A Catalog of Benevolent Items: Li Shizhen's Compendium of Classical Chinese KnowledgeDistills ten volumes, four dictionaries, and 1,800 years of knowledge into an authoritative introduction to the Ben cao gang mu. The Ben cao gang mu was the world’s most comprehensive encyclopedia of natural history and medicine when it was published in China in 1593. In fifty-two chapters, the physician Li Shizhen recorded two millennia of medical observations, interpreting the wide-ranging uses of plants, animals, minerals, and artificial substances and including countless verbatim quotations along with his own evaluations. Edited and translated by Paul U. Unschuld, A Catalog of Benevolent Items provides thoughtfully curated selections from the Ben cao gang mu, organized by theme. This anthology offers little-known details of China’s historical knowledge of nature; traditional Chinese medicine and its theoretical foundations; social and cultural facets of ancient Chinese civilization not documented elsewhere; and the information management of a sixteenth-century Chinese scholar. |
Contents
Preface | 5 |
16 sections | 31 |
Widespread culture local customs | 46 |
From magic correlations | 69 |
Numbers time | 92 |
Demons and spirits shamans and exorcism | 106 |
Involvement of Buddhists and Daoists | 123 |
Its organs and paths of entrance | 148 |
Cosmetics body enhancement | 172 |
Gender and sex | 192 |
Fertility and pregnancy | 214 |
Assessment and justification | 233 |
Toolsupported therapy | 255 |
Beggar and sovereign | 264 |
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Common terms and phrases
abdomen affected region ancient arsenolite bamboo bark BCGM Dict beans blood body boil called cao gang chai hu Chen Cangqi Chinese standard Chinese standard name cold color Daoist decoction demons disease Duan Chengshi effects evil qi Examples of Refined Famous Physicians females fetus fire five flavor flowers fruits ginseng Gong Grind grow hair heat hemp Hence herb human ingest juice kernels kidneys leaves Li Gao Li Shizhen long-term depots maces male materia medica medication mountains mung beans one’s Original Classic ounce pain paper mulberry patient pharmaceutical drug phlegm pills poison powder prepared Proven Recipes realgar Records by Famous Refined Usage resemble result root seeds serves to cure Shen Shizhen Song sores Su Song substances Sun Simiao Supplementary Records Tang Tao Hongjing therapeutic tree Wang wind intrusion wine wood worms/bugs yellow yin and yang Zhang Zhou