profits of opium would allow the British to reverse the growing trade deficit due to the tremendous domestic demand for Chinese tea.

Many scholars have linked opium to British imperialism in the study of the Sino-British conflict in the mid-nineteenth century. In the past two decades, historians started to pay more attention to the cultural significance and social functions of opium in late imperial China. Some key questions they examine include, what were the social dynamics behind the vast expansion of opium smoking; what were the cultural determinants for the establishing of opium as a consuming habit in China. The commodification of opium in late imperial China followed a similar trajectory that tea was taken into British society, the consequences were quite different.

Tea became the cultural marker of the Britishness, whereas opium was condemned as the source of corruption and weakness of the Qing court.

During the early nineteenth century, consuming exotic medical commodities in Britain entered into an impressive new stage, with even more varieties of foreign drugs available on the medical market. During this period, the British domestic market witnessed an increasing demand

186 for various kinds of narcotics, including alcohol, opium, , coca, mescal, and morphine.

In the early nineteenth century, most physicians and patients had a relatively positive attitude toward the sale and use of the opium. In the 1830s, Jonathan Pereira pointed out in his well- known work, The Elements of Materia Medica, that opium could be widely used “to mitigate pain, to allay spasm, to promote sleep, to reduce nervous restlessness, to produce perspiration, and to check profuse mucous discharge from the bronchia and gastro-intestinal canal.”351 People could purchase a wide range of remedies based on opiate from the hands of barbers, wine merchants, and tobacconists.352

Intoxicating effects of opiates generated a considerable amount of literature on both the pleasure and the pain coming along with the drug. Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an

English Opium Eater, published in 1821 in the London Magazine, called opium “a panacea for all human woes.” It was the “secret of happiness” that could be “bought for a penny” and

“carried in the waistcoat-pocket and portable ecstasies corked up in a pint-bottle.”353 De Quincey first used opium as a pain-reliever and “fallen into miserable excesses of the drug.” He also admitted that he experienced several times struggling against the dominion of the evil substance.

During the nineteenth century, Thomas De Quincey was not the only literary person that used opium to relieve pain, for inspirations, or pleasures. Meanwhile, addiction to opium was not just a literary event but also became a common social problem that affected a wide range of people from all walks of life. “Opium-eaters” could be found among both working-class and middle- class, men and women alike.

351 Jonathan Pereira, The Elements of Materia Medica, Part Two, 352 Virginia Berridge, “Victorian Opium Eating: Responses to Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England,” Victorian Studies,” Vol. 21, No. 4 (Summer, 1978), pp. 437-461. 353 Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 54.

187 In the early nineteenth century, there was an increasing concern and fear about the spread of habitual opiate use. There were growing attempts to regulate medical professionals and the concepts of public health and medical safety. British medical professionals were not only concerned about the potential danger of the consumption of opium but also increasingly concerned about social, moral, and physical degradation that came with the addiction. In 1868,

The Pharmacy Act was established in England, putting on restrictions on consumers of medical remedies like opium.

Much scholarship has highlighted the role of opium in Sino-British trade and diplomatic relations, especially the broader cultural understanding of opium trade in the Sino-British conflicts in the mid-nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, tea from China, along with silk and porcelain, had occupied a large share of the British market, whereas British commodities could hardly arouse similar interests from the Chinese consumers. The British government was no longer satisfied with the increasing amount of silver they invested in Chinese goods. In the 1780s, the East India Company and Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General in

India, reached a solution. They found the Chinese were particularly interested in cotton and opium from India and established a monopoly over opium from Patna, the production and distribution center of opium in India. After the failure of two British diplomatic embassies, the

Cathcart and the Macartney, at the end of the eighteenth century, and the renewal of an official prohibition on opium imports by the Qing government, the British decided to smuggle opium into Canton.

The trade imbalance started to reverse in the early nineteenth century, and millions of silver bullions were shipped from China to exchange for Indian opium.354 With the increasing

354 Hans Derks, “Tea for Opium vice versa.” In History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, Ca. 1600- 1950, 49-86 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012)

188 smuggling of British-India opium to Canton at the beginning of the nineteenth century, “no

region of the empire, however remote, was safe from opium’s ubiquitous reach, not even the

Qing ancestral homeland in Manchuria.”355 From the 1810s to 1830s, the production of opium in

India experienced a sharp increase in order to deal with the competition from Turkey. The

decrease of the opium price led to an increase in the availability of the drug among ordinary

Chinese. According to a report from the British Parliament in 1840, the nationwide addiction to

the drug had a destructive effect on the body of the Chinese, “those who use it to great excess,

the breath becomes feeble, the body wasted, the face shallow, the teeth black: the individuals

themselves clearly see the evil effects of it, yet cannot refrain from it.”356

Unlike the British adopting tea drinking as a national symbol, the consumption of opium in nineteenth-century Chinese society reflected a rather troublesome history. Opium was first brought to China by Portuguese and Dutch merchants as a luxury medicinal commodity and the consumption of the drug was limited to those with power and wealth. Around mid-eighteen century British dealers started to smuggle opium to China. The Qing government had considered the drug as a problem by the early eighteenth century. The first imperial edict against import of foreign opium could be traced back to 1729 during the reign of Emperor Yongzheng. By the turn of the nineteenth century, opium already became a product for mass consumption in China. With the increasing illegal smuggling and the social problems caused by opium abuse, the Qing government reacted with several other edicts, which all turned out to be in vain.

During the 1830s, forbidding the opium trade with Britain became an increasingly critical issue for the Qing government. Many Qing officials submitted memorials to Daoguang Emperor in

355 Chinese Repository (April 1839), 610. 356 British Parliament, Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 156.

189 order to deal with the rapidly growing opium importation and the opium addiction. In a memorial submitted by the Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi to the Qing Emperor Daoguang in1838, Qi

Shan recommended that tea, rhubarb, and silk should be sold to foreigners at fixed prices, he pointed out that “the foreigners, if deprived several days of the tea and rhubarb from China, are afflicted with dimness of sight and constipation of the bowels, to such a degree that life is endangered…tea and rhubarb are necessaries of life to each individual foreigner.”357

This comment of Qi Shan not only reflected the rhubarb mania in the West since the sixteenth century, but also revealed some nineteenth-century discourses constructed around opium in

China, from political and economic considerations to health concerns. Even though rhubarb and its medical effect had been known to Europeans since the ninth or tenth century, it was not until the sixteenth century when European physicians, botanists, apothecaries, and merchants started to assign the plant medical, commercial, and cultural significance. After the 1750s, the British

East India Company succeeded in competition with Russia and dominated the rhubarb import from China. The annual import of rhubarb over 18,000 pounds gives us a glimpse of the massive domestic demands for the commodity.358

The rhubarb, tea, opium trade between China and Britain was an outcome of introducing exotic medical substances to the European world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This dissertation examines the mobility of people, natural objects, and the networks they created between China and Britain as a form of cultural encounter relying on materials in the early modern period. By looking at several medicinal plants, including rhubarb, ginseng, and tea, that transmitted from China to Britain through trade and scientific activities, the dissertation

357 Chinese Repository, 1838, vol. 7, 311. 358 For detailed history of rhubarb trade, see Clifford M. Foust, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug (Princeton University Press, 1992).

190 identifies the trajectory of incorporating Chinese herbs into British scholarly, commercial, and cultural discourses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The primary aim here is to analyze how major social and cultural determinants were established for the inclusion and mass consumption of exotic herbs in early-modern England. The conflicts between the knowledge acquired through texts and the actual experience of consuming allowed Chinese herbs, such as tea and rhubarb, to gain complex cultural meanings and social functions in eighteenth-century

Britain.

The successful commodification of tea in eighteenth-century Britain cannot be disconnected from the domestication of other medicinal plants from China, such as rhubarb, ginseng, and China root. The dominant discourse on tea in the seventeenth century was still medical, and most tea treatises prioritized its therapeutic effects over its taste and the connoisseurship of tea drinking. After all, the astringent nature and bitter taste of tea was not likely the primary reason to attract the British palate. By interfering on the market as a stimulant and a social activity during the rise of modern consuming society, tea was consolidated by the individual consuming experience of British people, who transformed the oriental novelty into a popular daily commodity.

At the same time, rhubarb was transforming from a “mild and pleasant laxative” to a popular culinary ingredient in nineteenth-century England. The use of rhubarb as a vegetable or a fruit was an outcome of the enormous popularity of medicinal rhubarb in Europe, especially in

Britain.359 The transition was not an accident that someone suddenly found the stalk of rhubarb was a great ingredient for marmalade and tarts. Despite the consistent efforts of British botanists and gardeners to transplant rhubarb in Britain, they failed to cultivate the species that could

359 Clifford M. Foust, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug (Princeton University Press, 1992), 214.

191 provide the best medical effect. Meanwhile, botanists and druggists were complaining that those imported true rhubarbs were adulterated with less valuable varieties. The fraudulence in the market assisted the development of techniques to distinguish different varieties of rhubarbs. The efforts to identify and cultivate the true rhubarb seemed in vain; the botanical origins of most species found in British gardens at this time remained unclear, and a large number of new hybrids began to appear in the London market. Meanwhile, sugar was taking an increasingly significant role in the British diet in the eighteenth century and was an indispensable factor for the growing consumption of tea and rhubarb.

Both tea and rhubarb were incorporated into specific occasions in eighteenth-century

England, and became increasingly essential in local diet habits, everyday rituals, and social practices. The commodification of tea in Britain spread to a broad market in the eighteenth century, it was no longer confined to the use of the upper class, and the discussion of tea was not limited to medical discourse. One of the main reasons for the widening consumption of tea was the development of social rituals and customs of tea drinking. The cultural formation of tea-table helped spread the values of refinement, politeness, sociability, and gentility in British society.

Meanwhile, the demand for tea also stimulated consumers’ interests and taste of tea equipage.

Consumers played an essential role in the domesticating of tea drinking in Britain. On the contrary, the commodification of rhubarb in Britain did not experience similar cultural construction like tea. The British empirical endeavor to accommodate this highly useful plant failed to produce roots that equaled the ones from China. However, the different varieties of

“English” rhubarbs they produced from local gardens were widely accepted by consumers for culinary purposes. Clifford M. Foust points out that the popularizing of rhubarb’s culinary use in the first half of the nineteenth century was initially from the supply side than from consumer

192 demand.360

The early spread of opium was also related to its medical effects.

Opium was known as a rare and luxurious drug in China during the Ming dynasty, and it was widely used to cure various kinds of physical disorders. By the early eighteenth century, the medical use of opium had become so common that the Qing government had to issue imperial edicts to limit its cultivation and importation. The consumption of opium outside the medical context emerged in the seventeenth century, coincident with the introduction and popularity of tobacco smoking in China. Tobacco was first introduced to China by European merchants in the late sixteenth century as a medical herb, and generally taking on social and cultural meanings.

When opium was brought into China by Dutch merchants in the early seventeenth century, the culture of smoke had already become a common social practice to the Chinese. Like tobacco, the consumption of opium was first limited among imperial and wealthy families as a rare and precious medicine. With the expanding market of opium in China in the mid-eighteenth century, the whole set of the smoking ritual was generally taking shape. The proper way to prepare and consume opium became a distinctive social thing.

With the expansion of opium imports in the nineteenth century, opium generally became a commodity for mass consumption. Less privileged people, even lower ranks like laborers and farmers, could afford smoking opium. For these lower-class laborers, opium served as a refreshment and relief for their whole day hard-working. As the Qing empire started to decline in the early nineteenth century, the excessive use of opium became an epitome for social and moral collapse. It was depicted as a conspiracy of the Western powers, particularly Britain, to

360 Clifford M. Foust, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug (Princeton University Press, 1992), 217.

193 overthrow the Qing government.361 In the 1830s, some Qing officials started to advocate for native opium production to prevent silver from leaking out of China. Advocates claimed domestic opium production could not only become an essential fiscal resource for the government, but also could help to feed less fertile provinces, such as Shanxi and Yunnan.362

Besides economic benefits, advocates of domestic opium growing also claimed that opium

cultivated from native soil was less harmful physically than imported opium. They compared

smoking native opium to smoking native tobacco, it is not intoxicating and addictive as the

foreign opium.363

In the 1850s, opium was transformed by the fiscal authorities of the Qing from a harmful

intoxicant to a drug that could be traded legally for individual use.364 It was not until the 1870s, a

new wave of public debate on harmful physical effects of opium began, and Western

missionaries and doctors in China started to propagate the harmful nature of opium. Meanwhile,

Qing officials who traveled to Europe realized that many European countries had already

prohibited opium trade, and the image of China had been severely damaged by opium addiction.

In the late nineteenth century, the prohibition of opium consumption has been closely interwoven

into the discourse of Chinese nationalism.365

This dissertation follows the global trajectory of medicinal plants from China and tracing

how they were redefined by local medical, cultural, and social discourses in early-modern

England. The process of commodification of Chinese herbal remedies in early-modern England

361 Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann and Zhang Xun, “Narcotic culture: A Social History of Drug Consumption in China,” The British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 42, No. 2 (SPRING 2002), pp. 317-336. 321. 362 Man-Houng Lin, “Late Qing Perceptions of Native Opium.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64, no. 1 (2004): 117-44. 122-125. 363 Ibid, 127. 364 Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann and Zhang Xun, “Narcotic culture: A Social History of Drug Consumption in China,” 324. 365 Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann and Zhang Xun, “Narcotic culture: A Social History of Drug Consumption in China,”, 129-130.

194 involved the flow of commodities, such as tea, rhubarb, and ginseng, and human agents, including merchants, physicians, and amateur medical practitioners. The reception and legitimating of these commodities in Britain required consistent public medical and cultural debates, which consistently tied their potential functions to specific intellectual and social changes in Britain. I argue that, at the same time, the intimate space of households became increasing essential for the commodification of exotic medicine in early modern England. The process revealed discrepancies between prerequisite knowledge through texts and the experience of consuming the commodity.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, exotic commodities such as coffee, tea, cacao, cotton, and indigo were not only successfully introduced to the British domestic market.

Through the process, their functions and meanings were heavily shaped by British intellectual, social, and cultural life. Tea was first introduced into the British market as a rare and precious medical ingredient targeting the elite class; intense debates were aroused to locate tea in

European therapeutic theory and practice. After the removing of its initial medical novelty, ritualizing tea-drinking in British daily alimentary structure, tea became a “symbolic cultural maker” for the British people.366 Although rhubarb had been known to European physicians as a safe laxative for centuries, the mass consumption of rhubarb in Britain appeared in the late seventeenth century. During this period, there was a consistent effort aimed to transplant the plant in Britain, botanical and medical studies carried out to better understand the plant.

Ultimately, rhubarb was domesticated in Britain in the nineteenth century as a popular vegetable for culinary use. In the late eighteenth century, opium was exported to China by Britain to shift the tea-dominated trade between the two empires. Opium had been put to medical use during the

366 Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt ed., Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (Rougledge, 1995), 7.

195 Ming period, and it was transitioned into a luxurious ingredient in the late seventeenth century.

Nineteenth-century discourse for opium consumption in China changed rapid, from an exotic drug, an elite pastime activity, to a physical and social poison, the scapegoat for political and economic problems. The discourse of opium was increasingly entangled with the emergence of nationalism in China and its relationship with Western powers at the end of the nineteenth century.

As we can see, these natural objects in this dissertation were gaining local significance in

variety of ways in their domesticating into a different cultural setting. During the early modern

period, merchants, botanists, and physicians were intensely searching and collecting exotic

botanical ingredients and incorporating them into trading records, medical treaties, and

inventories, which further stimulated the curiosities of consumers. Natural commodities, such as

coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, quinine, and opium not only became widespread daily consumption

after they were introduced into a different cultural background, but also had a profound influence

on local cultural and social habits, either in a good way or a bad way.

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209 Miaosi Zhang

EDUCATION 2020 Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University, History. 2012 M.A. University of Alabama, History. 2009 M.A. Sichuan University, History 2006 B.A. Sichuan Normal University, English

AWARDS/FELLOWSHIPS

2020 Hill Dissertation Completion fellowship 2018-2019 Predoctoral Fellowship, Center for Humanities & Information, Pennsylvania State University 2018 Mark and Lucy MacMillan Stitzer Program Support Endowment Grant 2017 Knight Pre-Dissertation Grant, Pennsylvania State University 2016 Stitzer Seed Grant, Pennsylvania State University

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS & TALKS (Selected)

2019 “Taken from Nature: Sino-British Medical Encounters in the Early Modern Period,” The Committee for Early Modern Studies, Pennsylvania State University, October 23 “Curiosity and Conflicts: Sino-British Medical Encounters in the Early Modern period”, The 66th Annual Midwest Conference on British Studies, Loyola University Chicago, September 27-29. 2017 “The Astronomer in an Embassy to the Celestial Empire: Scientific Knowledge Across Boundaries in 18th century Britain,” The 64th Annual Midwest Conference on British Studies, Webster University, St. Louis, MO, September 29. 2015 “Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge in 18th century Britain: A Case Study of James Dinwiddie,” Among Empires: the British Empire in Global Imperial Context, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, May 28.

TEACHING AND RESEARCH ASSISTANT

2017-2018 Research Assistant, History Department, Pennsylvania State University 2015-2016 Research Assistant, History Department, Pennsylvania State University 2016 Teaching Assistant, Western Heritage I, History Department, Pennsylvania State University 2013-2015 Teaching Assistant, History Department, University of Alabama:  Western Civilization To 1648  Western Civilization Since 1684  American civilization since 1865  American civilization to 1865