Healing with Poisons

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons...

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Hlavní autor: Liu, Yan
Médium: Online
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: University of Washington Press 2022
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On-line přístup:ONIX_20220715_9780295749013_196
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author Liu, Yan
author_browse Liu, Yan
author_facet Liu, Yan
author_sort Liu, Yan
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines.Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful.Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-884472024-03-31T22:44:51Z Healing with Poisons Liu, Yan History of medicine thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines.Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful.Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo. 2022-07-15T14:58:39Z 2022-07-15T14:58:39Z 2021 book ONIX_20220715_9780295749013_196 9780295749013 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/88447 eng image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://muse.jhu.edu/book/85685 University of Washington Press 05b43d6c-b025-4c47-9778-32ac09131cc4 9780295749013 288 open access
spellingShingle History of medicine
thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine
Liu, Yan
Healing with Poisons
title Healing with Poisons
title_full Healing with Poisons
title_fullStr Healing with Poisons
title_full_unstemmed Healing with Poisons
title_short Healing with Poisons
title_sort healing with poisons
topic History of medicine
thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine
topic_facet History of medicine
thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine
url ONIX_20220715_9780295749013_196
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