The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949: A Microhistory of the Caterpillar Fungus 3031247221, 9783031247224

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Introduction
Transnational Chinese Materia Medica
Scientific Medicine in Motion
Historicising the Caterpillar Fungus
2 The Spread of a Sino-Tibetan Marvel
Sino-Tibetan Origins
Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje’s Account of Yartsa Gunbu
Early Chinese Records of Winter Worm Summer Grass
As a Product
The Caterpillar Fungus Becomes Tribute
Emerging Areas of Production
Geographical Disparities and Rhapsodies
Transregional Comparisons and Nominal Variations
As a Marvel
The Caterpillar Fungus Captivates Eastern China
Miraculous Transformations and ‘Immortal Grass’
Packaging the Miracle and Trade
Fancy Look Versus Healing Power
As a Medicine
The Caterpillar Fungus in Cases and Prescriptions
Conclusion
3 The Caterpillar Fungus Travels Overseas
Debuting in France via the Jesuit Mission
Dominicus Parennin’s Tale of the Curative Caterpillar Fungus
Joining British Networks of Natural Knowledge
The Caterpillar Fungus Between John Reeves and British Naturalists
Samples from James E. Home and Henry Frewin and Medical Concern
Frank Kingdon Ward’s Specimens and Cambridge
Encountering Medical Concerns of Russians
Alexander A. Tatarinov Brings the Caterpillar Fungus to St. Petersburg
Spreading Eastward to Japan
Carl P. Thunberg Encounters ‘Totsu Kaso’
Chinese Traders Bring the Caterpillar Fungus to Japanese Attention
Japanese Variants of the Caterpillar Fungus as Kasō Tōchū
Conclusion
4 The Caterpillar Fungus Teases
A Wonder No More?
Auguste-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy’s Revisit of Réaumur’s ‘Plante Ver’
New Taxonomic Identifications
Miles J. Berkeley’s Identification of Sphaeria Sinensis and Its Aftermath
Identification of the Caterpillar
New Medical Representations
Maritime Customs’s Publication of Information on Chinese Medicines
Homeopathic Use of the Caterpillar Fungus
Changes in Japanese Perceptions
In Search of the Caterpillar Fungus and Discovery of Similar Organisms
New Perceptions About the Caterpillar Fungus
Conclusion
5 New Caterpillar Fungus Emerges and Negotiates
Locating a Scientific Caterpillar Fungus
Cognitive Change
Communicating the Science of the Caterpillar Fungus
Inviting Scientific Inquiry
Mycological Studies
Chemical and Pharmacological Studies
Domestic Circulation and Consumption
In the Spotlight of Medical Reform
Materia Medica of Growing Importance
Chinese Materia Medica Reformed in the Form of a Dictionary
The Caterpillar Fungus Scientised in an Entry
Between Scholarship and Practice
Extending Textual Life from Dictionaries to Textbooks
Consequences of Scientification
Conclusion
6 Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

MEDICINE AND BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES IN MODERN HISTORY

The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949 A Microhistory of the Caterpillar Fungus Di Lu

Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History

Series Editors Carsten Timmermann, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK Michael Worboys, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

The aim of this series is to illuminate the development and impact of medicine and the biomedical sciences in the modern era.The series was founded by the late Professor John Pickstone, and its ambitions reflect his commitment to the integrated study of medicine, science and technology in their contexts. He repeatedly commented that it was a pity that the foundation discipline of the field, for which he popularized the acronym ‘HSTM’ (History of Science, Technology and Medicine) had been the history of science rather than the history of medicine. His point was that historians of science had too often focused just on scientific ideas and institutions, while historians of medicine always had to consider the understanding, management and meanings of diseases in their socioeconomic, cultural, technological and political contexts. In the event, most of the books in the series dealt with medicine and the biomedical sciences, and the changed series title reflects this. However, as the new editors we share Professor Pickstone’s enthusiasm for the integrated study of medicine, science and technology, encouraging studies on biomedical science, translational medicine, clinical practice, disease histories, medical technologies, medical specialisms and health policies. The books in this series will present medicine and biomedical science as crucial features of modern culture, analysing their economic, social and political aspects, while not neglecting their expert content and context. Our authors investigate the uses and consequences of technical knowledge, and how it shaped, and was shaped by, particular economic, social and political structures. In re-launching the Series, we hope to build on its strengths but extend its geographical range beyond Western Europe and North America. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History is intended to supply analysis and stimulate debate. All books are based on searching historical study of topics which are important, not least because they cut across conventional academic boundaries.They should appeal not just to historians, nor just to medical practitioners, scientists and engineers, but to all who are interested in the place of medicine and biomedical sciences in modern history. This series continues the Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History series.

Di Lu

The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949 A Microhistory of the Caterpillar Fungus

Di Lu Institute of Advanced Studies University College London London, UK

ISSN 2947-9142 ISSN 2947-9150 (electronic) Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History ISBN 978-3-031-24722-4 ISBN 978-3-031-24723-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: @ICHIRO/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my grandparents, born optimists

Acknowledgements

I have been a slave to the caterpillar fungus for some nine years. Now it is time to write my declaration of independence. In 2013, with delightful memories of Canterbury, I moved to London to embark on my research project at University College London. First, I must express my deep gratitude to Vivienne Lo, who broadened my historical horizons and provided careful supervision and generous support in many ways. Michael Heinrich as a distinguished pharmacognosist reinforced my ability to anatomise scientific information from historical sources and offered me much helpful guidance on the history of European materia medica. Andrew Wear fascinated me with European medical history, while often pointing me to alternative ways of thinking history. Eleanor Robson once furnished me with some useful bibliographical information. Helga Satzinger and Volker Scheid read through my work and offered many insightful comments. Moreover, I derived much inspiration and encouragement from Penelope Barrett, Dolly Yang, Michael Stanley-Baker, Nancy Holroyde-Downing, David Dear and Takaki Nishiyama. What I have benefited from their writings and personalities are hard to put into words. I am indebted to Jon Earle and Judith Magee of the Natural History Museum (London), John Chignoli of the British Library, Lynda Brooks of the Linnean Society of London, Kathie T. Hodge of Cornell University, Carol Westaway of the Royal Horticultural Society (London), Jane Trodd of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (London), Genevieve E. Tocci of Farlow Herbarium at Harvard University, Janet Winfield of the American

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Baptist Historical Society (Atlanta), Mark G. Guchninsky of S. M. Kirov Military Medical Academy (St. Petersburg), and the staff of the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), Archives of the New York Botanical Garden, Linda Hall Library (Kansas), Nanjing Library and the Second Historical Archives in Nanjing. They facilitated my hunt for certain important Euro-American, Russian and Chinese publications and manuscripts. I also appreciate the generosity of Leonid P. Churilov, Li Nan, Wan Fang, Xiao Yuqiu, Li Min and Bhushan Shrestha in sharing some useful historical information, and of Begoña Aguirre-Hudson, Bryn Dentinger and Monique Simmonds in supplying me with a photograph of several specimens of the caterpillar fungus at the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Marta Hanson read the book manuscript meticulously and enriched my mind with a wide range of constructive ideas. The journey of transforming my research into a book started at the University of Manchester in September 2019. I am grateful to Peter H. Gries for creating a peaceful environment for me to think, read and write with freedom. After relocating to Tel Aviv University in March 2020, I began a new research project with considerable endorsement from Asaf Goldschmidt, Ori Sela and the School of Historical Studies. Meanwhile, the revision of the book manuscript proceeded. I was also honoured to have been elected a Zvi Yavetz Fellow and Thomas Arthur Arnold Fellow, and to have received the Dan David Prize scholarship. Israel is perhaps the most unique place in the world for a historian to reflect on multiculturalism and globalisation. I reaped an abundant harvest of warm memories of my days with Asaf, Ori, Galia Lavi, Israel Kanner, Gal Mendel, Pnina Chazon, Lee Kushnir, Einat Marbach Bar, Hila Yaffe, Eliyahu Antebi, Ilay Golan, Noa Hegesh, Eunhee Park, and a variety of other scholars and friends at Tel Aviv University. They have accompanied me through one of my toughest times. A series of research seminars organised by Mark Gamsa, in which I was involved, sharpened my skills in historical analysis and critical assessment. Yoav Ariel’s outspokenness and lectures on philosophy impressed me with the integrity and insights that a scholar should have. I also owe a debt of gratitude to J. E. Spencer, Chen Lu and Zong Shanshan, who at times gave me invaluable academic assistance but never complained. Irina Skogareva and Sergey Bronshtein enthusiastically guided me to Slavic culture and languages. My friendship with Daisy, Alice, Rosalyn, Yel, Beth, Mercy, Oren, Rommel, Lyn, Janelle, Shahar

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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Matmon, Lama’h Rchman, Monika Luft and Joshua Hutton brought invaluable extra joy to me. As always, my parents uphold my academic pursuits and feel proud of my international experiences. They once inquired into what I had learnt in the UK and overseas, and my answer was merely ‘so what’. This book marks the end of a significant period in my academic life. One of the roots that have led to the completion of this book might be traced to my elder sister. It was from her I for the first time learnt that the earthworm bore the amazing name of earth dragon in Chinese medicine. My nephew Kevin Ding is the youngest pal of mine always curious about everyday life abroad. Last but not least, many thanks are due to Molly Beck and Lucy Kidwell of Palgrave Macmillan for their patience, advice and editorial efforts. I thereby substantially streamlined the chapters and footnotes. However, the errors and inaccuracies in this book are not entirely my own, as the narrative is based on my compromise with the caterpillar fungus. But it is too humble to share authorship.

Contents

1

Introduction Transnational Chinese Materia Medica Scientific Medicine in Motion Historicising the Caterpillar Fungus

1 4 9 18

2

The Spread of a Sino-Tibetan Marvel Sino-Tibetan Origins As a Product As a Marvel As a Medicine Conclusion

25 27 38 57 86 95

3

The Caterpillar Fungus Travels Overseas Debuting in France via the Jesuit Mission Joining British Networks of Natural Knowledge Encountering Medical Concerns of Russians Spreading Eastward to Japan Conclusion

97 101 117 137 149 157

4

The Caterpillar Fungus Teases A Wonder No More? New Taxonomic Identifications New Medical Representations Changes in Japanese Perceptions Conclusion

159 163 175 192 204 214 xi

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CONTENTS

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New Caterpillar Fungus Emerges and Negotiates Locating a Scientific Caterpillar Fungus Inviting Scientific Inquiry Domestic Circulation and Consumption In the Spotlight of Medical Reform Between Scholarship and Practice Conclusion

217 219 229 241 250 268 280

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Conclusion

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

During the World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany in August 1993, three Chinese women runners won three gold medals in the 1500-metre, 3000-metre and 10,000-metre events.1 Refuting the accusation of drug-taking, the Chinese coach of them ‘credits his runners’ success to rigorous training and a special diet that includes traditional herbs and a mineral-rich potion made from the dong chong xia cao worm’.2 The following year two American entomologists published an article entitled ‘Chinese Caterpillar Fungus and World Record Runners’ in the journal American Entomologist. Before telling ‘an interesting entomological story’, they noted that ‘the possible stress-relieving properties’ of the caterpillar fungus, called dongchong xiacao in Chinese, continued to ‘intrigue Western athletes and scientists’, which might ‘result in runners around the world ingesting the caterpillar fungus tonic’ and, as they hoped, would ‘stimulate research by medical researchers’.3 So, what is

1 Mark Butler (ed.), IAAF World Athletics Championships, Doha 2019: Statistics Handbook, Monaco: IAAF Communications Department, 2019, pp. 274, 281, 286. 2 David Gordon, ‘The Rumored Dope on Beijing’s Women’, Newsweek, 27 September 1993, Sect. 63. 3 Donald C. Steinkraus and James B. Whitfield, ‘Chinese Caterpillar Fungus and World Record Runners’, American Entomologist, 1994, 40(4): 235–239, 235.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1_1

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the caterpillar fungus? Why does it have such a strange name as dongchong xiacao, which literally means winter worm summer grass? A concise biological biography of the caterpillar fungus here may help readers go through this book more smoothly, despite fear of undermining subsequent interpretations of historical records and implying a positivist orientation. According to contemporary biology, its formation is as follows: the fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis, formerly known as Cordyceps sinensis ) infects the larvae of the insects belonging to the family Hepialidae (a group of moths) in summer or autumn; then, after the mycelial development in winter, which kills the larvae, the fungus grows out of their heads and forms fruiting bodies the following spring or summer. As the fruiting bodies mature, they will release spores to the environment in which some of the larvae will then be infected and start the above process. If the larvae are not infected, they will then be able to develop to moths. At the point of collection for human consumption, the larvae are dead, but the fungus is still alive.4 Recent biogeographical investigations demonstrate that this fungal species, now under threat of overexploitation and climate change, is distributed only in the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding Himalayas, including certain high-altitude areas in China (Tibet, Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu), Nepal, Bhutan

4 Yang Yuexiong et al., ‘Chongcao Jun Ganran Chongcao Fu’e Youchong De Yanjiu’, Dongwu Xue Yanjiu, 1989, 10(3): 227–231; Gi-Ho Sung et al., ‘Phylogenetic Classification of Cordyceps and the Clavicipitaceous Fungi’, Studies in Mycology, 2007, 57: 5–59; Daniel Winkler, ‘Caterpillar Fungus (Ophiocordyceps Sinensis ) Production and Sustainability on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas’, Asian Medicine, 2009, 5(2): 291–316; Daniel Winkler, ‘Cordyceps Sinensis: A Precious Parasitic Fungus Infecting Tibet’, Field Mycology, 2010, 11(2): 60–67; Xiao-Liang Wang and Yi-Jian Yao, ‘Host Insect Species of Ophiocordyceps Sinensis: A Review’, ZooKeys, 2011, 127: 43–59; Zhengyang Wang et al., ‘Thitarodes shambalaensis sp. nov. (Lepidoptera, Hepialidae): A New Host of the Caterpillar Fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis Supported by Genome-Wide SNP Data’, ZooKeys, 2019, 885: 89–113.

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and India.5 For sure only very late did these scientific facts come into being and circulate around the world. The caterpillar fungus is a popular, expensive and highly esteemed medicinal substance in and even outside China.6 But Tibetans had used it long before it came into the sights of Chinese physicians and flowed to Europe and Japan. Fascinating different communities concerned with the construction of knowledge and adaptation of traditions in cross-cultural contexts, it reinvented itself now and then, and entangled with international roots of the transformation of Chinese materia medica in modern times. Over the past decades, scholars have detected various historical traces of the caterpillar fungus in Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese and Western cultures.7 Their efforts lay a sound foundation for a historiographical 5 Liang Zongqi (ed.), Zhongguo Zhenjun Zhi (Vol. 32), Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 125–126; Bhushan Shrestha et al., ‘What Is the Chinese Caterpillar Fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis (Ophiocordycipitaceae)?’, Mycology, 2010, 1(4): 228–236; Yi Li et al., ‘A Survey of the Geographic Distribution of Ophiocordyceps sinensis ’, The Journal of Microbiology, 2011, 49(6): 913–919; Uttam Babu Shrestha and Kamaljit S. Bawa, ‘Impact of Climate Change on Potential Distribution of Chinese Caterpillar Fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis ) in Nepal Himalaya’, PLoS ONE, 2014, 9(9): e106405; Yujing Yan et al., ‘Range Shifts in Response to Climate Change of Ophiocordyceps sinensis, a Fungus Endemic to the Tibetan Plateau’, Biological Conservation, 2017, 206: 143–150; Kelly A. Hopping et al., ‘The Demise of Caterpillar Fungus in the Himalayan Region due to Climate Change and Overharvesting’, PNAS, 2018, 115(45): 11,489–11,494. 6 Kenneth Jones, Cordyceps : Tonic Food of Ancient China, Seattle: Sylvan Press, 1997; Georges M. Halpern, Cordyceps : China’s Healing Mushroom, Garden City Park: Avery Publishing Group, 1999; Dennis J. McKenna et al., Botanical Medicines: The Desk Reference for Major Herbal Supplements, New York: The Haworth Herbal Press, 2002, pp. 169–184; David L. Hawksworth, ‘Cordyceps sinensis and Ganoderma lucidum amongst Top ‘Herbal’ Medicines’, Mycological Research, 2003, 107(3): 259; Kunga Tsering Lama, Crowded Mountains, Empty Towns: Commodification and Contestation in Cordyceps Harvesting in Eastern Tibet (MA Thesis), Boulder: University of Colorado, 2007. 7 Kobayashi Yoshio, Nihon Ch¯ ugoku Kinrui Rekishi to Minzokugaku, Tokyo: Hirokawa Shoten, 1983, pp. 63–66; Nie San, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Tanqu’, Shiyong Jun, 1984 (1): 42–43; Chen Shiyu,‘Dongchong Xiacao Shihua’, Shiyong Jun, 1991, (6): 45–46; Chen Shiyu, ‘Mingqing Biji Xiaoshuo Zhong De Dongchong Xiacao’, Zhongguo Shiyong Jun, 1993, 12(4): 7–8; Jiang Sanjun, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Kao’, Zhongguo Shiping, 1993, (12): 29–30; Chen Shouchang, ‘Chongcao Kaozheng’, Nongye Kaogu, 1993 (1): 161–163; Daniel Winkler, ‘Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc.: Economy, Ecology, and Ethno-Mycology of Yartsa Gunbu, a Medicinal Fungus Endemic for the Tibetan Plateau’, International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, 2005, 7(3): 481–482; Okuzawa Yasumasa, ‘T¯ och¯u Kas¯o (K¯ogi) Torai no Rekishi to Yakubutsu to Shite no Juy¯ o’, Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi, 2007, 53(1): 178–179; Okuzawa Yasumasa, T¯ och¯ u Kas¯ o no Bunkashi, Kyoto: Ishida Taiseisha, 2012, pp. 39–142.

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reappraisal and further exploration of its footsteps across geographical, political and cultural boundaries, which facilitates a nuanced discussion about the significance of changes in the wider world to the transformation of the Chinese materia medica. Its extraordinary ability to transition itself from winter worm to summer grass aptly functions as metaphor as well for the dynamic mutability of medical expertise and Chinese materia medica one can see through the social life of caterpillar fungus.

Transnational Chinese Materia Medica Materia medica has been an important theme of the material and intellectual interactions between East and West. The historian Linda L. Barnes has taken into account herbal medicine in her erudite history of Western representations of Chinese healing traditions from the thirteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries.8 Composed by the Polish Jesuit missionary Michael Boym and others, the Specimen Medicinae Sinicae (1682) records two hundred and eighty-nine medicinal substances and dozens of prescriptions used by the Chinese.9 In around 1697, the Mexican Franciscan missionary Pedro de la Piñuela composed a Chinese text entitled Bencao Bu (Supplement to [Chinese] Materia Medica) in China, with the purpose of introducing some knowledge about exotic and indigenous medicinal substances beyond the scope of Chinese learning.10 Part of its content was later invoked by Chinese medical authors.11 In the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a growing Western interest in Chinese medicinal substances, accompanied with the publication of relevant treatises by, for example, Daniel Hanbury, Jean-Odon Debeaux and Bernard E. Read.12 As suggested 8 Linda L. Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. For Chinese materia medica in the early modern period, see He Bian, Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. 9 Michael Boym et al., Specimen Medicinae Sinicae, Francofurti: Joannis Petri Zubrodt, 1682, pp. 157–211. 10 Pedro de la Piñuela, Bencao Bu, Rome: Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, JapanicaSinica II, 86; and Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Chinois 5332. 11 For example, see Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [c. 1803] 1998, pp. 44–45. 12 Daniel Hanbury, Notes on Chinese Materia Medica, London: John E. Taylor, 1862; Jean-Odon Debeaux, Essai sur la Pharmacie et la Matière Médicale des Chinois, Paris:

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by the title of Frederick P. Smith’s medical work Contributions towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China (1871), many of the medicinal substances in the world of Chinese medicine were also plants, animals and minerals, and thereby intersected with the interest of natural historians.13 Carla Nappi’s treatment of the bulky Chinese book Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1578) takes a naturalhistorical perspective, exploring how its inclusion of an unprecedented number of native and exotic medicinal objects and species negotiated with existing natural knowledge system in the tradition of materia medica.14 Historians have devoted much attention to certain medicinal substances well known in Chinese society. Clifford M. Foust provides a lively cultural, economic and medical history of rhubarb from the medieval ages to the twentieth century, though it places emphasis on Europe and does not give sufficient consideration to China as a major production area.15 Chang Che-Chia’s analysis of Sino-Russian interaction concerning rhubarb trade before the early nineteenth century demonstrates how different preparation and understandings of a single drug participated in the making of unexpected political policies and results.16 Different from rhubarb, opium is a narcotic, tightly associated with imperialism and nationalism in historical writing of modern China, especially the Sino-British Opium War.17 In their survey of the consumption and

J.-B. Baillière et Fils, 1865; Bernard E. Read, Botanical, Chemical, and Pharmacological Reference List to Chinese Materia Medica, Beijing: Printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, 1923; Bernard E. Read and Liu Ju-Ch’iang, Plantae Medicinalis Sinensis: Bibliography of Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu, Beijing: Department of Pharmacology, Peking Union Medical College, 1927. 13 Frederick P. Smith, Contributions towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, Shanghai and London: American Presbyterian Mission Press and Trübner & Co., 1871. Here I describe it as a medical work because of its subtitle: ‘for the use of medical missionaries & native medical students’. 14 Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. 15 Clifford M. Foust, Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug, Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1992. 16 Chang Che-Chia, ‘Origins of a Misunderstanding: The Qianlong Emperor’s Embargo on Rhubarb Exports to Russia, the Scenario and Its Consequences’, Asian Medicine, 2005, 1(2): 335–354. 17 Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (eds.), Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

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state regulation of opium and its derivatives in modern Chinese society, Frank Dikötter and his collaborators challenge the stigmatised image of opium in the opening of China, accentuating the benefits of opium for agricultural economy and medical treatment, while questioning the exaggerated harmful effects of opium and population of addicts.18 Such a conception also appears in Zheng Yangwen’s social history of opium.19 These studies of opium point to the complex social significance of medicinal substances, as reflected also in Carol Benedict’s historical inquiry into the Chinese consumption of exotic but domesticated tobacco, like opium and its infusion into late imperial medical culture.20 Ginseng, a precious natural resource in the northeastern region of China, even lends Seonmin Kim a lens into the transformation of the Manchu state to the Qing empire, and Qing control of its borderland and political relations with Chos˘on Korea.21 The border-crossing interactions involving medicinal substances demonstrate a transnational context for observation of knowledge circulation, networking and power relations. By the mid-twentieth century, historians had been aware that the nation state, whose hierarchical spatial order had started to assert itself by the middle of the nineteenth century, no longer worked as the most appropriate reference frame for social action.22 In the 1960s scholars such as Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault commenced a critical reflection on the rigid imagination of space, stressing ‘the ontological parity of space and time’ in social processes and relations.23 From the 1980s–1990s, historians’ engagement with the spatial turn occasioned a historiographic departure from 18 Frank Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. 19 Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 20 Carol Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550–2010, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, pp. 88–109. 21 Seonmin Kim, Ginseng and Borderland: Territorial Boundaries and Political Relations Between Qing China and Chos˘on Korea, 1636–1912, Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. 22 Matthias Middell and Katja Naumann, ‘Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization’, Journal of Global History, 2010, 5(1): 149–170. 23 Edward W. Soja, ‘Taking Space Personally’, in Barney Warf and Santa Arias (eds.), The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 11–35, 18.

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conceptions of space as a fixed and inanimate container for the social, and also a methodological move away from nation-centrism. This new spatial awareness contributed to the rise of research into transnational history, which lays stress on the movements of things, ideas and practices across borders.24 The historian Pamela H. Smith draws attention to places or nodes of convergence where mobile humans and materials came together, emphasising that the value and meanings of travelling materials transmuted as they assembled with people, ideas and practices in entangled itineraries and new relational fields which shaped knowledge-making and epistemologies.25 Moreover, the rejection of scientific universalism by historians of science led attention to the influence of various places and spaces on scientific practice, as well as ‘the cosmopolitan or trans-national idea of intellectual exchange across geographical borders’.26 Attending to the transmissibility of a single border-crossing object such as the caterpillar fungus more or less avoids the tension between the local and the global arising from increasing efforts to weave together local case studies and historiographies of science into a global plot.27 Chinese medicine, with which the name of the caterpillar fungus is often associated, has never framed itself within national boundaries. Roberta E. Bivins has revealed the introduction of acupuncture to Europe and its transmission and innovations in Britain from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.28 Harold J. Cook finds that the English physician John Floyer (1649– 1734) acquired knowledge of Chinese medicine from Jesuit missionaries in China; his misunderstandings about the ‘pulse’ in Chinese medicine, 24 Christopher A. Bayly et al., ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, The American Historical Review, 2006, 111(5): 1441–1464; Beat Kümin and Cornelie Usborne, ‘At Home and in the Workplace: A Historical Introduction to the ‘Spatial Turn’’, History and Theory, 2013, 52(3): 305–318; Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 1–18. 25 Pamela H. Smith, ‘Nodes of Convergence, Material Complexes, and Entangled Itineraries’, in Pamela H. Smith (ed.), Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, pp. 5–24. 26 Charles W. J. Withers, ‘Place and the ‘Spatial Turn’ in Geography and in History’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 2009, 70(4): 637–658, 655. 27 Carla Nappi, ‘The Global and Beyond: Adventures in the Local Historiographies of Science’, Isis, 2013, 104(1): 102–110. 28 Roberta E. Bivins, Acupuncture, Expertise and Cross-Cultural Medicine, New York: Palgrave, 2000.

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however, did not bring about tragic medical consequences but inspired his creative response in relation to natural changes in the body.29 This case, as Cook indicates, constituted part of the processes of alteration in the translation of Chinese medical ways beyond its homeland in the early modern period.30 These studies challenge the diffusionist framework of centre and periphery, and the essentialist view of a singular ‘Chinese medicine’. The heterogeneity of ‘Chinese’ materia medica also shows that it was not inherently Chinese.31 In modern China, science and its powerful rhetoric engaged in the shaping of new scholarship of medicinal substances.32 In 1992, a general history of materia medica in modern China devoted much space to the transmission of Western materia medica to modern Chinese society and its encounter with indigenous materia medica. The inflow of Western drugs and underdevelopment of native pharmaceutical industry was largely attributed to foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism. Yet favourable comments were made on scientific knowledge, along with eight suggestions for integrating Chinese and Western materia medica, most of which centre on the application of modern science and technology.33 The scientific approach to indigenous medicinal substances is reflected in the biomedical exploration of the antimalarial efficacy of Changshan (Dichroa febrifuga) in Republican China.34 It also led to, allegedly enlightened by an ancient Chinese medical record,

29 Harold J. Cook, ‘Creative Misunderstandings: Chinese Medicine in SeventeenthCentury Europe’, in Daniel T. Rodgers et al. (eds.), Cultures in Motion, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 215–240. 30 Harold J. Cook, ‘Translating Chinese Medical Ways in the Early Modern Period’, Harold J. Cook (ed.), Translation at Work: Chinese Medicine in the First Global Age, Leiden: Brill, 2020, pp. 1–22. 31 Shiu Ying Hu, ‘History of the Introduction of Exotic Elements into Traditional Chinese Medicine’, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 1990, 71(4): 487–526; Sean Bradley, ‘Myrrh: Medical Knowledge from Arabia into Chinese Materia Medica’, Medicina nei Secoli-Arte e Scienza, 2018, 30(3): 881–906. 32 Xue Yu (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Shiliao, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1984, pp. 410–438; Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 261–267. 33 Chen Xinqian and Zhang Tianlu, Zhongguo Jindai Yaoxue Shi, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1992, pp. 213–214. 34 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, ‘From Changshan to a New Anti-Malarial Drug: ReNetworking Chinese Drugs and Excluding Traditional Doctors’, Social Studies of Science, 1999, 29(3): 323–358.

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the discovery of the anti-malarial chemical drug artemisinin from the plant qinghao (Artemisia annua) in the 1970s, which won China the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015. Artemisinin is now regarded ‘a gift from traditional Chinese medicine to the world’.35 To be sure, artemisinin is a product of biomedical research. Yet its connection with ancient Chinese medicine prompts reflection on the dichotomy between tradition and modernity in the making of ‘modern’ ‘Chinese’ materia medica.

Scientific Medicine in Motion Probing the making of modern Chinese materia medica necessitates concern for the globalisation of modern medical sciences. The EuroAmericans in China, especially the Protestant missionaries, were pivotal to the introduction of their own science and medicine which often functioned as an auxiliary tool for spreading Christianity among the Chinese.36 The German missionary Karl F. A. Gützlaff (1803–1851) believed that Western ‘useful knowledge and science’, ‘the handmaids of true religion’, would inform the Chinese of ‘what has been and is now existing and transpiring beyond the limits of the celestial empire’; and the Chinese remained ‘stationary’, ‘as they have been for ages past’, and regarded all the other nations as ‘barbarians’.37 Thus science also served to redress Sino-Western power relations. During the nineteenth century, the efforts of medical missionaries to heal the sick and save souls supplied alternative and sometimes more effective ways of healing to the Chinese.38 To prosecute the required medical undertakings, some 35 Youyou Tu, From Artemisia annua L. to Artemisinins: The Discovery and Devel-

opment of Artemisinins and Antimalarial Agents, San Diego: Academic Press, 2017, p. xxxix. 36 Harold Balme, China and Modern Medicine, a Study in Medical Missionary Development, London: United Council for Missionary Education, 1921, pp. 30–31, 41; Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 283–351. 37 Charles Gützlaff, ‘A Monthly Periodical in the Chinese Language’, The Chinese Repository, 1833, 2(4): 186–187. 38 Omar L. Kilborn, Heal the Sick: An Appeal for Medical Missions in China, Toronto: Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, 1910; Gerald H. Choa, ‘Heal the Sick’ Was Their Motto: The Protestant Medical Missionaries in China, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1990.

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Euro-Americans, such as the American doctor Peter Parker, also the first medical missionary in China, suggested dispatching medical missionaries and founding a medical missionary society.39 On 21 February 1838, the ‘Medical Missionary Society in China’ was organised in Canton.40 Soon later Parker and two others delivered an address on 14 April, stating that ‘the Chinese admit their ignorance of medical science, especially surgery and anatomy’; but the Society recommended studying the Chinese language partly because of its usefulness in investigating ‘the substances used in Chinese Pharmacy’ and ‘their peculiar modes of preparation’, so that ‘we may therefore look for a great many valuable additions to our dispensatories’.41 Obviously, they debased Chinese medicine for its absence of their ‘science’, meanwhile valuing the potential contribution of Chinese medicinal substances to their own pharmacy. Following the end of the Sino-British Opium War (1839–1842), restrictions on the movement and activities of westerners were gradually relieved. The Treaty of Wanghia (1844) permitted Americans to erect churches in the treaty ports open to foreign trade.42 Fourteen years later, the treaties of Tientsin (1858) between the Qing court and Russia, United States, Britain and France for the first time legitimated travel and missionary work in the interior of China.43 According to Joseph C. Thomson’s statistics in 1890, by then there had been two hundred fourteen medical missionaries of twenty-five societies to the Chinese; and

39 Thomas R. Colledge, ‘Suggestions with Regard to Employing Medical Practitioners as Missionaries to China’, The Chinese Repository, 1835, 4(8): 386–389; Thomas R. Colledge et al., ‘Suggestions for the Formation of a Medical Missionary Society, Offered to the Consideration of All Christian Nations’, The Chinese Repository, 1836, 5(8): 370–373. 40 Thomas R. Colledge et al., ‘Medical Missionary Society: Regulations and Resolutions, adopted at a Public Meeting Held at Canton on the 21st of February, 1838’, The Chinese Repository, 1838, 7(1): 32–44. 41 Thomas R. Colledge et al., The Medical Missionary Society in China: Address, with Minutes of Proceedings, Canton: Printed at the Office of the Chinese Repository, 1838, pp. 16–18. 42 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1887, p. 288. 43 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, pp. 35, 162, 336, 412.

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most of China’s provinces had seen one medical missionary or more.44 From 1877 to 1890, the number of mission hospitals and dispensaries in China increased from sixteen and twenty-four to sixty-one and fortyfour.45 By 1907 the number had surged to one hundred sixty-six and two hundred forty-one, respectively.46 In 1909 there were reportedly more than eight-hundred medical missionaries and some forty trained nurses in charge of probably three-hundred-and-fifty hospitals and dispensaries in China, seeing about two million patients a year.47 These medical intuitions entailed consumption of Western medicines. In 1836, Peter Parker’s first report of his ophthalmic hospital in Canton mentioned the use of, for example, caustic potash, laudanum and a saline purgative.48 In the 1840s he even pioneered the introduction of ether and chloroform to China.49 From its opening to foreign trade in 1843 to 1911, Shanghai gradually came to the fore regarding the supply of Western medicines, witnessing the establishment of a number of foreign (mainly EuroAmerican) purveyors of such medicines.50 In 1902, a uniform tariff of five per cent was imposed on imported unenumerated ‘medicines’ beyond those limitedly enumerated and receiving differential tax treatment.51 44 Joseph C. Thomson, List of Medical Missionaries to the Chinese, Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1890, pp. 14–16. 45 Anonymous, Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China, Held at Shanghai, May 10–24, 1877 , Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1878, p. 486; Anonymous, Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China, Held at Shanghai, May 7 –20, 1890, Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1890, p. 735. 46 Anonymous, China Centenary Missionary Conference, Held at Shanghai, April 25 to May 8, 1907 , Shanghai: Centenary Conference Committee, 1907, p. 783. 47 William H. Jefferys, ‘A Review of Medical Education in China’, The China Medical Journal, 1909, 23(5): 294–299. 48 Peter Parker, ‘Ophthalmic Hospital at Canton, First Quarterly Report, from the 4th of November 1835 to the 4th of February 1836’, The Chinese Repository, 1836, 4(10): 461–473. 49 Edward H. Hume, ‘Peter Parker and the Introduction of Anesthesia into China’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1946, 1(4): 670–674. 50 Shanghai Shi Yiyao Gongsi et al., Shanghai Jindai Xiyao Hangye Shi, Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1998, pp. 17–35. 51 Order of the Inspector General of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, Revised Import Tariff for the Trade of China, 31st October 1902, Shanghai: The Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1911, p. 28; Zhuhu Tongshang Haiguan Zaocechu, Tongshang Jinkou Shuize, Shanghai: Zhuhu Tongshang Haiguan Zaocechu, 1902, p. 12.

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Prior to the foundation of the Medical Missionary Society in China, ‘two promising youths’ had already learnt English from Peter Parker in 1837, wishing to become doctors. One of them ‘is a great lover of the medical profession and regrets that he is too old to become a doctor himself’.52 He was Guan Tao who, after receiving medical training from Parker, became the ‘first Chinese surgeon’, ‘remarkable as the first Chinese to acquire a knowledge of Western medicine and surgery’.53 The involvement of natives and education conduced to the development of Western medicine in China. In 1866, the American Presbyterian medical missionary John G. Kerr (1824–1901) opened a medical school in Canton, with the assistance of Huang Kuan (1829–1878), who graduated M.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1855. Kerr lectured on materia medica and chemistry; Huang taught anatomy, physiology and surgery; and Guan Tao, then temporarily absent, would instruct practical medicine and Chinese medicine.54 By 1909, there had been diverse mission medical schools and medical departments of mission universities, providing education on materia medica, chemistry, anatomy and other branches of Western medicine.55 Some Methodists in Suzhou even organised a ‘class in pharmacy’ commencing in 1907.56 Promulgated on 15 August 1902 and 13 January 1904, moreover, the new-style national higher education regulations listed materia medica as a subject independent of medicine.57

52 George B. Stevens, The Life, Letters, and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter Parker, M.D., Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1896, pp. 132–133. 53 Joseph C. Thomson, ‘Rev. Peter Parker, M.D., First Medical Missionary to China, and Dr. Kwan A-To, First Chinese Surgeon’, The China Medical Missionary Journal, 1888, 2(4): 169–172, 169, 171. Cf. Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973, p. 150; Liu Zesheng, ‘Zhongguo Jindai Diyiwei Xiyisheng: Guan Tao’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2000, 30(2): 98–100. 54 Anonymous, Report of the Medical Missionary Society in China, for the Year 1866, Canton: Publisher Unknown, 1867, pp. 8–10. 55 Francis L. H. Pott et al., ‘Medical Education in China […] Union School for Nurses,

Peking’, The China Medical Journal, 1909, 23(5): 289–345. 56 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Annual Report of the Board of Missions of the M. E. Church, South, Nashville: The Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1908, p. 38. 57 Qu Xingui and Tang Liangyan (eds.), Zhongguo Jindai Jiaoyu Shi Ziliao Huibian: Xuezhi Yanbian, Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1991, pp. 236–237, 359–361.

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Missionaries and their local collaborators also published several Chinese treatises on a materia medica new to the Chinese, including the Xiyao Lüeshi (Manual of Materia Medica, 1871), Xiyao Dacheng (Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 1887; translated from John F. Royle and Frederick W. Headland’s A Manual of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 1868), Xiyao Dacheng Yaoping Zhongxi Mingmu Biao (Vocabulary of Names of Materia Medica Occurring in the Translation of ‘Royle’s Manual of Materia Medica, and Therapeutics’, 1887), Wanguo Yaofang (A Manual of Therapeutics and Pharmacy in the Chinese Language, 1890; translated from Peter Squire’s Companion to the Latest Edition of the British Pharmacopoeia, 1886) and Xiyao Dacheng Bubian (Supplement to Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 1904; translated from John Harley’s Royle’s Manual of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 1876).58 Many other missionary publications in Chinese also contain much new knowledge of materia medica, as evidenced in Benjamin Hobson and Guan Maocai’s books Xiyi Luelun (Principles and Practice of Western Medicine, 1857) and Neike Xinshuo (Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica, 1858). The former book contains several chapters dealing generally with materia medica and specifically with different types of drugs,59 while the second volume of the latter book, entitled Dongxi Bencao Luyao (Essentials of Eastern and Western Materia Medica), introduces both Chinese medicinal substances such as ginger and gancao (Glycyrrhiza uralensis ), and exotic natural (such as cinchona) or chemically produced drugs like

58 John G. Kerr, Xiyao Lüeshi, Guangzhou: Boji Yiju, 1871; John Fryer and Zhao Yuanyi, Xiyao Dacheng, Shanghai: Jiangnan Zhizaoju, 1887; John Fryer and Zhao Yuanyi, Xiyao Dacheng Yaoping Zhongxi Mingmu Biao, Shanghai: Jiangnan Zhizaoju, 1887; Stephen A. Hunter, Wanguo Yaofang, Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1890; John Fryer and Zhao Yuanyi, Xiyao Dacheng Bubian, Shanghai: Jiangnan Zhizaoju, 1904. John G. Kerr later revised the Xiyao Lüeshi twice in collaboration with Lin Xiangdong and Kong Jiliang, respectively; the two revisions were printed by the same publisher in 1875 and 1886. 59 Benjamin Hobson and Guan Maocai, Xiyi Luelun, Shanghai: Renji Yiguan, 1857, pp. 7–10, 331–364.

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suda (sodium carbonate).60 The volume title indicates an effort to integrate medicinal knowledge medica despite a tendency to detract Chinese materia medica here and there while elevating the exotic.61 Hobson himself had an interest in Chinese materia medica. In the 1854 report on his hospital in Canton, Hobson mentioned his success in using the seeds of the ‘Chaul moogra’ to treat his leprosy patients. Though the seeds were supplied from India, he found that this remedy was known to the Chinese, ‘but those who have any experience of its value, keep it a secret for their own profit’. Further, he translated a relevant Chinese medical record and wrote down its name in Chinese characters, that is, da feng zi. Besides, he even added a list of medicines ‘taken from a popular and standard work, called an abridgement or selection of the Chinese Materia Medica’.62 Hobson was by no means the only Westerner curious about local medicinal substances in nineteenth-century China. The British medical missionary William Lockhart (1811–1896) quoted Hobson’s list of medicines in his memoir, in which he provided a translation of a Chinese prescription showing ‘the Chinese to have discovered the value of arsenic in connection with ague’.63 In the first year following the foundation of the Medical Missionary Association of China in 1886, John G. Kerr as the president suggested members of the Association pay attention to the study of Chinese materia medica, not the ‘common’ and ‘inert’ substances, but those ‘peculiar to Chinese medicine, and of which little or nothing is known’; to him, it was nearly time for medical missionaries to know ‘the chemical composition and physiological action of all those which possess any real power to combat disease’.64 This idea in a general sense corresponded to the development of pharmacology that relied in

60 Benjamin Hobson and Guan Maocai, Neike Xinshuo, Shanghai: Renji Yiguan, 1858, pp. 145–233. 61 For Hobson’s varied attitudes to Chinese and Western materia medica, see Chan Man Sing, et al., ‘Wanqing Xiyixue De Yishu: Yi Xiyi Luelun, Fuying Xinshuo Liangge Gaoben Weili’, Zhongguo Wenhua Yanjiusuo Xuebao, 2013, (56): 243–293. 62 Benjamin Hobson, Report of the Hospital at Canton, for 1853–54, Canton: Publisher Unknown, 1854, pp. 9–10, 12. 63 William Lockhart, The Medical Missionary in China: A Narrative of Twenty Years’ Experience, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1861, pp. 59, 197–201. 64 John G. Kerr, ‘Chinese Materia Medica’, The China Medical Missionary Journal, 1887, 1(2): 79–80.

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part on, as Fa-ti Fan stresses, British and European research into Chinese materia medica.65 In reality there were indeed already many missionaries investigating Chinese medicines. In 1891 the British missionary George King introduced the powder made of ‘the inner skin of the chicken’s gizzard’, in consideration of procuring cheap medicinal substitutes locally to reduce the expense of medical mission work in China. He had used the powder in his family and among the Chinese, and could ‘testify to its efficacy as a digester and appetiser, as, in fact, an excellent substitute for Pepsin’.66 Similarly, the American medical missionary James B. Neal also strived to discover ‘medicines useful to the foreign practitioner’ in Jinan. In the same year, he reported his examination of sixty ‘Chinese inorganic drugs’ purchased locally, ‘unqualifiedly’ recommending about a dozen ‘for use in foreign practice’.67 While being exploited as a potential source of new effective medicines and medicinal substitutes, Chinese materia medica also received criticism. Hobson, for example, commented in 1860 that it lacked ‘the science of chemistry’ and terminologies ‘to represent an oxide, alkali, or salt’, and contained ‘very few preparations from the Mineral Kingdom’, ‘which forms so important a part of our Pharmacopoeia’. More broadly, he saw the application of the theories of yin and yang and five elements to medical treatment as ‘fatal to the progress of rational Medicine’, and ‘no better than a system of fanciful imagination and Empiricism’, though in actual practice, as he observed, there were ‘thinking’ Chinese physicians who ‘throw them aside, and follow more the convictions of their experience than the false systems laid down in their ancient books’.68 In brief, he thought that Chinese materia medica or medicine lacked sufficient, if not all, scientific basis despite its empirical value. Seen in this light it is not surprising that the first object of

65 Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 78–80. 66 George King, ‘A Cheap Substitute for Pepsin’, The China Medical Missionary Journal, 1891, 5(1): 24–25, 24. The inner skin of the chicken’s gizzard was often called ji nei jin (chicken’s inner gold) in Chinese medicine, see, for example, Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, Beijing: Huaxia Chubanshe, [1578] 2008, pp. 1715. 67 James B. Neal, ‘Inorganic Native Drugs of Chinanfu’, The China Medical Missionary Journal, 1891, 5(4): 193–204, 193–194. 68 Benjamin Hobson, ‘The History and Present State of Medicine in China’, The Medical Times and Gazette, 1860, 2: 451–453, 451.

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the Medical Missionary Association of China was ‘the promotion of the Science of Medicine amongst the Chinese’.69 However, this exotic, new and competitive science of medicine had to enlist local support, especially local official endorsement, as long as it aspired to achieve profound success among the vast Chinese population. At the suggestion of the British medical missionary John K. Mackenzie, the Viceroy Li Hongzhang precipitated the establishment of modern China’s first official school of scientific medicine in Tianjin on 15 December 1881. Eight young Chinese who had studied in the United States with official support were placed under the charge of Mackenzie ‘for the study of medicine and surgery’, ‘with a view to their being utilized eventually as medical officers by the Government’.70 But it would be too simplistic to treat missionaries as impartial agents of scientific medicine. Mackenzie confessed that ‘I do not value this branch of work so much from the medical side’; ‘if it merely meant training surgeons for the Chinese Government, I would give it up. I value it as a rare means of influencing these educated young men from a Christian standpoint’.71 Bridie Andrews confirms such a religious intent in her survey of missionary contributions to the transmission of scientific medicine to modern China, though she underlines more the encounter of scientific medicine and Chinese cultural norms and medical expertise.72 However, it is problematic to simply view this medicine as ‘Western’, as Japanese instructors in China and Chinese students trained in Japan, too, promoted its transmission in late Qing China, especially during the New Policies period (1901–1911).73 Of the Chinese books published in this 69 Anonymous, ‘Constitutions and By-Laws of the Medical Missionary Association of China’, The China Medical Missionary Journal, 1887, 1(1): 32–34, 32. 70 Mary Bryson, John Kenneth Mackenzie, Medical Missionary to China, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1891, pp. 229–232. 71 Albert B. Robinson, ‘John Kenneth Mackenzie, M.D.’, The Church at Home and Abroad, 1898, 23: 259–263, 261. 72 Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014, pp. 51–88. 73 For the arrival of Japanese teachers in China in the early twentieth century, see Cui

Shufen, Kindai Ch¯ ugoku ni Okeru Shihan Ky¯ oiku no Tenkai: Kiyosue Kara 1948 Nen Made o Ch¯ ushin to Shite, Fukuoka: Ky¯ush¯u Daigaku Bungaku Kenky¯ uka T¯oy¯oshi Hakase K¯oki Katei, 1996, p. 135; Wang Xiangrong, Riben Jiaoxi, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 2014, pp. 70–140; Ky¯ oko Kat¯o, ‘20 Seiki Shot¯ o ni Okeru Nihonjin Joshi Ky¯oin no Naka Kuni Haken’, Jend¯ a Kenky¯ u, 2015 (18): 73–85. For Chinese students in Japan in the early

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period, moreover, those translated from Japanese significantly outnumbered the translations of Euro-American books.74 This book adopts ‘scientific medicine’, relatively properer in terms of its nature as generally perceived by its practitioners and promoters, to describe the alleged ‘Western medicine’. From the beginning of the twentieth century, Chinese overseas students returning home gradually gave rise to the formation of native research strengths in scientific medicine, often accompanied with the voice of national salvation through science.75 Scientific medicine also secured a solid position in the government educational system of Republican China, which did not meanwhile admit Chinese medicine education.76 The official suppression of Chinese medicine then contrasted with the subsequent political utilisation of it in early Communist China, as analysed in depth by Kim Taylor.77 Yet given the regional imbalances in and territorial vastness of Republican China, scientific medicine was far from attaining a complete predominance over Chinese medicine.78

twentieth century, see Saneto Keishu, Chugokujin Nihon Ryugaku Shi, Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan, 1960; Huang Fuqing, Qingmo Liuri Xuesheng, Taipei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Jindaishi Yanjiusuo, 1975. For some statistical information on Japanese-trained Chinese students, see Li Huaxing and Chen Zuhuai, ‘Liuxue Jiaoyu Yu Jindai Zhongguo’, Shilin, 1996 (3): 41–52; Zhou Yichuan, ‘Jindai Zhongguo Liuri Xuesheng Renshu Kaobian’, Wen Shi Zhe, 2008, (2): 104–112; Lü Shunchang, Qingmo Zhongri Jiaoyu Wenhua Jiaoliu Zhi Yanjiu, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 2012, p. 185. 74 Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, ‘Western Impact on China through Translation’, in Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, Collected Writings on Chinese Culture, Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2011, pp. 163–190; Xiong Yuezhi, Xixue Dongjian Yu Wanqing Shehui, Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2011, p. 11. Cf. Tan Ruqian (ed.), Zhongguo Yi Ribenshu Zonghe Mulu, Hong Kong: Zhongwen Daxue Chubanshe, 1980, pp. 41, 47; Zhang Zhongmin, ‘Wanqing Chuban De Shengli Weisheng Shuji Jiqi Duzhe’, Shilin, 2008, (4): 20–36. 75 Xi Gao, ‘Foreign Models of Medicine in Twentieth-Century China’, in Bridie Andrews and Mary B. Bullock (eds.), Medical Transitions in Twentieth-Century China, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014, pp. 173–211. 76 Jiayubu, ‘Jiaoyubu Gongbu Daxue Guicheng Ling’, Jiaoyu Zazhi, 1913, 5(1): 1–19; Deng Tietao and Cheng Zhifan (eds.), Zhongguo Yixue Tongshi: Jindai Juan, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1999, pp. 195–244. 77 Kim Taylor, Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945–63: A Medicine of Revolution, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005, pp. 14–150. 78 In most regions of Republican China, Chinese medicine remained the mainstream of social medical care. For example, some government statistical information involving eleven provinces in 1929 and twenty-eight cities in 1933 demonstrates that the number

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And Chinese medicine was not at all extinct but, as Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei reveals, survived in different forms despite the hegemony of scientific modernity.79 Volker Scheid’s dissection of the development of the Menghe medical current in Republican China also points to continuity in the transmission of Chinese medical knowledge through kinship, mentoring relationships and so forth.80 Admittedly, however, the arrival of scientific medicine and its encounter with indigenous medical expertise in modern China, which has spawned considerable historical scholarship, played a fundamental part in the shaping of present-day therapeutic landscapes. Giving central concern to the interplay between human actors and materials, and natural history and medicine, then enables new insights into the materialities and structuring of knowledge engaged in medical modernity. This book delves into multi-sited presence of the caterpillar fungus within global scientific networks, which holds a mirror to the nodes of convergence and relational fields that affected the modernisation of Chinese medicine. Meanwhile, it seeks to balance relevant grand narratives with little stories and details of this travelling organism. As Robert W. Batterman recognises, ‘the devil is truly in the details’.81

Historicising the Caterpillar Fungus The transnational history given in the following chapters involves several Eurasian countries and spans the period from the eighteenth through the first half of the twentieth centuries. Confining the topic to the caterpillar fungus and modern scholarship on Chinese medicinal substances helps to deal with such a challenging geographical and temporal frame. The caterpillar fungus, no doubt, has its own life in the wild. But it also bursts with vitality in society. Since the late twentieth century, there has been

of Chinese physicians and Chinese drugstores in all these provinces and a majority of these cities significantly exceeded that of doctors of Western medicine and Western dispensaries, see Guomin Zhengfu Zhujichu Tongjiju (ed.), Zhonghua Minguo Tongji Tiyao, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1936, p. 395. 79 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, pp. 264–268. 80 Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006, Seattle: Eastland Press, 2007, pp. 173–294. 81 Robert W. Batterman, The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 7.

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increasing scholarly attention to the role of nonhumans in social interaction.82 Igor Kopytoff notes the conceptual separation between people and things in the West, and indicates that societies construct both people and things.83 Based on Kopytoff’s biographical approach to the cultural significance of nonhuman commodities and things, Arjun Appadurai suggests that commodities also have ‘social lives’ or ‘can usefully be regarded as having life histories’.84 Given the methodological inspiration it draws from these propositions, this book also serves as a biography of the caterpillar fungus. The stress on the centrality of nonhuman objects synergises with the material turn which involves the predisposition to endow objects with agency.85 Object agency contradicts the prevalent divide between subject and object in purported modern societies, but is represented here and there in allegedly non-modern societies or communities. María A. Guzmán-Gallegos’s anthropological research on the Runa people of the Amazonian Ecuador reveals that in their mind both humans and objects have subjectivity and agency.86 Scholars such as Alfred Gell and Bruno Latour have done much to deepen our understanding of materiality and agency. Gell is often invoked in anthropological investigation of art and beyond.87 He identifies primary agents (i.e. intentional beings) 82 Karen A. Cerulo, ‘Nonhumans in Social Interaction’, Annual Review of Sociology, 2009, 35: 531–552. 83 Igor Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 64–91. 84 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 3, 17. 85 Dean Pierides and Dan Woodman, ‘Object-Oriented Sociology and Organizing in the Face of Emergency: Bruno Latour, Graham Harman and the Material Turn’, The British Journal of Sociology, 2012, 63(4): 662–679; Jennifer L. Roberts, ‘Things: Material Turn, Transnational Turn’, American Art, 2017, 31(2): 64–69. 86 María A. Guzmán-Gallegos, ‘Identity Cards, Abducted Footprints, and the Book of San Gonzalo: The Power of Textual Objects in Runa Worldview’, in Fernando SantosGranero (ed.), The Occult Life of Things: Native Amazonian Theories of Materiality and Personhood, Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2009, pp. 214–234. 87 See, for example, Robin Osborne and Jeremy Tanner (eds.), Art’s Agency and Art History, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007; Liana Chua and Mark Elliott (eds.), Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering After Alfred Gell, New York: Berghahn Books, 2013; Sule ¸ Can, ‘Talk to It: Memory and Material Agency in Arab Alawite

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and secondary agents (e.g. artefacts), and uses the technical term ‘index’ to denote artwork.88 Indexes are normally secondary agents which are not ‘endowed with will or intention by themselves’ but ‘borrow their agency from some external source’ and mediate it to the patient.89 The two types of agents possess primary and secondary agency, respectively; and a Gellian concept of agency is ‘relational and context-dependent’.90 Different from Gell’s theory, Latour’s discourse of object agency is closely associated with his critique of modernity. According to Daniel Miller, ‘Gell is looking through objects to the embedded human agency we infer that they contain’, while ‘Latour is looking for the nonhumans below the level of human agency.’91 Latour criticises the object-subject, nonhuman-human and nature-culture dichotomies that characterise the moderns’ practices of purification; and this set of practices act in concert with the production of hybrid networks of nature and culture through the practices of translation. He argues that ‘quasi-objects’ or hybrids of nature and culture underlie the moderns’ success in separating nonhumans and humans, or nature and culture, which further distinguishes the moderns from the premoderns. But we have never been modern, because the quasi-objects or hybrids, which the moderns multiply but deny, do not fit into the dichotomies of modernity.92 Latour ascribes agency to the quasi-objects participating in heterogeneous networks of human and nonhuman actors.93 Yet he resists establishing a ‘symmetry between humans and nonhumans’, claiming that ‘to be symmetric, for us, simply means not to impose a priori some

(Nusayri) Community’, in Ruth M. Van Dyke (ed.), Practicing Materiality, Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2015, pp. 33–55. 88 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, pp. 13, 20–21. Gell defines an index as a ‘natural sign’, or ‘an entity from which the observer can make a causal inference of some kind, or an inference about the intentions or capabilities of another person’. 89 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, p. 36. 90 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, pp. 22, 36–38. 91 Daniel Miller, ‘Materiality: An Introduction’, in Daniel Miller (ed.), Materiality,

Durham: Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 1–50, 13. 92 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Catherine Porter (trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 1–3, 10–14, 50–59, 65, 87–89, 97–100, 133. 93 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 10, 63–86, 143, 237–238.

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spurious asymmetry among human intentional action and a material world of causal relations’.94 Drawing on Latour and his collaborators, a variety of case studies have specified the agency of nonhumans ranging from trees to artefacts, pictures and texts.95 The caterpillar fungus belonged neither simply to nature nor to culture, but could be treated as a quasi-object in negotiation with various human actors when it left the soil, spread widely, fell under observation and stimulated new knowledge and applications. Historians have underscored the agency of the natural world and its shaping of social life, and what is known as society has also been questioned to be exclusively constructed by humans in light of the interplay between humans and their objects.96 Here, besides the task of letting history speak for itself, I face the challenge of letting nature speak for itself.97 Throughout the book, the polyvocal narratives, in Latour’s words, ‘follow my actors’.98 I trace the movement of the caterpillar fungus and related human actors, and analyse the accompanying processes of knowledge production and exchange within their own contexts and networks. The changing scholarship about the caterpillar fungus involved both prominent minds and, as historians of science highlight, those who seemed to be marginal, minor, or hidden but actually also counted.99 94 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, p. 76. 95 See, for example, Owain Jones and Paul Cloke, ‘Non-Human Agencies: Trees in Place and Time’, in Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-anthropocentric Approach, New York: Springer, 2008, pp. 79–96; Carl Knappett, ‘The Neglected Networks of Material Agency: Artefacts, Pictures and Texts’, in Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris (eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-anthropocentric Approach, New York: Springer, 2008, pp. 139–156. 96 Lynn Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014, pp. 78–118. 97 ‘Let nature speak for itself’ represents a new form of scientific objectivity emerging in the nineteenth century, that is, mechanical objectivity, see Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007, pp. 120–121. Here I borrow the words and associate them with historical writing. 98 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, p. 156. 99 Jonathan R. Topham, ‘Historicizing ‘Popular Science’’, Isis, 2009, 100(2): 310– 318; Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, Selling Science in the Age of Newton: Advertising and the Commoditization of Knowledge, Farnham: Ashgate, 2010; Ulf Schmidt, Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments, Oxford: Oxford University Press,

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It manifests not only tensions but also negotiations between different understandings and intellectual domains in the making of a new Chinese materia medica as both a local and global event. This book does not attempt to generalise the explanatory apparatus for the caterpillar fungus to other medicinal substances. In his history of psychoactive drugs, David T. Courtwright remarks that there are ‘countless reasons’ for specific cases concerning why or when ‘a given substance became a global commodity while another did not’; and ‘any explanation of regional limits, however detailed or plausible, is in one sense premature.’100 The historical information in this book is arranged chronologically, geographically and thematically. Chapter 1 explores the emergence and spread of the caterpillar fungus in Chinese society by the end of the Qing dynasty. This process concerned human imagination of its transformative ability according to its Chinese interpreters from travellers and physicians to officials and poets. While being written about widely and sought after, it sustained a ‘social life’ in Chinese materia medica, natural history and commerce, touching broadly upon the politics of nature and acculturation of exotica in a Sino-Tibetan context. Chapter 2 turns to the outside world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mainly tracking the travels of the caterpillar fungus to France, Britain, Russia and Japan, with emphasis on key disseminators and cross-cultural contacts. Arguably the pursuit of new effective medicinal substances and natural-historical curiosities underlay its journeys overseas despite different bilateral relations. Chapter 3 further investigates how the caterpillar fungus was perceived and studied with exotic eyes. Special attention goes to relevant scientific practice, intellectual networks and cognitive changes. This wonder of nature maintained its attractiveness during scientific demystification of its perceived marvellousness, and mediated some geographical and medicinal knowledge which at times combined with European taxonomy and nomenclature in facilitation of its procurement for medical concerns. The Japanese critical reflection on it and morphologically similar species found in Japan then embodies the influence of both modern science and Chinese natural knowledge in a new cultural, scientific, linguistic and environmental milieu. Chapter 4 returns to China 2015; Victoria Carroll, Science and Eccentricity: Collecting, Writing and Performing Science for Early Nineteenth-Century Audiences, London: Routledge, 2016. 100 David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 59.

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mainly in the Republican era, inquiring into how the caterpillar fungus entered as an object of inquiry in science communication, mycological, chemical and pharmacological research, and the project of scientification in association with Chinese materia medica, involving Chinese physicians and biomedical practitioners. This book is by no means intended to be an encyclopaedia of the caterpillar fungus. Yet the historical information woven into the following biography of this little organism suffices to open a window onto the multifaceted contours of its past. Many details and little stories are particularly retained to increase a sense of narrative, as this book is oriented not only to historians but also to wider audiences. This does not serve to challenge the structuralist approach to history,101 but derives inspiration from microhistorical scholarship which values minute information and microscopic investigation as appealing to the general public, and also potentially effective against ‘oversimplification and superficial historical judgement’.102 By writing a history dedicated to the caterpillar fungus, I enter into painstaking conversation with it, rediscovering its intersection with natural history, materia medica and medical practice as an illumination of the relationship between exoticism and indigeneity, truth and imagination, and epistemological disparity and discursive hierarchy. Meanwhile, the caterpillar fungus also brings to the foreground the importance of the inherent properties of an organism itself to the making of its history, and to our understanding of transnational history, history of science and cross-cultural medical history.

101 For discussions about the narrativist and structuralist approaches to history, see Lawrence Stone, ‘The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History’, Past & Present, 1979, (85): 3–24; Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 86–105. 102 Sigurður G. Magnússon and István M. Szijártó, What is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice, New York: Routledge, 2013, pp. 75–76. See also István M. Szijártó, ‘Four Arguments for Microhistory’, Rethinking History, 2002, 6(2): 209–215.

CHAPTER 2

The Spread of a Sino-Tibetan Marvel

On 7 July 1918, a family recipe for cooking duck appeared in the popular newspaper Shenbao (Shanghai News). It suggested gourmet enthusiasts boil a duck with seven or eight pieces of dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass), and finally talked about the sale of winter worm summer grass, or caterpillar fungus, in Chinese drugstores.1 More than six years later, on New Year’s Day 1925, the food company Guanshengyuan advertised the novel product called dongchong [xia]cao ya (winter worm [summer] grass-duck) in the Shanghai News, providing the following captivating information: The northern district branch of Guanshengyuan is selling a newly invented tonic food, which is produced by boiling winter worm summer grass and ducks together. Due to the appropriate recipe, it can replenish both qi and blood, and is also beneficial to the synergy of yin and yang. And the effects will be achieved quickly if the soup is drunk by blending it with wine. Truly a good tonic for winter consumption, the food tastes quite

1 Weikaihua Min, ‘Zhuya’, Shenbao, 7 July 1918, Sect. 14. The caterpillar fungus is mainly written as dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass), xiacao dongchong (summer grass winter worm) or chongcao (worm grass) in Chinese literature.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1_2

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fresh and delicious, loved by people of all circles and is in great demand. We are producing it everyday, and hence become so busy.2

Guanshengyuan is an old and popular food company headquartered in Shanghai, originating in 1915.3 And Shanghai as a cosmopolitan city pivotal in China’s modernisation process absorbed different people and cultural elements from East and West. Between 1915 and 1927, the population of Shanghai grew from around 1.96 million to around 2.64 million.4 The circulation of the Shanghai News also amounted to approximately one hundred thousand in 1925.5 Hence, many people in this bustling city would see the advertisement and be attracted to the nourishment promised by ducks and the caterpillar fungus. Clearly, the selling point lay in the caterpillar fungus rather than the duck, which as a very common type of poultry was not quite worth the advertisement. This chapter probes into the history of the caterpillar fungus as a transforming interspecies complex, a medicinal substance, a foodstuff and as a commercial product to the early twentieth century when the last imperial dynasty of China ended, in its Sino-Tibetan context. In addition to a reappraisal of the earliest extant records of the caterpillar fungus, particular focus is given to who facilitated its travel down the plateau regions to eastern China, and how this curious and exotic entity had its identity changed to become an enduring substance of Chinese natural history and materia medica. The transmission of the caterpillar fungus across geographical and cultural boundaries involved its own (mysterious) historical characters and, as Carla Nappi underscores, for example, colonial practice and identity construction.6 Moreover, while receiving reinterpretations in Chinese cultural frames, the caterpillar fungus also participated

2 Guanshengyuan, ‘Xin Faming Dongchong [Xia]cao Ya Shangshi’, Shenbao, 1 January 1925, Sect. 19. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 3 For the history of Guanshengyuan, see Han Jian, Xian Guansheng He Guanshengyuan, Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 2018. 4 Christian Henriot et al., The Population of Shanghai (1865–1953): A Sourcebook,

Leiden: Brill, 2018, p. 95. 5 Hu Daojing, Xinwen Shi Shang De Xin Shidai, Shanghai: Shijie Shuju, 1946, p. 103. 6 Carla Nappi, ‘Winter Worm, Summer Grass: Cordyceps, Colonial Chinese Medicine,

and the Formation of Historical Objects’, in Anne Digby et al. (eds.), Crossing Colonial Historiographies: Histories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transnational Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 21–36.

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in knowledge production. A wide range of prescriptions written by physicians from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries then shed light on novel applications of the caterpillar fungus in the treatment of varied illnesses, which thereby challenges the simplified view about Chinese materia medica as being static, moribund and unchanging.

Sino-Tibetan Origins Despite the celebrity status of the caterpillar fungus today it was never explicitly mentioned before the fifteenth century. The Tibetan physician Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje (1439–1475) offered the oldest extant account of the caterpillar fungus in his medical text Man nGag bYe Ba Ring bSrel (Oral Instructions on a Myriad Medicines).7 In the history of Tibetan medicine, he was a recognised representative of the Zurkhar lineage, one of the two main medical schools of fifteenth-century Tibet.8 Despite a series of medical treatises attributed to him, however, not much is known about his short life. Legendarily, he is said to have received medical teachings from the eighth-century Tibetan physician Yuthog Yonten Gonpo.9

7 Karma Chopel (ed.), bDud rTsi sMan Gyi’Khrungs dPe Legs bShad Nor Bu’i Phreng mDzes, Lhasa: Bod lJongs Mi dMangs dPe sKrun Khang, 1993, pp. 177–178; Daniel Winkler, ‘Yartsa Gunbu (Cordyceps sinensis ) and the Fungal Commodification of Tibet’s Rural Economy’, Economic Botany, 2008, 62(3): 291–305; Alessandro Boesi and Francesca Cardi, ‘Cordyceps sinensis Medicinal Fungus: Traditional Use among Tibetan People, Harvesting Techniques, and Modern Uses’, HerbalGram, 2009, (83): 54–63; Ashok Kumar Panda, ‘Tracing Historical Perspective of Cordyceps sinensis - An Aphrodisiac in Sikkim Him¯alaya’, Indian Journal of History of Science, 2010, 45(2): 189–198. 8 Yumzhana Zhabon, ‘Desi Sangye Gyatsho (1653–1705) on the Succession of Medical Knowledge in the Tibetan Chang and Zur Schools’, Archiv Orientální, 2003, 71(3): 465– 478; Theresia Hofer, Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014, p. 142. 9 Desi Sangye Gyatso, dPal lDan gSo Ba Rig Pa’i Khog’Bugs Legs bShad Bai Durya’i Me Long Drang Srong dGyes Pa’i dGa’ sTon, Dharamsala: Bod gZhung sMan rTsis Khang, [1686] 1994, pp. 330–345. See also Desi Sangye Gyatso, Mirror of Beryl: A Historical Introduction to Tibetan Medicine, Gavin Kilty (trans.), Somerville: Wisdom Publications, [1686] 2010, pp. 293–309.

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Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje’s Account of Yartsa Gunbu According to Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje, the caterpillar fungus is called ‘’dam bu bur shing’jag ma rtsa’, also known as ‘dbyar rtsa dgun’bu’ (yartsa gunbu). The latter term, literally summer grass winter worm, accords with the current Tibetan name for the caterpillar fungus, but appears the inverse of its current Chinese name. As described in the text, it is a medicinal substance with many good qualities, growing on the grass-covered slopes of mountain areas; in summer, it is a blade of grass on a worm, resembling the leaf of mountain garlic; its flower is similar to sedge; while at the end of autumn its root looks like cumin seed.10 Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje’s description of the caterpillar fungus’s external characteristics is basically accurate, although biologists today would point out that the blade of grass is the fruiting body of the fungus; the flower is the part of the stroma embedded with perithecia, which resembles the spadices of some sedge species, e.g. Acorus calamus L.; the shape and colour of the root (i.e. the worm) at the end of autumn also do resemble those of the cumin seed to some extent. Collectors can benefit from the information on the habitat and location where a medicinal substance has been found. Such information is rich in fifteenth-century and earlier Chinese herbals.11 However, Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje did not give specific place names for the production areas of the caterpillar fungus, but only described the environment for its growth. At most, his record informs its use by fifteenth-century Tibetans who occupied some places in present-day western Sichuan, such as Dege county (sDe dGe rDzong) where the caterpillar fungus exists and is still being exploited.12 Central to the medicinal property of the organism is 10 Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje, Man nGag bYe Ba Ring bSrel (Vol. 1), Gangtok: Sherab Gyaltsen Lama, [15th Century] 1977, pp. 347–349. For a collated version of the text, see Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje, Man nGag bYe Ba Ring bSrel, Pecin: Mirik Petrunkhang, [15th Century] 2005, pp. 308–310. For an English translation of the Tibetan record, see Daniel Winkler, ‘The Mushrooming Fungi Market in Tibet Exemplified by Cordyceps sinensis and Tricholoma matsutake’, Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, 2008, (4): 1–47, 32–36. 11 See, for example, Su Jing et al., Tang Xinxiu Bencao, Shang Zhijun (ed.), Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [659] 1981; Zhu Su, Jiuhuang Bencao, Ni Genjin (ed.), Beijing: Zhongguo Nongye Chubanshe, [1406] 2008. 12 Josef Kolmaš (ed.), A Genealogy of the Kings of Derge, Prague: Oriental Institute in Academica, Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1968, pp. 25– 32; Leonard W. J. Van Der Kuijp, ‘Two Early Sources for the History of the House of

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the aphrodisiacal effect. According to the text, it has a slight warm quality and a sweet but mild astringent taste, and serves particularly to increase byang sems (bodhichitta, here a synonym for semen) and sbyor ba (sexual union), so as to help people enjoy sexual pleasure and improve fertility. Besides, it is able to cure rlung (wind) and bile diseases without increasing phlegm. These descriptions immediately reveal the transcultural SinoIndo-Tibetan contexts in which the knowledge of the caterpillar fungus was formed. Wind, termed rlung in Tibetan and v¯ ayu or v¯ ata in Sanskrit, is a concept of Indian origin, relating to breath or life-sustaining and so forth.13 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim suggests that rlung is perhaps better understood as qi in the Chinese tradition.14 Though Tibetan physicians tended to attribute their sources to an Indian Buddhist origin,15 there was a flow of information and textual records between the Tibetan and the Chinese for many centuries before this time, and some work has been carried out analysing medieval Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang in the northwest of China that bear witness to this.16 The part

Sde-dge’, The Journal of the Tibet Society, 1988, 8: 1–20; Liu Xianyi (ed.), Dege Xianzhi, Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe, 1995, pp. 45–46, 58–59. For the production of the caterpillar fungus in Dege county and elsewhere, see Daniel Winkler, ‘Yartsa Gunbu Cordyceps sinensis: Economy, Ecology & Ethno-Mycology of a Fungus Endemic to the Tibetan Plateau’, Memorie della Società Italiana di Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, 2005, 33(1): 69–85. 13 Rechung Rinpoche Jampal Kunzang (ed.), Tibetan Medicine: Illustrated in Original Texts, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, pp. 43–45; Marianne Winder, ‘Tibetan Medicine Compared with Ancient and Mediaeval Western Medicine’, Bulletin of Tibetology, 1981, 17(1): 5–22; Susannah Deane, ‘rLung, Mind, and Mental Health: The Notion of ‘Wind’ in Tibetan Conceptions of Mind and Mental Illness’, Journal of Religion and Health, 2019, 58(3): 708–724. 14 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Tibetan ‘Wind’ and ‘Wind’ Illnesses: Towards a Multicultural Approach to Health and Illness’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2010, 41(4): 318–324. 15 Frances Garrett, ‘Buddhism and the Historicising of Medicine in Thirteenth-Century Tibet’, Asian Medicine, 2006, 2(2): 204–224; Frances Garrett, Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet, London: Routledge, 2008, pp. 37–56; William A. McGrath, Buddhism and Medicine in Tibet: Origins, Ethics, and Tradition (PhD Dissertation), Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2017. 16 Cong Chunyu (ed.), Dunhuang Zhongyiyao Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongyi Guji Chubanshe, 1994, pp. 15–19, 126–181; Zhen Yan and Vivienne Lo, ‘rTsa in the Tibetan Manuscripts from Dunhuang’, Asian Medicine, 2007, 3(2): 296–307; Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Central Asian Mélange: Early Tibetan Medicine from Dunhuang’, in Brandon Dotson

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of Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje’s record that is salient to this history is the Tibetan adoption of the Chinese medical potencies of ‘warm quality and a sweet but mild astringent taste’, as flavours and thermostatic potencies were codified in ancient Chinese texts on materia medica.17 The process of preparing and consuming the drug, according to Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje, is complicated but can be roughly summarised as follows: fill the chest of a sparrow with the powder of the caterpillar fungus (ground in advance) and yeast, then boil the sparrow in sheep milk until all moisture is evaporated; grind the dry material and some additional ingredients (e.g. black pepper) to a fine powder and then make them into pills; the pills should be taken with wine at dawn for one month; raw foods or spoiled vegetables, as well as sexual intercourse, should be avoided in this month. The use of aphrodisiacs has been demonstrated in Greco-Roman, Indian, Chinese, Egyptian and Arabic cultures before the fifteenth century.18 And the tradition of using animal products as aphrodisiacs (e.g. sparrow, otter, a kind of frog and sheep’s testicles) and using sparrows as

et al. (eds.), Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2013, pp. 53–60; Vivienne Lo and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxa-Cautery from Dunhuang’, in Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (eds.), Imagining Chinese Medicine, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 271–290; Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘The Silk Roads as a Model for Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Views from the Tibetan Medical Manuscripts of Dunhuang’, in Pamela H. Smith (ed.), Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, pp. 47–62. 17 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, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 163–185. The record of dahuang (rhubarb) in the Shennong Bencao Jing (Divine Husbandman’s Classic of Materia Medica) is an example, see Ma Jixing (ed.), Shennong Bencao Jing Jizhu, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [c. first century AD] 1995, p. 338. 18 Peter V. Taberner, Aphrodisiacs: The Science and the Myth, London: Croom Helm, 1985, pp. 21–40; Jack R. Harlan, ‘Lettuce and the Sycomore: Sex and Romance in Ancient Egypt’, Economic Botany, 1986, 40(1): 4–15; Kenneth G Zysk, ‘Potency Therapy in Classical Indian Medicine’, Asian Medicine, 2005, 1(1): 101–118; Donald Harper, ‘Ancient and Medieval Chinese Recipes for Aphrodisiacs and Philters’, Asian Medicine, 2005, 1(1): 91–100; Michael Gagarin (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Vol. 1), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 125–127; Vivienne Lo and Eleanor Re’em, ‘Recipes for Love in the Ancient World’, in Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd and Jingyi Jenny Zhao (eds.), Ancient Greece and China Compared, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 326–352; Shireen Hamza, ‘Medicine Beyond Doctors: Aphrodisiac Recipes in Tenth-Century Medicine and Cuisine’, Medieval Feminist Forum, 2018, 53(2): 91–113.

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containers for different medicinal substances in Tibetan medicine can also be traced back at least to the rGyud bZhi (Four Medical Tantras). This twelfth-century medical classic contains a chapter entitled ‘Ro Tsa Bar bYa Ba’ (restoring virility), which lists a number of substances and prescriptions used to build up men’s strength, increase semen and enhance sexual performance.19 Though little is known about how the aphrodisiacal effect of the caterpillar fungus was initially discovered, it may well be related to the modern observation that yaks become energised or began estrus after grazing on it on the grasslands, just as the Nepalese observed in the field.20 Since Tibetan records demonstrate various kinds of aphrodisiacs before Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje’s record, perhaps this is why the caterpillar fungus as another candidate was mentioned so late, and why it received little attention by Tibetan medical authors before the twentieth century. The rarity of pertinent records also indicates that this substance was not commonly used in the Tibetan medical tradition. The reason why it is so valued now owes more to its function within the Chinese experience than to its Tibetan history. Early Chinese Records of Winter Worm Summer Grass Tibetan and Chinese medicine share a variety of medicinal substances, albeit not necessarily used for the same purposes.21 The caterpillar fungus enables a glimpse of Tibetan influence on Chinese medicine, which remains disproportionately represented in historical scholarship on SinoTibetan medical exchange. Although there was such exchange much earlier, due to unknown reasons, the caterpillar fungus did not appear in

19 Yuthog Yonten Gonpo, bDud rTsi sNying Po Yan Lag brGyad Pa gSang Ba Man nGag Gi rGyud Ces Bya Ba bZhugs So, Pecin: Mi Rigs dPe sKrun Khang, [twelfth century] 2005, pp. 1483–1491. The chapter mentions two aphrodisiac prescriptions both using sparrows as containers for different medicinal substances. For identifications and descriptions of a few aphrodisiacs in the chapter, see Pasang Yonten Arya, Dictionary of Tibetan Materia Medica, Yonten Gyasto (trans.), Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998, pp. 109, 121, 172, 254, 283. 20 Guan Peisheng and Cao Jiye, Xunshi: Daxing Zhenjun Wenhua Shi, Hong Kong: Huizhi Chuban Youxian Gongsi, 2010, pp. 102–104. Cf. Donald C. Steinkraus and James B. Whitfield, ‘Chinese Caterpillar Fungus and World Record Runners’, American Entomologist, 1994, 40(4): 235–239, 236. 21 Ming-Ming Zhao et al., ‘A Comparative Study on Shared-Use Medicines in Tibetan and Chinese Medicine’, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 2019, 15: 43.

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Chinese texts until surprisingly late in the early eighteenth century. Some publications state that the first Chinese record of the caterpillar fungus was offered by the physician Wang Ang (1615–c. 1700) in his medical text entitled Bencao Beiyao (Essentials of Materia Medica, finalised c. 1683, and enlarged in 1694).22 In fact, the caterpillar fungus only appears in some (not all) of the extant enlarged versions of the text under Wang’s name.23 However, historians of medicine have found that a few supplements in the enlarged versions actually originated several decades after 1694, and the use of illustrations in those versions was never mentioned by Wang in his prefaces.24 Arguably the record of the caterpillar fungus in the texts ascribed to Wang Ang could not be a note by Wang himself but a later addition by others. All the geographical, medical and other information in the record can be found in the record of the caterpillar fungus in Wu Yiluo’s Bencao Congxin (Renewed Materia Medica, 1757). The wording of the former record is also nearly identical to that of the latter. Wu wrote the medical text for the purpose of revising and further enlarging Wang’s text.25 He recorded the winter worm summer grass as follows: (Nourishes lung and kidney). Sweet and balanced, protects the lungs, benefits the kidney, stops bleeding, disperses phlegm, and eliminates exhaustion 22 John Powers and David Templeman, Historical Dictionary of Tibet, Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2012, p. 181; Shaoping Li and Karl W. K. Tsim, ‘The Biological and Pharmacological Properties of Cordyceps sinensis, a Traditional Chinese Medicine That Has Broad Clinical Applications’, in Lester Packer et al. (eds), Herbal and Traditional Medicine: Molecular Aspects of Health, New York: Marcel Dekker, 2004, pp. 657–683; Daniel Winkler, ‘Caterpillar Fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis ) Production and Sustainability on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas’, Asian Medicine, 2009, 5(2): 291–316; John Holliday, ‘Cordyceps: a Highly Coveted Medicinal Mushroom’, in Dinesh Chandra Agrawal (eds.), Medicinal Plants and Fungi: Recent Advances in Research and Development, Singapore: Springer, 2017, pp. 59–92. 23 See, for example, Wang Ang, Bencao Beiyao, Chongqing: Chongqing Daxue Chubanshe, [1694?] 1996, p. 139; Wang Ang, Bencao Beiyao, in He Qinghu et al. (eds.), Zhonghua Yishu Jicheng (Book 5), Beijing: Zhongyi Guji Chubanshe, [1694?] 1997, p. 76; Wang Ang, Bencao Beiyao, in Xiang Changsheng (ed.), Wang Ang Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1694?] 1999, p. 384. 24 Wang Shimin, ‘Bencao Beiyao He Zengding Bencao Beiyao Xiaokao’, Shanxi Zhongyi, 2006, 22(1): 41–42; Mao Yifei and Liu Gengsheng, ‘Bencao Beiyao Yanjiu Pingshu’, Anhui Zhongyi Xueyuan Xuebao, 2013, 32(3): 17–19. 25 Wu Yiluo, Bencao Congxin, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1757] 1982, p. 1.

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cough. The best [winter worm summer grass] grows in Jiading Fu of Sichuan, while the inferior [winter worm summer grass] grows in Yunnan and Guizhou. In winter it stays in the ground and is able to move, resembling a piliferous old silkworm; while in summer its hair grows out of the ground, and turns into a blade of grass together with the body. If not gathered in summer, it will turn into a worm again in the coming winter.26

In the Qing dynasty, the place name ‘Jiading Fu’ (Jiading prefecture), noted by Wu and allegedly Wang, began to be used as late as 1734, while during the period from 1376 to 1734 it was called ‘Jiading Zhou’ (Jiading subprefecture).27 This indicates that the record must be written at some point after 1734 and therefore could not have been written by Wang Ang as he would have been 119 years old, or even older. It is reasonable to consider that later editors added Wu’s record of the caterpillar fungus with slight revisions while enlarging Wang’s text. Moreover, so far as is known, none of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese records of the caterpillar fungus invoke Wang’s name and/or Essentials of Materia Medica. On the contrary, the popularity of Wu’s Renewed Materia Medica, the first Chinese medical text to record the caterpillar fungus, facilitated this organism to be known as a transformable medicinal substance to a larger population of Chinese people.28 However, Wu did not offer the first Chinese record of the caterpillar fungus, nor did he make the first mention of its medicinal value. An intellectual named Tang Fangyi (1686–1722) provided us with the oldest extant Chinese record of the caterpillar fungus. But in the past his name seemed irrelevant, and his life and writings also remained unexplored. According to a few local chronicles and genealogical records, he was born in Shanghai Xian (part of Minhang district of Shanghai). In 1714, he went to study at the guozijian (Imperial Academy) in

26 Wu Yiluo, Bencao Congxin, p. 36. 27 Huang Tinggui et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange Siku Quanshu

(Book 559), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1735] 1983, pp. 91–92; Zhang Tingyu et al., Ming Shi, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1735] 2000, pp. 698–699; Zhao Er’xun et al., Qingshi Gao Jiaozhu, Zhu Chongsheng (ed.), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1927] 1999, pp. 2485–2486. 28 For an example of nineteenth-century quotations from Wu Yiluo’s record of the caterpillar fungus, see Cheng Wenyou, Yishu, Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1826] 1983, p. 1110.

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Beijing and then engaged in the compilation of the voluminous encyclopaedia Gujin Tushu Jicheng (The Complete Collection of Ancient and Modern Illustrations and Texts). His familiarity with literature prompted the general editor Chen Menglei (1650–1741) to shift his effort from transcription to collation. Further, appreciated by the emperor, he became a subeditor. Following the finalisation of the encyclopaedia in 1719, his contribution was assessed and later on qualified him as a magistrate candidate. Unfortunately, he died of sickness in Beijing on 23 September 1722 while waiting to take office.29 It was Chen Menglei who privately compiled a draft of the encyclopaedia during the period 1701–1706. The Qing court took over the compilation project in 1716, designating Chen and some others to revise the draft in an institution established to serve their work. This project lasted until 1719, but the complete printed version of the encyclopaedia did not come out until 1726 due to personnel changes.30 In Tang’s time, a proportion of the students at the Imperial Academy would be selected to transcribe imperial collections of books and would finally be rewarded for their efforts.31 Tang Fangyi had composed a collection of miscellaneous notes entitled Qingli Yuzhao Ji (Collection on Dim Candlelight, in ten chapters) during

29 Wang Datong et al., Shanghai Xianzhi (Vol. 11), Publisher Unknown, 1814, p. 111; Song Rulin et al., Songjiang Fuzhi, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 689), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1816] 2002, p. 262; Tang Guohai and Tang Jiaqi (eds.), Shanghai Tangshi Zupu, Shanghai: Private Print, 1834, pp. 72–73; Ying Baoshi et al., Shanghai Xianzhi, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu, Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1871] 1975, pp. 1536–1537, 2467. Cf. Jiang Tingxi et al., ‘Hubu Zuoshilang Jiang Tingxi Deng Zoubao Gujin Tushu Jicheng Gaojun Zhuanghuang Yibu Chenglan Bing Qing Yuzhi Xunwen Zhe’, in Zhongguo Diyi Lishi Dang’an Guan (ed.), Yongzheng Chao Hanwen Zhupi Zouzhe Huibian (Book 33), Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, [1726] 1991, pp. 569–570; Xiang Xuan, ‘Gujin Tushu Jicheng Guan Zuanxiu Renyuan Kaoshi’, Wen Shi, 2014, (4): 143–162. 30 The revision of the encyclopaedia was completed in 1719 and began to be printed in 1720. However, due to the Yongzheng emperor’s (r. 1723–1735) abomination of Chen Menglei, the printing work was discontinued; and the first complete printed version of the encyclopaedia came out as late as 1726, see Pei Qin, Gujin Tushu Jicheng Yanjiu, Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe, 2001, pp. 27–42; Xiang Xuan, ‘Qingdai Neifu Tong Huozi Kaolun’, Ziran Kexue Shi Yanjiu, 2013, 32(2): 254–262. 31 Liang Guozhi et al., Qinding Guozijian Zhi, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange Siku Quanshu (Book 600), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1778] 1983, pp. 466–467; Li Zongfang et al., Qinding Guozijian Zhi, in Zhu Jiajin (ed.), Gugong Zhenben Congkan (Book 275), Haikou: Hainan Chubanshe, [1834] 2000, pp. 176–177; Xi Peng, Qingdai Guozijian Zhidu Yanjiu, Harbin: Heilongjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 142–145.

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his participation in the compilation of the encyclopaedia (1716–1719).32 This book is now lost. However, a record of the caterpillar fungus in this book is fortunately quoted in two other books: Tang Bingjun’s Wenfang Sikao Tushuo (Illustrated Detailed Notes from the Study Room, initially printed in 1778) and Zhao Xuemin’s (1719–1805) Bencao Gangmu Shiyi (Supplement to the Compendium of Materia Medica, finalised c. 1803). The record from Tang’s book is as follows: The taishi (royal historian) Dong Hong, whose style name is Yuwan, incidentally said, the summer grass winter worm was produced in Sichuan; its root resembled a movable hairy silkworm; in summer a seedling grew out of its head up to several cun; while in winter the seedling became dry and withered, only its root survived, which often crept over the snow-covered land in bitterly cold weather. Recently it has also appeared in drugstores in the capital (i.e. Beijing).’33

In Zhao’s book, however, the record lacks the information on Dong Hong and the appearance of the caterpillar fungus in drugstores in Beijing.34 Clearly, the information about the caterpillar fungus emanated from Dong. Here it is necessary to point out that Tang Fangyi had a younger brother whose son was Tang Bingjun; both Tang Bingjun and his natural father had written medical works; and Tang Bingjun was later

32 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu

(Book 1113), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1778] 2002, pp. 393–394; Tang Guohai and Tang Jiaqi (eds.), Shanghai Tangshi Zupu, pp. 313–315. The book was also recorded to be entitled Qingli Yuzhao (Dim Candlelight). 33 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, p. 386. One cun was approximately 3.2 cm at that time, see Qiu Guangming (ed.), Zhongguo Lidai Duliangheng Kao, Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1992, pp. 117, 520. 34 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, p. 139. Tang Bingjun recorded Dong Hong as ‘Dong Yuwan Hong’. ‘Yuwan’ is the style name of ‘Dong Hong’. There existed such a way of recording ancient Chinese intellectuals’ names: putting one’s style name between his family name and given name. For example, Su and Shi are the family name and given name of the literatus Su Shi (1037–1101), whose style name is Zizhan or Dongpo. In premodern Chinese literature, he was occasionally recorded as Su Zizhan Shi, or Su Dongpo Shi, see Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang Zhi, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange Siku Quanshu (Book 489), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1261] 1983, p. 445; Wu Weiye, Meicun Jiacang Gao, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1396), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1670] 2002, p. 231; Huang Zongxi et al., Songyuan Xue’an, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1838] 1986, pp. 590, 3302.

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adopted by Tang Fangyi’s family.35 Given this relational context, Tang Bingjun must have had privileged access to Tang Fangyi’s writings and could quote the passage on the caterpillar fungus. According to Tang Bingjun, Kong Jiyuan, director of the Yingkui College, had also read the book by Tang Fangyi.36 Then, who was Dong Hong? Dong Hong, born in Qingpu (Qingpu district of Shanghai), became a jinshi (metropolitan graduate) in 1712 and was soon appointed as a royal historian in the Hanlin Yuan (Academy of the Forest of Brushes) in Beijing. Thereafter he stayed in Beijing and served the Qing court until he died there in 1742.37 Dong Hong and Tang Fangyi both came from present-day Shanghai and resided in Beijing. The two might have been delighted to know each other in that city distanced more than one thousand kilometres away from their hometown in south-eastern China, and Dong Hong’s words about the caterpillar fungus must have been merely a portion of their conversation. Tang Fangyi’s mention of Dong Hong as a royal historian also indicates that the record was written after 1712, not contradicting previous dating of Tang’s Collection on Dim Candlelight. To sum up, the record of the caterpillar fungus in the book was written during the period from 1716 to 1719. Even considering that Tang might continue to revise his book after this period, the record must also be written no later than 1722 when he died.

35 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, pp. 405–406; Tang Guohai and Tang Jiaqi

(eds.), Shanghai Tangshi Zupu, pp. 74, 98. 36 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, p. 404. 37 Chen Qiyuan et al.., Qingpu Xianzhi, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi

Congshu (Huazhong Difang, Book 16), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1877] 1970, pp. 988, 1242; Li Zhouwang et al., Mingqing Like Jinshi Timing Beilu, Taipei: Huawen Shuju, [c. 1904] 1969, p. 1740; Fang Zhaoying and Du Lianzhe, Zengjiao Qingchao Jinshi Timing Beilu, Beiping: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1941, p. 57; Zhu Baojiong and Xie Peilin, Mingqing Jinshi Timing Beilu Suoyin, Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1979, pp. 2682–2683; Jiang Qingbai (ed.), Qingchao Jinshi Timing Lu, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2007, pp. 303, 308. Hu was his surname which he signed on his examination paper. However, he changed Hu as his original surname to Dong after he passed the national examination and became a metropolitan graduate. This is why in literature his name was also written as Hu Hong, Dong Huhong or Dong Hong. The phenomenon that examinees changed their surnames, given names or style names after passing the national examination was common in Qing China, see Jiang Jinxing, Qingdai Zhujuan Jicheng De Wenxian Jiazhi He Xueshu Jiazhi Yanjiu (PhD Dissertation), Hangzhou: Zhejiang University, 2004, pp. 67–68.

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The literal meaning of the Chinese term for the caterpillar fungus in Dong Hong’s words, namely summer grass winter worm, corresponds to that of the Tibetan term yartsa gunbu. Dong compared the ‘root’ of the caterpillar fungus to a silkworm, not only because it resembled the latter and was believed to be able to move, but also because the Chinese, who had developed sericulture for centuries, were familiar with silkworms.38 However, though neither a silkworm nor the ‘root’ has hairs, it is still possible that Dong Hong had observed a specimen, because improper preservation will cause mildew infection of the ‘root’, making it look hairy.39 Dong Hong had a knowledge of its origin in Sichuan, but his narrative of its life cycle and behaviour, whether his own or from others, was rather imaginative. No doubt it challenged people’s cognitive abilities and inspired their imagination. In particular, Dong lived at a distance from its production areas and therefore lacked in situ observation which, of course, would not necessarily ensure the emergence of new theoretical ideas. There must also have been a lack of alternative competitive explanations for its formation before his conversation with Tang Fangyi. Otherwise, this elite intellectual and royal historian would have related them to Tang Fangyi. More importantly, the caterpillar fungus in Beijing drugstores indicates the existence of relevant trade between Sichuan (and possibly other production areas) and Beijing no later than the end of the reign of the emperor Kangxi (1661–1722). Further confirmation of its travels northeastward in the early eighteenth century comes from the French Jesuit missionary Dominicus Parennin (1665–1741). In 1723 he reported that three years ago, he ate the duck simmered with the summer grass winter worm in Beijing, and thereby restored his feeble body; after consultation with royal physicians, he was informed about its efficacy.40 Moreover, following the quotation from Collection on Dim Candlelight, Tang Bingjun added, in around 1778, that this substance had gradually spread in recent years to Suzhou, a prosperous city near present-day 38 Gaines K. C. Liu, ‘The Silkworm and Chinese Culture’, Osiris, 1952, 10: 129–194; Dieter Kuhn, Science and Civilisation in China (Vol. 5, Part 9, Textile Technology), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 285–433. 39 Miao Xicheng et al., ‘Dongchong Xiacao De Jingyan Zhucun Fa Jieshao’, Shizhen Guoyi Guoyao, 2000, 11(10): 905. 40 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 17), Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1726, pp. 409–414.

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Shanghai, although he himself felt uncertain about its efficacies and thus dared not taste it.41 Overall, the oldest extant Chinese record of the caterpillar fungus, which informs its identity as a medicine, though, mentions nothing specific about its medicinal properties, but focuses on details of its physical transformation. This reflects Dong Hong’s own interest as well as his role as an agent in the transmission of the legend about its miraculous transformation.

As a Product In order to track the circulation of the caterpillar fungus in Chinese society by the early twentieth century, it is necessary to examine evidence about the production areas that involved natural curiosity, medicinal qualities, commercial trade, imaginations and power relations. Related geographical information scattered in travel notes, medical texts, local chronicles, literary works and other types of literature enables us to unveil Chinese efforts to locate and record this organism, which lays the foundation for investigating the routes it was taken on and how it was perceived within the Chinese cultural context. In 1726, Wei Litong discontinued his official career in a few cities located in present-day Anhui, Fujian and Jiangsu provinces, and returned to his hometown Baixiang in present-day Hebei province. In the same year, Shen Deqian of Suzhou wrote a preface to Wei’s collection of poetry. In one of the poems, Wei made a note of the caterpillar fungus: ‘there is a medicinal substance in Sichuan, whose leaf [grows out and] becomes a blade of grass in summer; while in winter its root turns into a worm. It is called winter worm summer grass’.42 Unlike Wei, Wang Shirui (1674– 1745) had been to Sichuan and even Tibet. On 27 October 1732, the Qing court designated Wang, then the magistrate of Luzhou, Sichuan, to confer nobility upon a Tibetan aristocrat and his son in Lhasa. He set out from Chengdu, and later on passed through Dajianlu (Kangding;

41 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, p. 386. 42 Wei Litong, Huaifang Shiji, in Ji Xianlin (ed.), Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu

Bubian (Book 4), Jinan: Qilu Shushe, [c. 1726] 2001, p. 170. For Wei Litong’s life and works, see Li Jianli et al., ‘Wei Yijie Jiqi Jiazu Muzhi Zongkao’, Wenwu Chunqiu, 1996, (4): 36–49; Ke Yuchun, Qingren Shiwen Ji Zongmu Tiyao, Beijing: Beijing Guji Chubanshe, 2001, p. 433; Ju Baozhao and Cao Ying (eds.), Qingdai Yilin Renwu Shiliao Jizuan, Shenyang: Liaoning Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2013, pp. 353–354.

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Dartsedo in Tibetan) which stood on the western frontier of Sichuan and, as he observed, was then a prospering hub of Sino-Tibetan trade.43 When climbing over the snowy Bolanggong mountain, not far from Litang ahead, he noted that the winter worm summer grass could grow out of the ground in the mountain when the snow melted in the fifth or sixth lunar month.44 This mountain was a frequent stopping point along one of the routes stretching from Dajianlu to Tibet.45 The American Tibetologist William W. Rockhill (1854–1914) once reached the ‘Molung gung (Po-lang-kung shan in Chinese)’ mountain on 28 September 1892, reporting that ‘this mountain is famous as producing that curious worm-plant known as the Shar-tsa gong-bu (tung-chung hsia-ts’ao in Chinese), called by botanists Cordyceps sinensis ’.46 ‘Mo-lung gung’ or Bolanggong, the Tibetan name for the mountain, probably refers to present-day Jianziwan mountain. Normally, a local product would have to have been recognised, used, or consumed for some time before entering the textual world. According to his own account, for example, Wang Shirui could not have observed the caterpillar fungus in the Bolanggong mountain in winter, but must have obtained the information on its production already shared among others. Soon afterwards, the caterpillar fungus gained a place in the chapter Xiyu (western territory) of the 1735 official general chronicle of Sichuan. Some historians treat the chapter, which covers the region

43 For the history and importance of Dajianlu (i.e. Kangding) in Sino-Tibetan trade in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, see Yingcong Dai, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009, pp. 183–184; Yudru Tsomu, ‘Guozhuang Trading Houses and Tibetan Middlemen in Dartsedo, the ‘Shanghai of Tibet’’, Cross-Currents, 2016, (19): 71–121; Shi Shuo and Zhou Libo, ‘‘Dajianlu’: Hanzang Jiaorong Xia De Diming, Chuanshuo Yu Xinyang’, Sixiang Zhanxian, 2019, 45(3): 33–45. 44 Wang Shirui, Jinzang Jicheng, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 737), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1733] 2002, p. 442. For Wang Shirui’s life and his trip to Tibet, see Han Yunqing, ‘Wang Shirui Jinzang Fengwang’, in Wang Zhexiu (ed.), Zhangqiu Wenshi Ziliao Xuanji, Zhangqiu: Zhengxie Zhangqiu Shi Wenshi Ziliao Yanjiu Weiyuanhui, 2001, pp. 118–122. 45 Lan Yong, Sichuan Gudai Jiaotong Luxian Shi, Chongqing: Xinan Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 1989, p. 253; Zhang Liangcheng and Zhong Zhengliang (eds.), Yajiang Xianzhi, Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, 2000, pp. 356–358. 46 William W. Rockhill, Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892, Washington: The Smithsonian Institution, 1894, p. 361.

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ranging from Dajianlu (i.e. Dartsedo) to Lhasa, the earliest official chronicle that devotes attention to Tibet albeit from a Chinese point of view.47 In this geographical context, the winter worm summer grass was recorded as one of the local products of the Bolanggong mountain in Litang, having a warm quality, restoring the jing (semen or essence) and benefiting sui (marrow); additionally, it had never appeared in herbals.48 The chapter reveals the exoticism of the caterpillar fungus to Chinese materia medica and, indeed, provides for the first time a Chinese account of its medicinal properties which obviously bear some resemblance to those documented by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje. From a broad perspective, there exists common ground between the inclusion of Tibet in the official chronicle and Wang Shirui’s journey to Lhasa, that is, the Qing court’s control of Tibet, including Tibetan products. The chronicle of Sichuan is merely one of the thousands of extant Chinese local chronicles compiled before the mid-twentieth century.49 Historians often trace the tradition of compiling such texts, which persists to the present day, back over two thousand years, despite varied opinions on its origins.50 Sometimes considered a predecessor of the local chronicle, the chapter Yugong (Tribute of Yu, c. fifth century BC) in the Shangshu (Book of Documents) mainly describes the establishment of nine territories through the efforts of Sage King Yu.51 During this course, dozens of natural and handmade products of the territories came into Yu’s vision and, as tribute items, became part of the politics of 47 He Jinwen, Sichuan Fangzhi Kao, Changchun: Jilin Sheng Difangzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui and Jilin Sheng Tushuguan Xuehui, 1985, pp. 80–82; Xu Shiqun (ed.), Bashu Wenhua Dadian, Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe, 1998, p. 330; Zhao Xinyu, Qingdai Xizang Fangzhi Yanjiu, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 2016, p. 253. This general chronicle of Sichuan was finalised in 1735 and printed the following year. 48 Huang Tinggui et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, p. 174. 49 Liu Weiyi, Zhongguo Difang Zhi, Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 1991, pp. 16–18; Nan

Jiangtao, ‘Zhongguo Jiuzhi Zhengli Yu Chuban Gaikuang’, Zhongguo Difang Zhi, 2017, (12): 42–50. 50 Zhu Shijia, ‘Zhongguo Difang Zhi De Qiyuan, Tezheng Jiqi Shiliao Jiazhi’, Shixueshi Ziliao, 1979, (2): 1–9; Huang Wei, ‘Fangzhi Yuanyuan Kaobian’, Zhonghua Wenshi Luncong, 1981, 3: 259–276; Chengzhi Wang, ‘Chinese Local Gazetteers: Evolution, Institutionalization and Digitization’, Journal of East Asian Libraries, 2009, (149): 45–54. 51 Kong Anguo and Kong Yingda (eds.), Shangshu Zhengyi, Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, [c. fifth century BC] 2000, pp. 158–205. See also Michael Loewe (ed.), Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993, pp. 376–389.

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nature and the hierarchy of authority.52 Extant complete local chronicles of the eleventh through nineteenth centuries constitute an encyclopaedic source for understanding regional history, geographies, people, education, products and so on. Underpinning material and economic life, products satisfied luxury needs of royal families and contributed to imperial finance.53 Not surprisingly, the chronicles maintained a long-standing concern with tributary duties that related products to the power relations between the local and the central.54 The Caterpillar Fungus Becomes Tribute Through a series of wars with the Han Chinese, the Russians, the Zunghar Mongols and the Miao people, and also invasion of Tibet, the Qing state achieved unprecedented expansion in its territory by the mid-eighteenth century.55 Meanwhile, the colonial momentum spurred demands for more abundant and reliable information on the people and land being incorporated into the Qing administrative order; it also extended tributary duties to local products of the expanding borderlands.56 The chapter on 52 Robin McNeal, ‘Spatial Models of the State in Early Chinese Texts: Tribute Networks and the Articulation of Power and Authority in Shangshu ‘Yu gong’ and Yi Zhoushu ‘Wang hui’’, in Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer (eds.), Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy, Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. 475–495; Li Min, Social Memory and State Formation in Early China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 399–401. 53 Zheng Xuemeng, Zhongguo Fuyi Zhidu Shi, Xiamen: Xiamen Daxue Chubanshe, 1994, pp. 251–255; Zhang Renxi and Feng Changlin, ‘Mingdai Tugong Kaolue’, Xueshu Luntan, 2003, (3): 99–102; Shan Peng, Songdai Tugong Chutan (MA Thesis), Baoding: Hebei Daxue, 2006; Pan Hao, ‘Qingdai Tugong Zhidu Jianlun’, Jianghan Luntan, 2015, (5): 105–108. 54 One collection of local chronicles, for example, enables us to observe this longstanding concern, see Guangdong Sheng Difang Shizhi Bangongshi (ed.), Guangdong Lidai Fangzhi Jicheng, Guangzhou: Lingnan Meishu Chubanshe, [fourteenth-twentieth centuries] 2006–2010. 55 Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 87–89, 547– 551; Robert K. Guy, Qing Governors and Their Provinces: The Evolution of Territorial Administration in China, 1644–1796, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010, pp. 183–351. 56 Roger Greatrex, ‘Tribute Missions from the Sichuan Borderlands to the Imperial Court (1400–1665)’, Acta Orientalia, 1997, 58: 75–151; James A. Millward and Laura J. Newby, ‘The Qing and Islam on the Western Frontier’, in Pamela K. Crossley et al. (eds.), Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China,

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western territory in the 1735 chronicle of Sichuan was actually composed to eulogise the Qing state’s territorial magnificence and extensive tributary networks that surpassed that of any preceding dynasty.57 A similar text is the 1763 imperial dictionary of languages in the western territory, prepared to lay the foundation for compiling an official (touted) account of the Qianlong emperor’s recent unification of the western territory. It expressly records that the Tibetan medicine name dgun rtsa (winter grass), pronounced gunza in Chinese, was equivalent to the Chinese name dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass).58 This effort to seek denotative unity amid linguistic diversity echoed the Qing court’s pursuit of political unity amid regional and cultural diversity.59 In light of the exchanges of goods and people between Tibetan regions and Ming China (1368–1644),60 needless to say the Qing westward expansion would not necessarily result in the appearance of the caterpillar fungus in early eighteenth-century Chinese literature, but it doubtless facilitated the Chinese acquaintance with the material world of the more tightly controlled vast western borderlands. Offering the caterpillar fungus as tribute to the Qing court dates back at least to the beginning of the 1720s. According to the report of the

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 113–134; He Xinhua, Qingdai Gongwu Zhidu Yanjiu, Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2012, pp. 11–22, 37–102. For tribute medicine in China before the Qing dynasty, see He Bian, Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020, pp. 49–73. 57 Huang Tinggui et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, p. 166. 58 Fuheng et al., Qinding Xiyu Tongwen Zhi, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange Siku Quanshu

(Book 235), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1763] 1983, p. 328. 59 Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 49. 60 Morris Rossabi, ‘The Tea and Horse Trade with Inner Asia during the Ming’, Journal of Asian History, 1970, 4(2): 136–168; Zhang Lihong, ‘Lun Mingqing Chuanzang Maoyi’, Zhongguo Zangxue, 1993, (3): 83–92; Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (ed.), The Cambridge History of China (Vol. 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 241–258; Weirong Shen, ‘‘Accommodating Barbarians from Afar’: Political and Cultural Interactions between Ming China and Tibet’, Ming Studies, 2007, (1): 37–93; Martin Slobodník, ‘Tribute and Trade Economic Exchanges between Central Tibet and Early Ming China’, Studia Orientalia Slovaca, 2013, 12(2): 227–246.

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aforementioned Jesuit Dominicus Parennin in 1723, both the caterpillar fungus he ate and the duck-caterpillar fungus recipe he used three years previously came from the Governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi who went to Beijing to see the emperor, it was among the most singular items he found in his prefecture and neighbouring areas and presented to the emperor as to the ‘coûtume’ (custom). The anonymous person Parennin referred to was Nian Gengyao (1679–1726), who met the Kangxi emperor in Beijing and was afterwards promoted to the Governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi in 1721.61 Probably based on Nian’s information, Parennin knew that the caterpillar fungus grew in Tibet and, in small quantities, in the frontier areas of Sichuan that bordered Tibet. Besides, he also stated that then it remained rare and could only be found in the Imperial Palace; due to its rarity, royal physicians only used it when they made up a prescription. They told Parennin about its efficacy (the same as that recounted by the Governor) and ‘Hou-quam’ (Huguang; present-day Hunan and Hubei) as a possible area where many plants from neighbouring realms grew and the caterpillar fungus could possibly be procured. Through a friend living in that province, Parennin obtained some specimens at a cost of four times their own weight in silver.62 Geographically speaking, Hunan and Hubei lacked snowy alpine habitats. Qing Chinese authors also had never recorded them as production areas of the caterpillar fungus. But the nearby Sichuan certainly could facilitate its flow to Hunan and Hubei. The Governor must have become familiar with the caterpillar fungus and its medicinal properties earlier than 1721. He carried this singular object a long way to Beijing suggesting his value for it. Through him,

61 Zhao Er’xun et al., Qingshi Gao Jiaozhu, Zhu Chongsheng (ed.), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1927] 1999, p. 8899; Qian Shifu, Qingdai Zhiguan Nianbiao, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980, pp. 1384–1385. The official position of Governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi did not exist in the previous two years (1719–1720). Parennin’s memory or record of the year (i.e. three years ago [1720]) the Governor went to Beijing was slightly inaccurate. 62 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 17), pp. 410–414.

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some relevant geographical, culinary and medical knowledge also disseminated to Beijing. The custom he followed ought to be personal or mandatory local tribute to the emperor, which involved Governors indeed.63 For indigenous medicinal substances, the Qing court mainly acquired them through three ways: regular requisitions (local tribute), officials’ personal tribute, and purchase from medicine merchants.64 Theoretically, the caterpillar fungus could reach the hands of royal physicians through any of these ways. But regular requisition for it was not recorded until the 1816 revised general chronicle of Sichuan spelt out the obligation of the fanmin (Tibetans) of Litang to send nine boxes of worm grass (an abbreviation of winter worm summer grass) as regular tribute annually.65 The following event, however, presents an example of proactive tribute and explains in part changes in tributary coverage. On 19 April and 16 May 1885, Ding Baozhen (1820–1886), the Governor of Sichuan, reported twice to the emperor Guangxu that the headman of Zhag’yab (in eastern Tibet) requested to pay tribute to the emperor in company with the tribute teams from neighbouring Chamdo and Batang. Considering frontier stability and the British presence in India, Ding suggested the emperor approve the request.66 After consulting with the Court of Colonial Affairs, the emperor accepted Ding’s suggestion on 25 June. But he further asked Ding to negotiate with the Amban of Tibet so as to, for example, determine tribute items and the number of tribute team members.67 Ding’s memorial to the emperor, written on 15 March 1886, 63 He Xinhua, Qingdai Gongwu Zhidu Yanjiu, Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2012, pp. 129–136; Li Shi, Qingdai Kangxi Chao Guanyuan Jingong Wenti Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Changchun: Dongbei Shifan Daxue, 2016, pp. 8–31. 64 Guan Xueling, ‘Qinggong Yiyao Laiyuan Kaosuo’, Ha’erbin Gongye Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban), 2007, 9(4): 19–26; Guan Xueling, Qingdai Gongting Yixue Yu Yixue Wenwu, Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 110–139. 65 Chang Ming et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1816] 1984, p. 3099. 66 Ding Baozhen, Ding Wencheng Gong Zougao, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku

Quanshu (Book 509), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1886] 2002, pp. 713–714. For Ding Baozhen’s life, see Tang Jiong, Ding Wencheng Gong Nianpu, in Zhou Heping (ed.), Beijing Tushuguan Cang Zhenben Nianpu (Book 164), Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe, [1913] 1999. 67 Guangxu, ‘Yu Jiao Lifan Yuan Benri Junji Dachen Mianfeng’, in Ye Zhiru et al., Guangxu Chao Shangyu Dang (Book 11), Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [1885] 1996, p. 113; Guangxu, ‘Yu Junji Dachen Ziji Sichuan Zongdu Ding Baozhen Zhe’, in Ye Zhiru et al., Guangxu Chao Shangyu Dang (Book 11), Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [1885] 1996, p. 115; Shixu et al., Qing Shilu (Book 54),

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enumerates fifty liang of worm grass among some tribute items that can be identified as medicines.68 Thus the caterpillar fungus showed off its ability to unlock the door of the Imperial Palace. Emerging Areas of Production The population boom and migrations, territorial expansion, and increased prosperity in eighteenth-century China were coupled with the growth of publishing industries and text distribution despite the notorious censorship and literary inquisition.69 As time moved on, product information circulated dynamically through various texts in Chinese society. The record of the caterpillar fungus in the Bolanggong mountain and Litang in the 1735 general chronicle of Sichuan was later directly or indirectly appropriated to the 1739 local chronicle of Yazhou (Ya’an, Sichuan),70

Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1921] 1987, pp. 918, 937–938, 941. On 25 June 1885, the Amban of Tibet was Selenge, assisted by Chonggang, see Josef Kolmaš, The Ambans and Assistant Ambans of Tibet: A Chronological Study, Prague: Oriental Institute, 1994, pp. 58–60; Zeng Guoqing and Huang Weizhong (eds.), Qingdai Zangzu Lishi, Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue Chubanshe, 2012, p. 471. 68 Ding Baozhen, Ding Wencheng Gong Zougao, pp. 748–750. See also Anonymous, ‘Guangxu Shi’er Nian Siyue Chuyi Ri Jingbao Quanlu’, Shenbao, 13 May 1886, Sect. 9. One liang was approximately 37.3 grams at that time, see Qiu Guangming (ed.), Zhongguo Lidai Duliangheng Kao, pp. 512–513, 520. The caterpillar fungus is listed between the medicinal plants Huanglian (Coptis chinensis Franch.) and Zhimu (Anemarrhena asphodeloides Bunge), both of which had been used as medicines long before the 1880s, see, for example, Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, pp. 506–508, 537–542. 69 Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, Science and Civilisation in China (Vol. 5, Part 1, Paper and Printing), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 184–194; Cynthia J. Brokaw, ‘On the History of the Book in China’, in Cynthia J. Brokaw and Kai-Wing Chow (eds.), Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 3–54; Suyoung Son, Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018, pp. 127–161; Christine Moll-Murata, State and Crafts in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 213–291. 70 Cao Lunbin et al., Yazhou Fuzhi, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu (Xibu Difang, Book 28), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1739] 1969, p. 301.

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the 1792 pictorial description of Central Tibet,71 and Yao Ying’s (1785– 1853) account of his two trips to Zhag’yab and Chamdo.72 Similarly, Wu Yiluo’s description of the caterpillar fungus, as mentioned before, was also incorporated into Cheng Wenyou’s (1761–c. 1833) narrative of medicine and Zhao Xuemin’s (1719–1805) monograph on materia medica.73 Of the production areas, the Bolanggong mountain and Litang were often iterated or confirmed by Chinese authors. Xiao Tenglin’s and Zhang Hai’s 1740s treatises on Tibet, based in part on their own experiences, both mention the winter worm summer grass in Litang.74 This product in Litang also left an imprint on the chronicle of Dajianlu written around 1794.75 Over a decade later, a chronicle of Litang lists the worm grass among local medicinal products; additionally, it acclaims this product a special drug in the Bolanggong mountain and provides a Chinese transliteration of its name used by the manren (barbarians), that is, yaza e’mo (roughly corresponding to the Tibetan name yartsa gunbu).76 Evidently, as will also be seen below, the perennial tradition of racism or ethnocentrism had sometimes, if not always, affected Chinese representations

71 Though this book did not indicate the origin of the record, Lu Huazhu, author of the preface, pointed out that it did refer to the general chronicle of Sichuan, see Ma Jie and Sheng Shenzu, Weizang Tuzhi, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 1), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [1792] 2003, pp. 293, 392. 72 Yao Ying, Kangyou Jixing, Hefei: Huangshan Shushe, [c. 1846] 1990, p. 484. 73 Cheng Wenyou, Yishu, Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1826] 1983, p. 1110;

Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, p. 139. 74 Xiao Tenglin, Xizang Jianwen Lu, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 2), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [1746] 2003, p. 81; Zhang Hai, Xijiang Jishu, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu (Xibu Difang, Book 34), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [c. 1749] 1968, p. 27. 75 Anonymous, Dajianlu Zhilue, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 40), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [c. 1794] 2003, p. 20. For the compiler and date of this chronicle, see Zhao Xinyu, ‘Qianlong Dajianlu Zhilue Zhuzhe Ji Ziliao Laiyuan Kao’, Xinan Minzu Daxue Xuebao (Renwen Sheke Ban), 2003, 24(9): 49–52. 76 Chen Denglong, Litang Zhilue, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu (Xibu Difang, Book 29), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1807] 1970, pp. 48, 91–92.

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of frontier natural products.77 Elsewhere, words about the winter worm summer grass in the Bolanggong mountain also appeared in an anonymous account of Tibet and a general geographical monograph.78 In 1847, the Manchu official Binliang (1784–1847) embarked on a trip from Chengdu to Lhasa. When passing through a place called Zanma’er Dong in western Sichuan, he composed a poem, which mentions Litang and the summer grass winter worm as a medicine.79 Jiading prefecture was another widely known production area, as reported by Wu Yiluo in 1757. The manual of national officers in 1760 and the general chronicle of Sichuan revised in 1816 both indicate the winter worm summer grass as a local product of the prefecture.80 Qin Wuyu, who had held official positions in Anxian and Zhijiang in Sichuan, wrote in the late eighteenth century that the winter worm summer grass inhabited Jiazhou, Dajianlu and other places in Sichuan.81 Here Jiazhou was actually a medieval designation for Jiading prefecture.82 The physician Long Bai also associated this old place name with the winter worm 77 For racism or ethnocentrism in Chinese culture and history, see Q. Edward Wang, ‘History, Space, and Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview’, Journal of World History, 1999, 10(2): 285–305; Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 1–78. Cf. James Leibold, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 19–25. 78 Anonymous, Xizang Ji, in Wang Yunwu (ed.), Congshu Jicheng Chubian, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, [c. 1794] 1936, p. 51; Xu Hongpan, Fangyu Kaozheng (Book 29), Jining: Panshi Huajiange [1837] 1918, p. 100. 79 Binliang, Baochong Zhai Shiji, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1508), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1847] 2002, p. 478. Zanma’er Dong was also called Zanmala Dong, located not far from the Bolanggong Mountain in Sichuan, see Wen Guanghan (ed.), Litang Xianzhi, Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe, 1996, pp. 164–165. 80 Tongshengge Shufang (ed.), Manhan Jinshen Quanshu, in Feng Lisheng and Geng Xiangxin (eds.), Qingdai Jinshen Lu Jicheng (Book 1), Zhengzhou: Daxiang Chubanshe, [1760] 2008, p. 398; Chang Ming et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1816] 1984, p. 2434. 81 Qin Wuyu, Wenjian Banxiang Lu, in Wang Deyi (ed.), Congshu Jicheng Xubian (Book 24), Taipei: Xin Wenfeng Chuban Gongsi, [c. 1783] 1989, p. 506. For Qin Wuyu’s official career in Sichuan, see Zeng Guoquan et al., Shanxi Tongzhi, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 645), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1892] 2002, p. 500. 82 Chang Ming et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1816] 1984, pp. 585–586.

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summer grass.83 Late in the eighteenth century the connection between the caterpillar fungus and Dajianlu emerged. Zhu Feng, an epigraphist who had travelled to Shaanxi and Henan provinces and stayed there for years, noted in around 1780 that Dajianlu produced the spring worm summer grass.84 This name for the caterpillar fungus was unique in relevant original Qing descriptions. By around 1904, a concise chronicle of Dajianlu then introduced the worm grass as a local product.85 Despite the long history of production, the caterpillar fungus on the market in Dajianlu would not necessarily come locally. Xu Ke had ever sketched the commercial prosperity of this transportation centre in his 1916 collection of jottings on the Qing dynasty. Through Dajianlu, the yiren (barbarians) in the western territory exported the winter worm summer grass, musk and other goods to the Chinese in the interior regions, in exchange for tea, cotton threads and so on.86 Within such a discriminatory context, Dajianlu not only functioned as a geographical divide between Tibetan and Chinese cultures, but also drew an ethnic distinction between the civilised or superior and the barbarous or inferior. Other specific production sites still sprang up from time to time. Might as well start with Sichuan. Zhu Zhang (1679–1759), who was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang and served as the magistrate of Jiangyou in Sichuan from 1707 to 1716, kept a note of the summer grass winter worm from Hualinping (in present-day Luding) in his collection of poetry.87 Zhao 83 Long Bai, Maiyao Lianzhu: Yaoxing Kao, in Gan Zuwang et al. (eds.), Wuzhong Yiji (Fangyao Lei), Nanjing: Jiangsu Keji Chubanshe, [1795] 1993, p. 686. 84 Zhu Feng mentioned the caterpillar fungus in his Ganyuan Xiaozhi (Notes of Tangerine Garden, c. 1780), which probably has never been published. A manuscript of this text is now preserved at Nanjing Library. For the record and a textual study of the manuscript, see Di Lu, ‘Nantu Cang Ganyuan Xiaozhi Chaoben Chutan’, Changjiang Xueshu, 2014, (2): 88–93. 85 Liu Tingshu et al., Dajian Ting Zhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Sichuan Fuxianzhi Ji, Book 66), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [c. 1904] 1992, p. 990. For the date of this text, see Sichuan Sheng Difang Zhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui (ed.), Sichuan Shengzhi: Chuban Zhi, Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe, 2001, p. 584. 86 Xu Ke, Qingbai Leichao, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1916] 1984, pp. 2336–2337. 87 Zhu Zhang, Guanshu Tang Shiji, in Ji Xianlin (ed.), Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu

(Jibu, Book 258), Jinan: Qilu Shushe, [c. 1759] 1997, p. 701. For Zhu Zhang’s official career in Jiangyou, see Peng Zhi, Jiangyou Xianzhi, in Zhu Jiajin (ed.), Gugong Zhenben Congkan (Book 206), Haikou: Hainan Chubanshe, [1727] 2001, pp. 21, 35–36; Fang Ping, Zhu Zhang Rushu Ji Shuzhong Shige Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Chengdu: Sichuan Shifan Daxue, 2015, pp. 1–15.

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Xuemin assimilated the note into his work on materia medica, but mislocated Hualinping in Jiangyou.88 Based on his official career and travels in western Sichuan, Li Xinheng’s 1790 work on the Jinchuan area devotes an entry for the winter worm summer grass then commonly known as worm grass.89 The entry is quoted in the 1816 general chronicle of Sichuan.90 Furthermore, Chen Yong of Suzhou in eastern China stated that in the winter of 1803 his uncle returned from Sichuan, bringing with him the winter worm summer grass yielded in Xiao Jinchuan (Xiaojin county).91 From the end of the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries, several chronicles of Maozhou (Maoxian), Batang, Huili, Yanyuan and Dingzhan (Xinlong) all treat the winter worm summer grass a local medicinal product.92 Tang Zonghai (1851–1897), a physician from Sichuan, once wrote about the worm grass of Songpan.93 As the

88 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, p. 139. Zhao’s record of the caterpillar fungus was often quoted by later authors, see, for example, Xu Jinyuan, Chuanbian Youji, Beijing: Jingcheng Yinshuju, 1932, p. 100. 89 Li Xinheng, Jinchuan Suoji, in Wang Yunwu (ed.), Congshu Jicheng Chubian, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1790] 1936, p. 64. Li’s record was also often quoted by later authors, see, for example, Zhang Xiangwen, Nanyuan Conggao, in Minguo Congshu Bianji Weiyuanhui (ed.), Minguo Congshu (Collection 5), Shanghai, Shanghai Shudian, [1929] 1996, pp. 829–830. Li Xinheng used to hold the position as assistant magistrate of Xichang in Sichuan, see Wang Tao, Yingruan Zazhi, Taipei: Wenhai Chubanshe, [c. 1871] 1969, p. 129. 90 Chang Ming et al., Sichuan Tongzhi, Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1816] 1984, p. 2467. 91 Chen Yong, Chusanxuan Congtan (Book 2, Vol. 4), Suzhou: Publisher Unknown,

[1804] 1864, pp. 27–29. 92 Ding Yingkui et al., Maozhou Zhi, in Zhu Jiajin (ed.), Gugong Zhenben Congkan

(Book 221), Haikou: Hainan Chubanshe, [1794] 2001, p. 213; Qian Zhaotang, Batang Zhilue, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 39), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [c. 1844] 2003, p. 510; Deng Renyuan et al., Huili Zhouzhi, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu (Huazhong Difang, Book 367), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1874] 1976, p. 1052; Gu Peiyuan et al., Yanyuan Xianzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Sichuan Fuxianzhi Ji, Book 70), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1894] 1992, p. 735; Zhang Ji, Dingzhan Ting Zhilue, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 40), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [c. 1897] 2003, p. 106. 93 Tang Zonghai, Yiyi Tongshuo, Qiu Xiaobo (ed.), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [c. 1897] 1992, p. 118.

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twentieth century commenced, the winter worm summer grass in Yuesui (Yuexi) and Chonghuatun (An’ning) also attracted local attention.94 Yunnan as a production area was first mentioned by Wu Yiluo. Besides, a 1763 general chronicle refers to the medicinal winter worm summer grass in Tibet, and the ‘barbarians’ often selling it in Zhongdian (ShangriLa) and Weixi in Yunnan.95 For sure, sale does not equal production. But by the nineteenth century, two chronicles of Zhongdian and Lijiang recorded the worm grass growing in Zhongdian and the cold alpine region of Adunzi (Deqin) in Weixi.96 Then Zhongdian and Weixi constituted part of Lijiang prefecture.97 In addition to these sources and sites, the winter worm summer grass as a local medicinal substance also found a place in the 1850 chronicle of Pu’er (Ning’er).98 Due caution needs to be exercised in approaching historical biogeography, because production information in circulation would sometimes be distorted in varying degrees. The 1895 chronicle of Lijiang prefecture, for example, explicitly claims that the worm grass did not grow in Lijiang but was misunderstood (by some people) as a Lijiang product.99 This statement, however, contradicted the above records and the information from Zhao Xuemin (1719–1805), that is, Mr. Ping Laizhong’s father, who had held office in Zhongdian, Lijiang prefecture, described to Mr. Ping the local winter worm summer grass.100

94 Ma Zhongliang et al., Yuesui Ting Quanzhi, in Lin Chaomin et al. (ed.), Xinan Xijian Fangzhi Wenxian (Book 48), Lanzhou: Lanzhou Daxue Chubanshe, [1906] 2003, p. 775; Liu Guangyong, Chonghuatun Zhilue, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Sichuan Fuxianzhi Ji, Book 66), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1912] 1992, p. 959. 95 Xie Shenglun, Dianqian Zhilue, Guiyang: Guizhou Renmin Chubanshe, [1763] 2008, p. 116. 96 Wu Ziqing et al., Xinxiu Zhongdian Ting Zhishu, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Yunnan Fuxianzhi Ji, Book 82), Nanjing: Fenghuang Chubanshe, [1884] 2009, p. 519; Chen Zonghai et al., Lijiang Fuzhi, Lijiang: Zhengxie Lijiang Shi Gucheng Qu Weiyuan Hui, [1895] 2005, p. 138. In the nineteenth century, Adunzi belonged to Weixi, see Deqin Xianzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui (ed.), Deqin Xianzhi, Kunming: Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe, 1997, p. 2. 97 Long Yun et al., Xinzuan Yunnan Tongzhi (Book 2), Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, [1944] 2007, pp. 45–48. 98 Li Xiling et al., Pu’er Fuzhi, Pu’er: Xueshu, 1850, p. 244. 99 Chen Zonghai et al., Lijiang Fuzhi, Lijiang: Zhengxie Lijiang Shi Gucheng Qu

Weiyuan Hui, [1895] 2005, p. 138. 100 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, p. 140.

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Geographical Disparities and Rhapsodies More intriguingly, perhaps, not all the reported production areas fall within the geographical scope of Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet. Guizhou as such an area, mentioned by Wu Yiluo and later recognised by a general chronicle of Guizhou,101 cannot be verified by modern biogeography. Likewise, the summer grass winter worm in a Manchu official’s work on the western territory, finalised in 1777, was deemed a product of Huijiang (Muslim regions in Xinjiang, south of the Tianshan mountains).102 Its connection with Xinjiang was further manifested in Wang Dashu’s (1732–1816) rhapsody on the Tianshan (Celestial Mountains), which describes its entrusting life to grass, and quotations of the rhapsody in, for example, He Ying’s (1741–1821) chronicle of Urumqi, Hami and Turpan.103 However, Li Cheng’s monograph on mountains did not directly link the winter worm summer grass with Tianshan, but with a snowy mountain northeast of Kashgar and southwest of the Tianshan mountains.104 By the beginning of the twentieth century, the chronicle of Kuqa traced the winter worm summer grass to the extremely cold snowy 101 Wu Yiluo’s words on the caterpillar fungus, indirectly quoted from Wu Qijun’s Zhiwu Mingshi Tukao (Illustrated Investigations of the Names and Entities of Plants, c. 1847), were invoked in support of local production of the caterpillar fungus, see Liu Xianshi et al., Guizhou Tongzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Guizhou Fuxianzhi Ji, Book 9), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1948] 2016, p. 167. 102 Qishiyi, Xiyu Wenjian Lu, in Shi Lizhen et al. (eds.), Qing Chaoben Lin Zexu Deng Xibu Jixing Sanzhong, Beijing: Quanguo Tushuguan Wenxian Suowei Fuzhi Zhongxin, [1777] 2001, p. 201. This text has different versions under different titles, which also contain the record of the caterpillar fungus. For example, see Qishiyi, Yiyu Suotan, Manuscript Preserved at the Waseda University Library, [1777] Undated, p. 12; Qishiyi, Xiyu Zongzhi, in Zhongguo Xibei Wenxian Congshu Bianji Weiyuanhui (ed.), Xibei Xijian Fangzhi Wenxian (Book 60), Lanzhou: Lanzhou Guji Shudian, [1777] 1990, p. 19. 103 Wang Dashu, Xizheng Lu, in Liu Jiaping and Zhou Jiming (eds.), Guojia Tushuguan

Cang Guji Zhenben Youji Congkan (Book 14), Beijing: Xianzhuang Shuju, [c. 1791] 2003, pp. 7178–7179; He Ying, Sanzhou Jilue, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu (Xibu Difang, Book 11), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [c. 1806] 1968, p. 297. In Wang Dashu’s rhapsody, the caterpillar fungus is also called summer flower winter worm. But in He Ying’s quotation, slightly different from the original rhapsody, the word flower is written as grass. For the date and authorship of the rhapsody, see Wu Huafeng and Zhou Yanling, ‘‘Tianshan Yuzhe’ Wang Dashu De Qianshu Shengya Yu Shiwen Chuangzuo’, Xiyu Yanjiu, 2014, (4): 115–122. 104 Li Cheng, Wanshan Gangmu, in Luo Lin (ed.), Siku Weishoushu Jikan (Collection 9, Book 6), Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, [c. 1890] 2000, pp. 422–423. Licheng was appointed the assistant magistrate of Yaozhou in 1813. For an introduction to his life

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mountain far away from Kuqa.105 While the pictorial general chronicle of Xinjiang, beyond alleging its existence in the Tianshan mountains, located the winter worm summer grass in a place now known as Zhaosu, Ili.106 In terms of the trustworthiness of these claims, the Xinjiang caterpillar fungus reminds one of the caterpillar fungus in Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian. The natural historian Wu Qijun (1789–1847) diverted attention to Guangdong and Guangxi. He should have observed the caterpillar fungus, as evidenced by the illustration of the winter worm summer grass in his posthumous botanical work. After quoting Wu Yiluo’s description of the species, he added that it was common in Guangdong and Guangxi; its root resembled a worm, and its leaf seemed to be a blade of newborn couch grass; people in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, gathered and ate it, saying that it was as delicious as the hechong (rice worm, i.e. Tylorrhynchus heterochaetus ).107 It remains obscure where Wu witnessed the caterpillar fungus. Given that Wu Qijun held the positions as Provincial Governor of Yunnan and Governor of Yunnan and Guizhou during the period 1843–1845,108 it was possible for him to encounter the species in Yunnan. Qi Xueqiu wrote in the late nineteenth century that Wu collected hundreds of unusual plants during his term of office in Yunnan; and one of them was the incredible winter worm summer

and Wanshan Gangmu (Compendium of Thousands of Mountains), see Sun Donghu, ‘Li Cheng Yu Wanshan Gangmu’, Zhongguo Lishi Dili Luncong, 1998, (2): 187–196. 105 Anonymous, Kuche Zhilizhou Xiangtu Zhi, in Ma Dazheng et al. (eds.), Xinjiang Xiangtuzhi Gao, Urumchi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, [1908] 2010, p. 321. 106 Yuan Dahua et al., Xinjiang Tuzhi, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 649), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1911] 2002, p. 262; Yuan Dahua et al., Xinjiang Tuzhi, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 650), p. 90. The original name of the present-day Zhaosu, Ili is Gake Chaha’er Hai. For related geographical identification, see He Ling (ed.), Xiyu Lishi Wenhua Dacidian, Urumqi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 2012, p. 375. 107 Wu Qijun, Zhiwu Mingshi Tukao, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, [c. 1847] 1957, p. 242. 108 Zhao Er’xun et al., Qingshi Gao Jiaozhu, Zhu Chongsheng (ed.), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1927] 1999, p. 9858; Qian Shifu, Qingdai Zhiguan Nianbiao, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980, pp. 1687–1689; Wei Xiumei, Qingji Zhiguan Biao, Taipei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Jindaishi Yanjiusuo, 2002, pp. 378, 442.

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grass.109 Aside from Guangdong and Guangxi, Fujian also became a production area under the pen of Li Zuoxian (1807–1876).110 Not much later, the caterpillar fungus, under the slightly abbreviated name of winter worm grass, entered the ranks of local medicinal products of Xinning (Taishan), Guangdong.111 Modern European natural history and Chinese mycology and materia medica recognise Ophiocordyceps sinensis as the authentic species corresponding to the caterpillar fungus. This species inhabits some areas in Sichuan, Tibet, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu, but does not grow elsewhere in China.112 With this consideration in view, the attributions in the Qing Chinese records to Guizhou, Xinjiang, Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian seem problematic. But the illustration in Wu’s work indicates his familiarity with the organism. The pictorial general chronicle of Xinjiang also informed that at the moment it was mostly distributed in western Sichuan.113 Although Qing Chinese authors left us no specimens of the species they described, it is possible that some of them used ‘winter worm summer grass’ or a related expression as a general name for Ophiocordyceps sinensis and other morphologically similar species, such as Cordyceps aspera in Tibet, Yunnan, Sichuan and Guangdong, Cordyceps gracilis in Yunnan and Xinjiang, Cordyceps gunnii in Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian, Cordyceps stylophora in Guangxi and Cordyceps taii in Guizhou.114 Certain species under the name of winter worm summer grass, produced elsewhere but sold on local markets in Guangdong, among others, could have possibly be mistaken as a local product. 109 Qi Xueqiu, Jianwen Xubi, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1181), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1873] 2002, p. 397. Qi Xueqiu misrecorded the title of Wu Qijun’s botanical work as Bencao Tushuo (Illustrated Herbal). 110 Li Zuoxian, Wulu Bitan, Lijin: Printed by Li Zuoxian, 1875, p. 288. 111 He Fuhai et al., Xinning Xianzhi, Taipei: Taiwan Xuesheng Shuju, [1893] 1968,

p. 346. 112 David N. Pegler et al., ‘The Chinese ‘Caterpillar Fungus’’, Mycologist, 1994, 8(1): 3–5; Zang Mu and Noriko Kinjo, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Moshi Biaoben De Yanjiu’, Acta Botanica Yunnanica, 1996, 18(2): 205–208; Song Liren (ed.), Zhonghua Bencao: Zangyao Juan, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2002, pp. 147–148; Liang Zongqi (ed.), Zhongguo Zhenjun Zhi (Vol. 32), Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 125–126. 113 Yuan Dahua et al., Xinjiang Tuzhi, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 650), p. 90. 114 Liang Zongqi (ed.), Zhongguo Zhenjun Zhi (Vol. 32), Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 89–90, 92, 130, 133, 140.

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Concerning some perceptual information which is hard to believe, one’s own experience can underpin his or her judgement about its credibility. For example, the caterpillar fungus, usually added into dishes as a tonic ingredient, does not taste as delicious as the rice worm, but faintly fishy and squishy.115 Possibly, the Guangzhou people referred to the wormlike and edible rhizome of the Chinese artichoke called ganlu zi (literally sweet dew fruit, i.e. Stachys sieboldii). This plant, whose habitat includes Guangdong, had been eaten long before the eighteenth century.116 Since the natural environment evolves through time, and historical representations of the natural world have remined uneven, there might be certain historicity underlying the dubious information about distribution. And a positivist approach would oversimplify or distort the history and geography of a natural product. Recent historical scholarship has shed new light on the manifold social functions of rumours and gossips, ranging from patriarchal curtailment to community solidarity.117 The stretching production areas of the caterpillar fungus whatsoever reflect the rising attention to the organism, which was mingled with imagination of imperial power and exotic spaces and nature. Wang Dashu’s rhapsody on the Tianshan mountains actually ends with an extolment of the Qing state’s prestige, vitality and territorial vastness; and some species depicted in the imaginative rhapsody, such as the nine-tailed fox, cannot be accounted for in reality.118 The scholar Zhang Shu (1781–1847) was another author who composed a rhapsody on the Tianshan mountains and mentioned in it the summer grass winter worm.119 Yet he had never

115 Cf. Michael Finkel, ‘Tibetan Gold: A Medicinal Fungus Highly Prized in China is Fueling a Boom on the Tibetan Plateau’, National Geographic, 2012, (8): 114–129. 116 Wu Zhengyi and Li Xiwen (eds.), Zhongguo Zhiwu Zhi (Vol. 66), Beijing: Kexue

Chubanshe, 1977, pp. 18–20; Luo Guihuan, ‘Ganluzi De Zaipei Qiyuan He Chuanbo’, Zhongguo Nongshi, 2014, (6): 21–24. 117 For example, see Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Lindsay Porter, Popular Rumour in Revolutionary Paris, 1792–1794, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 118 Wang Dashu, Xizheng Lu, in Liu Jiaping and Zhou Jiming (eds.), Guojia Tushuguan Cang Guji Zhenben Youji Congkan (Book 14), Beijing: Xianzhuang Shuju, [c. 1791] 2003, pp. 7180, 7188–7195. 119 Zhang Shu, Suyang Tang Wenji, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1506), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1837] 2002, p. 444.

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been to Xinjiang.120 Looking through Zhang’s rhapsody, one can find it infused with historical events, legendary creatures, fantasies and his praise of the Qing state’s geographical grandness. In a poem written during his official service in Sichuan, he contextualised the winter worm summer grass as a foodstuff within an official’s effective governance of the ‘barbarians’ in Chonghuatun (An’ning), Jinchuan.121 These literary writings interweave the caterpillar fungus with a sense of exoticism, ethnocentrism and colonial legitimacy. Transregional Comparisons and Nominal Variations Part of the increasing attention to the distribution of the caterpillar fungus echoed the concern with the close relationship between medicinal qualities and production areas. Along with this concern came the concept of geo-authenticity which explicitly appeared in Chinese materia medica at the beginning of the sixteenth century.122 For unknown reasons, perhaps based on his own practical observations, the eighteenth-century physician Wu Yiluo differentiated the superior caterpillar fungus of Jiading prefecture of Sichuan from the inferior caterpillar fungus of Yunnan and Guizhou.123 Similar differentiation persisted through to the twentieth century. The 1934 chronicle of Enping, Guangdong discriminated the local medicinal winter worm grass from its counterpart in Sichuan: ‘its stem is slightly bigger [than that of the same product in Sichuan], and it is not as good as that produced in Sichuan, which is slender and small’.124 The basis for the identification of quality or ‘good’ was presumably medicinal potency. Transregional circulation of products and information stood behind such comparisons. And efforts to seek or record new production

120 For a detailed chronicle of Zhang Shu’s life and writings, see Zhang Xiaopeng, Zhang Shu Nianpu, Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 2017. 121 Zhang Shu, Suyang Tang Shiji, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1506), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1842] 2002, p. 270. 122 Zhongzhen Zhao et al., ‘The Formation of daodi Medicinal Materials’, Journal of

Ethnopharmacology, 2012, 140(3): 476–481. Cf. Liu Wentai et al., Bencao Pinhui Jingyao, Cao Hui (ed.), Beijing: Huaxia Chubanshe, [1505] 2004, pp. 95, 775–789. 123 Wu Yiluo, Bencao Congxin, p. 36. 124 Yu Picheng et al., Enping Xianzhi, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi

Congshu (Huanan Difang, Book 184), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1934] 1974, p. 214.

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areas of this medicinal and economic substance were by no means limited to the aforementioned. The chronicle of Yanjing in Tibet, finalised in 1909, took note of the local medicinal caterpillar fungus albeit its small annual output.125 By around 1912, Liu Zanting’s chronicles of Jiali, Chaya, Yanjing, Jiuzu (part of Nagqu and Chamdo) and Enda in Tibet all took into account the worm grass as a local medicinal product.126 Nowadays Chinese people habitually call the caterpillar fungus winter worm summer grass or worm grass in abbreviation. However, the above analysis additionally reveals that the two names, together with summer grass winter worm and spring worm summer grass, had already been in use in the eighteenth century, whereas the name winter worm grass emerged in the nineteenth century, as exemplified in the physician Wang Shixiong’s 1857 casebook.127 Reasons for the variation in word order between summer grass winter worm and winter worm summer grass remain unclear. Possibly, it stemmed from an accidental slip of the tongue during verbal communication between different ethnic groups and regions. But in any case, this linguistic phenomenon points to the flexibility in the inversion of the two adjacent phrases (i.e. summer grass and winter worm), which did not lead to ambiguity of the combined terms, but corresponded to the enduring life cycle of the caterpillar fungus, without beginning or end, as portrayed by Wu Yiluo. These names and their abbreviations altogether counted as the cultural products of the circulation of the caterpillar fungus in Chinese society. In particular, Li Xinheng had written down the anonymous caiyao zhe (medicine collectors) in Jinchuan and their collecting experience; Li and the compilers 125 Duan Pengrui, Yanjing Xiangtu Zhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Xizang Fuxianzhi Ji), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1909] 1995, p. 405. 126 Liu Zanting, Jiali Xianzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Xizang Fuxianzhi Ji), Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [c. 1912] 1995, p. 62; Liu Zanting, Chaya Xian Yuzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Xizang Fuxianzhi Ji), p. 201; Liu Zanting, Yanjing Xianzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Xizang Fuxianzhi Ji), p. 385; Liu Zanting, Jiuzu Xianzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Xizang Fuxianzhi Ji), p. 515; Liu Zanting, Enda Xianzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Xizang Fuxianzhi Ji), p. 550. Liu Zanting had never published these chronicles during his life; he also did not indicate when they were finalised, see Yang Changhong, ‘Liu Zanting Canggao Yanjiu’, Zhongguo Zangxue, 2006, (4): 34–42. For the dating of these chronicles (c. 1912), see Peng Shenhong, Qingdai Minguo Xizang Fangzhi Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Chengdu: Sichuan Shifan Daxue, 2008, pp. 44–45. 127 Wang Shixiong, Guiyan Lu, in Sheng Zengxiu (ed.), Wang Mengying Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1857] 1999, p. 447.

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of the 1906 chronicle of Yuesui (Yuexi, Sichuan) articulated worm grass as the popular name for the winter worm summer grass.128 The abbreviations simplified communications about the caterpillar fungus, behind which the medicine trade, as will be explored below, perhaps had made a salient contribution. The winter worm grass employed by Wang Shixiong (1808–1863), who practised medicine in Zhejiang and Shanghai in eastern China,129 would have reached him through this well-developed medicine trade.

As a Marvel Miracles have long been a feature of medical efficacy. Recent research has highlighted the role of miracles in the construction of medical authority and the practices and experiences of efficacy.130 In terms of miracle medicines, of course, they have commercial cache. Prior to the fifteenth century, there was another documented medicinal substance that shared some similarities with the caterpillar fungus: chanhua (the flower on cicada). This strange organism made its entry into Chinese materia medica as early as around the fifth century, but morphological descriptions of it appeared several centuries later.131 In his Bencao Tujing (Illustrated Classic of Materia Medica, 1061), Su Song characterised the flower on cicada as follows:

128 Li Xinheng, Jinchuan Suoji, p. 64; Ma Zhongliang et al., Yuesui Ting Quanzhi, in Lin Chaomin et al. (ed.), Xinan Xijian Fangzhi Wenxian (Book 48), Lanzhou: Lanzhou Daxue Chubanshe, [1906] 2003, p. 775. 129 For the life and writings of Wang Shixiong, see Wang Hui and Wang Guanglei, ‘Wang Mengying Zunian Kao’, Zhejiang Zhongyi Zazhi, 2015, (12): 925; Zhang Lei, Wang Mengying, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 1–48. 130 Gianna Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the Holy Body: Medical Experts and Miraculous Evidence in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, Renaissance Studies, 2007, 21(4): 568–586; Mei Zhan, Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine through Transnational Frames, Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 91–118. 131 Lei Xiao, Leigong Paozhi Lun, Shang Zhijun (ed.), Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu

Chubanshe, [c. fifth century] 1991, p. 124. For the problematic date of this text, see Zheng Jinsheng et al. (eds.), Dictionary of the Ben Cao Gang Mu (Vol. 3), Oakland: University of California Press, 2018, p. 254. For an eleventh-century description of the flower on cicada, see Song Qi, Yibu Fangwu Lueji, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1057] 1936, pp. 14–15.

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Nowadays there is a kind of cicada in Sichuan; a horn extending from the head of its shell resembles the petals of a flower; it is called chanhua [the flower on cicada]. Some people from western regions brought it to the capital. Official physicians said, ‘it is the most marvelous thing when used as a medicinal substance.’132

Modern biology explains the formation of the flower on cicada, like that of the caterpillar fungus, from the perspective of fungal parasitism: the fungus Cordyceps sobolifera or Cordyceps cicadae parasitises the nymph of Platypleura kaempferi or Cicada flammata which belongs to the Cicadidae family, and then grows out of the latter’s head, and forms a flower-like fruiting body.133 Though the flower on cicada is structurally similar to the caterpillar fungus, there are still differences in their morphological characteristics: the latter usually has a single and longer fruiting body; their insect hosts belong to different families and are parasitised in their nymphal and larval stages respectively. Both the flower on cicada and the caterpillar fungus can be found in Sichuan, but the latter was integrated into Chinese materia medica as late as the eighteenth century. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the author of the chronicle of Litang asserted that it remained absent from Chinese materia medica.134 The physician Tang Zonghai, too, held such a view which then stimulated him to provide a detailed account of the caterpillar fungus at the end of the century.135 Even in the early twentieth century the writer Chai Xiaofan (1893–1936) still announced the lack of the caterpillar fungus in Chinese materia medica.136 Indeed, knowledge acquisition in their time was not as convenient as is today. But it is perplexing that Qing recorders of the caterpillar fungus had never 132 Su Song, Bencao Tujing, Shang Zhijun (ed.), Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1061] 1994, p. 484. 133 Modern mycology holds the view that the flower on cicada refers to Cordyceps sobolifera (distributed in Anhui and Sichuan) or Cordyceps cicadae (distributed in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian and Anhui), see Xing Xingqiu, ‘Da Chancao He Xiao Chancao De Fenlei’, Weishengwu Xuebao, 1975, 15(1): 21–26; Liang Zongqi (ed.), Zhongguo Zhenjun Zhi (Vol. 32), Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 77–78, 127–128. 134 Chen Denglong, Litang Zhilue, p. 91. 135 Tang Zonghai, Bencao Wenda, in Wang Mimi and Li Lin (eds.), Tang Rongchuan

Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1893] 1999, p. 538. 136 Chai Xiaofan, Fantian Lu Conglu, Beijing: Gugong Chubanshe, [1926] 2013, p. 1156.

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associated it with the flower on cicada despite their similar appearance. For example, Su Song assigned the flower on cicada to the category of chongyu (insects and aquatic animals), while Wu Yiluo placed the caterpillar fungus in the group of shancao (mountain herbs). Although current biology recognises their morphological and developmental similarities, in imperial China, the formation of the flower on cicada, as explained by Su Song, actually differed from that of the caterpillar fungus: the flower and the cicada could not reversibly transform between each other, and were not connected with seasonal changes. Moreover, the insect part of the caterpillar fungus is a larva rather than a nymph; the parasitised larva can be easily distinguished from the parasitised nymph by the naked eye. Compared with a nymph, a larva bears more uncertainty in change and is likely to inspire more active human imagination on transformation. The Tibetan or ‘barbarian’ origin of the caterpillar fungus perhaps reinforced its distance from the flower on cicada as well. The Caterpillar Fungus Captivates Eastern China In the twenty-third chapter of the satirical novel Rulin Waishi (The Scholars, c. 1750), the seventh wife of the wealthy salt merchant Wan Xuezhai in Yangzhou once suffered from the hanzheng (cold illness). Wan found himself unable to buy the rare but essential medicinal substance xuehama (snow frog) locally, even at an extremely high price. So, he entrusted a man named Niu Yupu with the task of seeking it in Suzhou, a metropolis about two hundred kilometres southeast of Yangzhou. Though Niu recommended another person to fulfil the task, he was still invited to attend the dinner in Wan’s house next day. The first dish Wan treated to Niu and two other salt merchants was the caterpillar fungus. To stress his ability to obtain it, Wan bragged that it came from fangwai (remote areas) and appeared in many quantities in Yangzhou; however, the city of Yangzhou was annoyingly devoid of the snow frog.137 The background of the plot was Yangzhou’s monopolistic position in the lucrative salt trade in eighteenth-century China. Wan as a fictional character represented the salt merchant group whose wealth exceeded that accumulated by any other group. Based on economic strength and a reciprocal relationship with imperial officials, these merchants, without official 137 Wu Jingzi, Rulin Waishi, Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, [c. 1750] 1977, pp. 277–278.

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political status themselves, pursued a life of sheer luxury and meanwhile vitalised local (material) culture and reshaped the landscape.138 From a broader perspective, the rise of Yangzhou in the eighteenth century to some extent resonated with the long-term shift of the economic and cultural centre of China from North to South and West to East, a shift that had gradually intensified since the Song dynasty (960–1279).139 The prosperous Yangzhou, a junction of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Yangtze River, magnetised goods for exchange from the rest of the country.140 Even the emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–1796) delighted in Yangzhou on his six inspections of the regions south of the Yangtze River. Not only did the Yangzhou salt merchants fund the inspections, but they also collected and produced various luxuries in the service of the royal court.141 Li Dou’s encyclopaedic portrayal of Yangzhou in 1795 described an affluent salt merchant served with over ten different dishes every meal. While another salt merchant kept hundreds of horses each of which cost him much gold everyday, the elaborately decorated horses were just led out of the city in the morning and led back in the evening in a conspicuous display of wealth.142

138 Ping-Ti Ho, ‘The Salt Merchants of Yang-Chou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century China’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1954, 17(1–2): 130– 168; Antonia Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550–1850, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004, pp. 117–147; Antonia Finnane, ‘Chinese Domestic Interiors and ‘Consumer Constraint’ in Qing China: Evidence from Yangzhou’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2014, 57(1): 112–144. 139 Shi Nianhai, Zhongguo Lishi Renkou Dili He Lishi Jingji Dili, Taipei: Taiwan Xuesheng Shuju, 1991, pp. 199–214; Lan Yong, ‘Cong Tiandisheng Zonghe Yanjiu Jiaodu Kan Zhonghua Wenming Dongyi Nanqian De Yuanyin’, Xueshu Yanjiu, 1995, (6): 71– 76; Man-houng Lin, ‘The Characteristics of China’s Traditional Economy’, in Gregory C. Chow and Dwight H. Perkins (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Economy, London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 1–20. 140 Liao Shengfeng, ‘Qingdai Qianqi Yangzhou Guan De Shangpin Liutong’, Jiangnan Daxue Xuebao (Renwen Shehui Kexue Ban), 2009, 8(1): 103–108. 141 Zhu Zongzhou, ‘Qianlong Nanxun Yu Yangzhou’, Yangzhou Shiyuan Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban), 1989, (4): 136–140; Yulian Wu, Luxurious Networks: Salt Merchants, Status, and Statecraft in Eighteenth-Century China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017, pp. 31–126. 142 Li Dou, Yangzhou Huafang Lu, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1795] 1997, pp. 148–

150.

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Historians have stressed the non-fictional aspects of The Scholars, which mirrored the social status quo and the author Wu Jingzi’s (1701– 1754) own experiences.143 On a large geographical scale, both Wu and Yangzhou salt merchants came from Anhui province. Wu migrated to Nanjing, Jiangsu province in 1733. Thereafter he travelled several times to Yangzhou, drinking wine with friends and looking for a livelihood, and finally died there. Though leading a rough life, he also consorted with a salt merchant friend named Cheng Jinfang (1718–1784).144 His acquaintance with their lifestyle motivated him to relate salt merchants to the bizarre things that they were able to use to distinguish them from ordinary people and flaunt their fortunes. The caterpillar fungus was such a curiosity. Wu might have seen it, or learnt about it from books, or even from people in Yangzhou or elsewhere. The vague term fangwai (remote areas) suggests the information about its origin, also a commercial secret, ultimately blurred after passing through several hands and regions. But anyway, merely speaking of ‘remote areas’ was enough for Wan Xuezhai to show off his luxury and materialised power, which in turn confirmed he belonged to the community of salt merchants. In Suzhou, the litterateur Yuan Dong (1697–1761), a contemporary of Wu Jingzi, had obtained some caterpillar fungus from one of his friends. In his 1744 collection of miscellaneous notes, Yuan wrote: A friend of mine once came from far away and presented me with the caterpillar fungus, a thing that grows on the borderland of Shaanxi. It gets the name because it is grass in summer and turns into a worm in winter. Soak it in wine, and then the wine can be used to remove illnesses and prolong life. When I saw it, I found it merely a withered grass-root of which the upper and lower parts differed in figure and colour: the halfgreen part looked like grass, while the half-black part was slightly thicker and bigger and seemed as if it was going to move. I have not found

143 Chen Meilin, Wu Jingzi Pingzhuan, Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe, 1990, pp. 436–529; Liangyan Ge, The Scholar and the State: Fiction as Political Discourse in Late Imperial China, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015, pp. 98–135. 144 Meng Xingren, Wu Jingzi Nianpu, Hefei: Anhui Renmin Chubanshe, 1981, pp. 41– 47, 108–114. For Cheng Jinfang’s life, see Arthur W. Hummel (ed.), Eminent Chinese of the Qing Period, Great Barrington: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2018, pp. 69–70.

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any records of this substance yet, so I noted down it here for further investigation.145

Despite the imprecise expression of the origin of the caterpillar fungus, it is well known that West Shaanxi borders Sichuan. From Shaanxi or Sichuan to Suzhou, the caterpillar fungus would have needed to travel more than one thousand kilometres. The long journey of Yuan’s friend and the caterpillar fungus from afar set off their intimate friendship. When he presented it to Yuan, he also shared its specialness that consisted in its transformation between a blade of grass and a worm as well as its desirable efficacies in removing illnesses and prolonging life. Though having not observed the transformation, Yuan, under the influence of his friend, still expressed a sense of movability ‘as if it was going to move’ in the caterpillar fungus. The vibrancy of eighteenth-century Suzhou was perhaps overshadowed by the enormous wealth of Yangzhou, though in the first half of the nineteenth century Yangzhou went downhill due to factors such as the declining importance of the Grand Canal and the dismantling of the salt monopoly held by local salt merchants.146 Yangzhou and Suzhou lay north and south of the Yangtze River, and the convenient water transportation networks between them provided great convenience for goods exchange. Wan Xuezhai, the fabled Yangzhou salt merchant in Wu Jingzi’s novel, did expect to acquire the snow frog in Suzhou. While in reality, Tang Bingjun, a native of Shanghai, reported in the late eighteenth century about the presence of the caterpillar fungus in Suzhou, reasonably in local drugstores in light of the medical context. Shanghai and Suzhou (and Tongxiang, to be mentioned below) are located very close

145 Yuan Dong, Shuyin Congshuo, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1137), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1744] 2002, p. 486. Yuan Dong was born in Wujiang, Suzhou. He also spent most of his life in Wujiang. For Yuan’s life and works, see Zhao Tingting, Qingdai Zhongqi Xiqu Jia Yuandong Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Nanjing: Nanjing Shifan Daxue, 2013, pp. 1–22. 146 Antonia Finnane, ‘Yangzhou: A Central Place in the Qing Empire’, in Linda C. Johnson (ed.), Cities of Jiangnan in Late Imperial China, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 117–149; Fan Jinmin, Mingqing Jiangnan Shangye De Fazhan, Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe, 1998, pp. 143–147; Xue Li, Making Local China: A Case Study of Yangzhou, 1853–1928, Wien: LIT, 2018, pp. 52–113.

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to each other.147 Surprisingly, under the title of ‘buyi sishen’ (as tonic and beneficial as ginseng), Tang additionally recorded a detailed medical case involving the use of the caterpillar fungus for impotence and general depletion: The director of the Yingkui College, teacher Kong Jiyuan, styled Yutang, is a descendant of Confucius. He is a decent gentleman, born in Wuzhen of Tongxiang [in Zhejiang province]. Kong told me that his younger brother once suffered from qie (impotence) and sweated heavily. He was quite afraid of wind, and stayed under the mosquito net in a closed room even when it was summer. He had been sick for three years, and no medicinal substances were found to be effective in curing his illness. At that time a relative quit his official position and returned from Sichuan, and gave the sick man three jin of the caterpillar fungus. The latter braised it together with meat and vegetables, and ate them every day. Gradually, he made a recovery from his illness. I learnt from this case that it really could protect the lung and compact the space between the skin and muscles. Subsequent use of the caterpillar fungus also proved its effectiveness. I believe that the potency of it is no lower than that of ginseng, so I attach these words here.148

The Yingkui College was established in Jiading (Jiading district of Shanghai) in 1755 and persisted to 1765.149 Presumably, Tang Bingjun had attended the College and studied with Kong Jiyuan. Kong, as mentioned before, had read his uncle Tang Fangyi’s book Collection on Dim Candlelight.150 Kong’s relative must have acquainted himself with the medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus and the method of using it before returning home. With respect to the illness qie, the renowned herbalist Li Shizhen (1518–1593), for example, enumerated five types 147 Heshen et al., Daqing Yitong Zhi, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange Siku Quanshu (Books 475 & 479), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1784] 1983, pp. 86, 159–160; 78–79. 148 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, p. 386. One jin was approximately 596.8 grams at that time, see Qiu Guangming (ed.), Zhongguo Lidai Duliangheng Kao, pp. 512– 513, 520. 149 Ji Xiaofeng (ed.), Zhongguo Shuyuan Cidian, Hangzhou: Zhejiang Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1996, p. 760; Zhang Yuming (ed.), Jiading Diming Zhi, Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 2002, p. 770. 150 For Kong Jiyuan’s life, see Kong Xianwen et al., Kongshi Zongpu, Publisher Unknown, 1907, pp. 165–166, 341–347; Gong Zhaozhi, Jiaxing Mingqing Wangzu Shuzheng, Beijing: Fangzhi Chubanshe, 2011, p. 430.

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of male infertility, among which the qie specifically referred to the penis erecting but never getting stiff, or a man lacking lust for women.151 Though Kong’s brother had tried treatments before, none of them really worked. It might be possible to imagine his anguish and despair during those ineffective treatments, as well as his delight with his recovery. Because ancient Chinese ideas of filial piety had long highlighted the importance of having offspring.152 The great thinker Meng Ke (372–289 BC) even stated that the worst of the three types of unfilial conducts was producing no offspring.153 Thus childlessness was tantamount to a moral stigma. Drawing on filial piety as a core value of Confucianism, imperial rulers also connected family ethics with state administration; showing filial piety to parents conformed to devoting loyalty to the throne, albeit the existence of conflicts between them in the practical functioning of bureaucracy.154 In the eyes of Kong and Tang, the caterpillar fungus proved to be a cure for impotence; meanwhile, its effectiveness earned it a reputation as a medicinal substance comparable with ginseng, an upper-class herb believed to have marvellous effects as early as around the first century.155 The Suzhou physician Xu Lingtai (1693–1771) even acclaimed the ability of ginseng to raise the dead.156 Prior to introducing the case of Kong’s brother, Tang Bingjun disclosed that through Wu Yiluo’s text he learnt about the effects of the caterpillar fungus on the lung and kidney. Influenced by both Wu’s account and the medical case, Tang declared his belief in its protective 151 Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, p. 1942. 152 Anonymous, Xiaojing Zhushu, Li Longji and Xing Bing (eds.), Beijing: Beijing

Daxue Chubanshe, [c. third century BC] 2000, p. 40. 153 Meng Ke, Mengzi Zhushu, Zhao Qi and Sun Shi (eds.), Beijing: Beijing Daxue

Chubanshe, [c. third century BC] 2000, p. 248. 154 Norman Kutcher, Mourning in Late Imperial China: Filial Piety and the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Philip J. Ivanhoe, ‘Filial Piety as a Virtue’, in Alan K. L. Chan and Sor-Hoon Tan (eds.), Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, pp. 189–202. 155 Ma Jixing (ed.), Shennong Bencao Jing Jizhu, p. 45. For the history of ginseng, see Steven Foster, ‘Towards an Understanding of Ginseng Adulteration: The Tangled Web of Names, History, Trade, and Perception’, HerbalGram, 2016, (111): 36–57; Jiang Zhushan, Renshen Diguo: Qingdai Renshen De Shengchan, Xiaofei Yu Yiliao, Hangzhou: Zhejiang Daxue Chubanshe, 2015. 156 Xu Lingtai, Yixue Yuanliu Lun, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1757] 2008, p. 37.

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effect on the lung. Biomedical practitioners today may find it hard to understand the nexus between sexual function and the lung and kidney. But according to the ancient Chinese medical classic Huangdi Neijing Suwen (Huang Di’s Inner Classic: Basic Questions, c. first century BC), the kidney is where the jing (essence) originates; and the lung is the basis of the qi. The essence and qi sustain the vitality of life and can transform into each other. In the male body, the overflow of the essence and qi determine his ability to have children.157 The concept of jing and its range of meanings embrace sexual potency, which materialises in semen.158 Given the importance of jing, the nourishing of the kidney has been one enduring theme in Chinese medicine. For young and middleaged people alike, taking care of the kidney often meant maintaining sexual function and disciplining instinctive pursuit of sexual pleasure, all allied to enhancing procreative potential and, as shall be seen, nurturing life.159 Having offspring would contribute labour to agricultural production, among others, and since early imperial times female bodies during and after pregnancy had been framed within particular medical, ritual and dietary contexts.160 The Tibetan physician Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje also stressed the goal of increasing fertility through boosting libido. Conceivably, Kong Jiyuan must not be the only person who spread the news of

157 Anonymous, Huang Di Neijing Suwen Jiaozhu, Guo Aichun (ed.), Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [c. first century BC] 1992, pp. 12–13, 75–76, 149–149; Paul U. Unschuld and Hermann Tessenow, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: An Annotated Translation of Huang Di’s Inner Classic - Basic Questions, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, pp. 39–40, 98–99, 178. For the concept and function of qi in early Chinese medicine, see Elisabeth Hsu, ‘Outward Form (xing ) and Inward Qi: The ‘Sentimental Body’ in Early Chinese Medicine’, Early China, 2009, 32: 103–124. The Chinese character shen in early Chinese medicine sometimes denotes testicles rather than the kidney, see Donald J. Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts, London: Kegan Paul International, 1998, p. 73. 158 Donald J. Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts, p. 348; Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 47–48, 196–206; Daniel Maxwell, ‘The Clinical Utility of the Concept of Jing in Chinese Reproductive Medicine’, Asian Medicine, 2012, 7(2): 421–454. 159 David Dear, ‘Chinese Yangsheng: Self-Help and Self-Image’, Asian Medicine, 2012, 7(1): 1–33; Sumiyo Umekawa and David Dear, ‘The Relationship between Chinese Erotic Art and the Art of the Bedchamber: A Preliminary Survey’, in Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (eds.), Imagining Chinese Medicine, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 215–226. 160 Jen-Der Lee, ‘Childbirth in Early Imperial China’, Nan Nü, 2005, 7(2): 216–286.

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the marvel, and Tang Bingjun not the exclusive audience. These men’s family, relatives, neighbours and friends would also bear witness to the miracle cure. The analogy between the caterpillar fungus and ginseng in terms of their medicinal properties not only built up a great reputation for the caterpillar fungus, but also helped to accommodate it into Chinese materia medica. Tang Bingjun was not the sole author making this analogy. In around the mid-eighteenth century, Zhu Zhang, a native of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, wrote that the Qiang people had a custom to collect the caterpillar fungus as a first-class medicinal substance; it had the same efficacies as ginseng. Someone had also sent him two bundles of the caterpillar fungus.161 The Qiang people had a history of thousands of years, whose name appears on oracle bones of the Shang dynasty (c. 1700–c. 1046 BC).162 Since the early twentieth century historical and ethnographical research on the Qiang people has uncovered the complex ethnic makeup of this group of people, and its falling under Tibetan and Han Chinese influence; the present-day Qiang people, mainly dwelling in northern Sichuan, were rediscovered and essentialised during the formation of the modern nation state.163 Zhu Zhang’s words about the caterpillar fungus, ginseng and the Qiang people were later adopted into Zhao Xuemin’s materia medica work, albeit without indicating their origin.164 A field investigation carried out in 1941 found that Zagunao of Lifan (Lixian) and Songpan in northern Sichuan functioned as two centres of trade between the Qiang and the Han Chinese; the Qiang people mainly exported the caterpillar fungus and some other medicinal substances to the Chinese.165

161 Zhu Zhang, Guanshu Tang Shiji, in Ji Xianlin (ed.), Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu (Jibu, Book 258), Jinan: Qilu Shushe, [c. 1759] 1997, p. 701. 162 Gideon Shelach, ‘The Qiang and the Question of Human Sacrifice in the Late Shang Period’, Asian Perspectives, 1996, 35(1): 1–26. 163 Ming-Ke Wang, ‘Searching for Qiang Culture in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, Inner Asia, 2002, 4(1): 131–148; Wang Mingke, Qiang Zai Hanzang Zhijian: Yige Huaxia Bianyuan De Lishi Renleixue Yanjiu, Taipei: Lianjing Chuban Shiye Gufen Youxian Gongsi, 2003, pp. 145–210. 164 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, p. 139. 165 Daxuesheng Shuqi Bianjiang Fuwutuan, Chuanxi Diaocha Ji, in Wang Xiaoli and

Jia Zhongyi (eds.), Zhongguo Bianjiang Shehui Diaocha Baogao Jicheng (Collection 1, Book 5), Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [1941] 2010, pp. 494–495.

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The demand for the caterpillar fungus may also arise from old people. Normally, their sexual desire has significantly decreased, and caring about their jing and bodies means maintaining their health and promoting their longevity. This consists with the nurturing life culture that dates back to at least the Warring States period (475–221 BC).166 In this capacity, the caterpillar fungus is more likely to be valued as a tonic rather than an aphrodisiac, despite that the two attributes often overlap. Yuan Dong’s friend told him about its ability to prolong life. Not long later, the epigraphist and traveller Zhu Feng of Hangzhou, Zhejiang revealed that ‘immerse a few pieces [of the caterpillar fungus] in wine, and then eat them; they can remove pains in the part of the body between waist and knees, and benefit the kidney. It would not be bored by worms if stored together with saffron. Someone says that it is good for old people if they eat it with a male duck after boiling them together’.167 There seemed to be no special age limits for the use of the caterpillar fungus. Zhu Feng’s mention of proper storage is reminiscent of Yuan Dong’s description of the half-black (worm) part of the caterpillar fungus. Usually, this part looks yellow or brown. Perhaps the earth adhering to the worm part was not well cleared away; or, the worm part had decayed due to improper storage and long-distance West–East transport. The Jesuit Parennin reported in 1723 that the caterpillar fungus he received from his friend afar was already black, old and decayed; and as he observed, it became black and corrupted easily if exposed to the air.168 A prescription written in the Imperial Palace on 2 July 1908 particularly urged to use the caterpillar fungus not bored by worms.169 Beyond providing a storage solution essential to the commercial profits and medical efficacy for it, the use of preservatives such as saffron would also add to the value of the caterpillar fungus. 166 For the evolvement of the nurturing life culture and its influence on Chinese medicine, see Vivienne Lo, ‘The Influence of Nurturing Life Culture on the Development of Western Han Acumoxa Therapy’, in Elisabeth Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese Medicine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 19–50; Sabine Wilms, ‘Nurturing Life in Classical Chinese Medicine: Sun Simiao on Healing without Drugs, Transforming Bodies, and Cultivating Life’, Journal of Chinese Medicine, 2010, (93): 5–13. 167 Lu Di, ‘Nantu Cang Ganyuan Xiaozhi Chaoben Chutan’, p. 92. 168 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 17), pp. 410, 414. 169 Chen Keji (ed.), Qinggong Yi’an Jicheng, Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2009, p. 1048.

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Miraculous Transformations and ‘Immortal Grass’ The miraculous transformation of the caterpillar fungus was in itself fascinating and attracted the attention of travellers, physicians and traders alike. Li Xinheng of the late eighteenth century told about the caterpillar fungus gatherers in Jinchuan, Sichuan as ‘groveling on the ground, first to find its sprout and then its root’.170 Today adults and children still spend hours lying on the alpine grasslands waiting for a caterpillar fungus to surface. Their patience is motivated by commercial rewards, but their concentration vividly evokes the allurement of their quarry which is visually embodied in its strange shape. That allurement as it prompted the caterpillar fungus to travel in ever greater numbers to East China has deep roots in the ancient Chinese imagination of shape-shifting organisms and interspecies transformation. The boundaries between species or humans and nonhumans in people’s conceptions of the world some centuries or even more than a millennium ago were not as rigorous as they are in current biology. Representations of composite or semi-human animals (e.g. centaurs), for example, existed in ancient Greco-Roman and other cultures, and might have a basis in reality.171 While in Chinese culture and history, the old text Shanhai Jing (Guideways to Mountains and Seas, c. fourth century BC) is full of strange creatures such as a bird with a human face, a beast with horse’s hooves and human hands, and a fish with bird’s wings.172 Two thousand years later, Shen Ronggu (1637–1703) of Zhejiang, then the magistrate

170 Li Xinheng, Jinchuan Suoji, p. 64. 171 Mary Beagon, ‘Wondrous Animals in Classical Antiquity’, in Gordon L. Campbell

(ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 414–440; David Wengrow, The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 50–73; Sean P. A. Desjardins, ‘A Change of Subject: Perspectivism and Multinaturalism in Inuit Depictions of Interspecies Transformation’, Études Inuit Studies, 2017, 41(1–2): 101–124; Rachel Neis, ‘The Reproduction of Species: Humans, Animals and Species Nonconformity in Early Rabbinic Science’, Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2017, 24(4): 289–317. 172 Anonymous, Shanhai Jing Jiaozhu, Yuan Ke (ed.), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. fourth century BC] 1980, pp. 15, 30, 63–64. Cf. Richard E. Strassberg, A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, pp. 93, 100, 117–118.

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of Tianhe, Guangxi, had found a leaf creeping on the ground. It was in his view half a leaf and half a worm, transformed from shire (damp heat).173 Besides composite creatures, there were also animals and legendary beasts enacting supernormal transformations across species. Roel Sterckx’s analysis of early Chinese perceptions of animals finds that the ability of animals to transform like dragons served as an epithet for transcendent virtue and sagehood; it led to a variety of imaginative theories, some of which had ties with human morality and sexuality.174 Sometimes these transformations marked calendrical change. According to the earliest extant Chinese calendar Xia Xiaozheng (Lesser Annuary of the Xia Dynasty, c. fifth century BC), the hawk and the dove would change from one to the other in the first and fifth months; the field mouse and the quail-like bird would turn into each other in the third and eighth months; and in the ninth and tenth months, the sparrow and the black pheasant would transform to the oyster and the clam, respectively.175 Apart from similar interspecies transformations, Lü Buwei’s (c. 290–235 BC) spring and autumn annals recount the conversion of the decayed grass into the firefly.176 This conversion, also described elsewhere,177 even crosses the boundary between plants and animals, or non-life and life. More intriguingly, the ancient work Zhuangzi (Book of Master Zhuang, c. fourth century BC) portrays dynamic chains of transformation that hinge on the ji (workings) of zhong (seeds) and connect non-living matter, plants and animals together.178 Further, the Daoist Tan Qiao presented in his work Huashu (Book of Transformations, c. tenth century) a worldview that centred on the 173 Lu Zuofan, Yuexi Ouji, in Ji Xianlin (ed.), Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu (Shibu, Book 128), Jinan: Qilu Shushe, [late seventeenth century] 1996, p. 431. For Shen’s life, see Xu Guixia, Shen Haori Ci Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Shenyang: Liaoning Daxue, 2015, pp. 4–12. 174 Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, pp. 165–204. 175 Anonymous, Xia Xiaozheng Jingwen Jiaoshi, Xia Weiying (ed.), Beijing: Nongye Chubanshe, [c. fifth century BC] 1981, pp. 12, 35, 45, 58, 62–63. 176 Lü Buwei, Lüshi Chunqiu Xin Jiaoshi, Chen Qiyou (ed.), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. third century BC] 2002, pp. 64, 123, 314. 177 For example, see Anonymous, Liji Zhengyi, Zheng Xuan and Kong Yingda (eds.), Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, [c. first century BC] 2000, p. 594. 178 Zhuang Zhou, Zhuangzi Jishi, Gui Qingfan (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. fourth century BC] 1985, pp. 624–625.

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enduring transformation of everything (e.g. the snake turning into the turtle) in nature and society.179 Though related causalities often remained unexplained, the idea of interspecies transformation had a profound epistemological influence on, for example, the previously mentioned the flower on cicada and ginseng. Kou Zongshi’s materia medica work, finalised in 1116, describes the formation of the flower on cicada as follows: the cicada unwilling to break through its shell metamorphosises into a flower and finally grows out of the shell.180 Li Shizhen of the sixteenth century regarded ginseng as the tujing (spirit of earth). Citing an earlier record, Li told us that a ginseng plant used to cry every night behind a person’s house; when it was dug out, the cries stopped, and the root was found to resemble a human body.181 Later, Dong Sizhang (1586–1628) contended that within a thousand years ginseng would transform into a child.182 With respect to the caterpillar fungus, the conception of interspecies transformation in Chinese culture and history no doubt helped reduce the heterogeneity of the caterpillar fungus to Chinese natural history and materia medica. The philologist Hao Yixing (1757–1825) even professed that the transformation of the caterpillar fungus convinced him of the saying about the roots of Crow’s Feet turning into maggots.183 The transformation from a worm in winter to a blade of grass in summer and vice versa follows the cycle of the seasons. Some such phenological phenomena as recorded in the Lesser Annuary of the Xia Dynasty and other classical Chinese texts categorised as Monthly Ordinances would receive criticisms based on empirical observations.184 But the reversible life cycle of the caterpillar fungus remained part of factual knowledge about nature in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese society. Zheng Guangzu (1776–1866) of Suzhou once also said that the 179 Tan Qiao, Huashu, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. tenth century] 1996, pp. 1–3. 180 Kou Zongshi, Bencao Yanyi, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [1116] 1990,

p. 120. 181 Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, p. 489. 182 Dong Sizhang, Guang Bowu Zhi, Changsha: Yuelu Shushe, [1607] 1991, p. 924. 183 Hao Yixing, Zheng Suwen, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 192),

Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1813] 2002, p. 564. 184 Zheng Xinxian, ‘Animals as Wonders: Writing Commentaries on Monthly Ordinances in Qing China’, in Roel Sterckx et al. (eds.), Animals through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 217–232.

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winter worm summer grass in Sichuan and Yunnan was a worm creeping in the ground in winter; a seedling resembling a mouse’s tail grew out of its tail in the warm spring, and afterwards changed again to a worm in winter.185 In most cases, however, the reversibility would not be unequivocally expressed. For example, Tan Cui (1724–1801), who spent years in Guizhou and Yunnan as an official, wrote that ‘the summer grass winter worm originates from the areas stretching from the remote side of the Wumeng Mountain. It gains this name because in summer it is a blade of grass growing out of the ground, while in winter it hibernates in the ground and turns into a worm’.186 Here the life cycle starts from grass in summer, which, combined with Wu Yiluo’s description, actually indicates the absence of an absolute starting or ending point of the transformation. An intellectual named Wang Peixun (1783–1859), born in Zichuan, Shandong, but holding an official position as the magistrate of a few counties in Sichuan for fourteenth years (1835–1849), had observed the caterpillar fungus sold in local markets in Sichuan. He expressed his perplexity about its endless transformation in the form of poetry: Which is the true form of the caterpillar fungus? It keeps on reversibly changing between a blade of grass and a worm How different it is from the elusive fireflies which will finally disappear, And the grassland which will not be the same green as before in the spring breeze187

The idea about transformation of the caterpillar fungus dated back at least five hundred years to Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje. But he did not clarify whether the transformation could happen bilaterally. The Japanese Buddhist monk Kawaguchi Ekai (1866–1945) gave an affirmative answer to this question. Kawaguchi reached the boundary of Tibet via Nepal on 4

185 Zheng Guangzu, Yiban Lu, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1140), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1845] 2002, p. 9. 186 Tan Cui, Qian Nang, in Ren Kedeng et al. (eds.), Qiannan Congshu (Collection 5, Book 2), Guiyang: Guiyang Wentong Shuju, [c. 1769] 1938, p. 35. For Tan’s life, see Song Yongping, ‘Tan Cui Yu Yunnan Difangzhi’, Shixue Shi Yanjiu, 1996, (1): 77–78. 187 Wang Peixun, Tingyu Lou Suibi, Chengdu: Bashu Shushe, [1845] 1987, p. 349. For his life and writings, see Wang Zhimin (ed.), Shandong Zhongyao Lishi Renwu (Vol. 4), Jinan: Shandong Renmin Chubanshe, 2009, pp. 17–19.

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July 1900, and then travelled and studied in Tibet until 15 June 1902.188 He returned to Japan with some plant specimens and Tibetan articles.189 From him the Japanese biologist It¯o Tokutar¯o (1866–1941) learnt that natives in Tibet thought the caterpillar fungus alternated between a worm and a blade of grass.190 Kawaguchi’s information came so late that it is difficult for us to ascertain whether it was purely of Tibetan origin. But the Chinese had made efforts to understand the caterpillar fungus in their own ways. In his 1792 collection of mysterious stories, Xu Kun described the caterpillar fungus in Yunnan, remarking that the changes based on qihua (qi transformation) rationalised its transformation.191 Here the notion of qi transformation had long been employed to explain the formation of the world, including transformations of organisms. The thinkers Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao of the eleventh and twelfth centuries counted the conversion of decayed grass into fireflies as a consequence of qi transformation. They considered that everything in the world had yin or yang, two types of qi; and everything originated from qi transformation.192 The physician Zhang Jiebin (1563–1640) wrote succinctly that everything was derived from the qi transformation of yin and yang.193 Xu Kun’s explanatory framework contributed to signifying the caterpillar fungus, but he did not explicitly mention yin and yang. In this respect, Tang Bingjun speculated that since the caterpillar fungus did not fear cold and could move in snow, its qi should be yang; and its quality should be warm.194 Later, in the nineteenth century, the link between the caterpillar fungus and both yin and yang occurred. Familiar with ancient 188 Kawaguchi Ekai, Nishikura Ryok¯ o Ki (Vol. 1), Tokyo: Hirobumi Kan, 1904, p. 87; Kawaguchi Ekai, Nishikura Ryok¯ o Ki (Vol. 2), Tokyo: Hirobumi Kan, 1904, pp. 345–360. See also Kawaguchi Ekai, Three Years in Tibet, London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1909, pp. 76, 641–654. 189 It¯ o Tokutar¯ o, ‘Notes on Some Himalayan Plants Collected by the Rev. Keikai

Kawaguchi in 1902’, The Botanical Magazine, 1903, 17(200): 157–159; T¯oky¯o Bijutsu Gakk¯o K¯oy¯ukai, Kawaguchi Ekai Shi Sh¯ orai Nishikura Hin Zuroku, Tokyo: Gah¯osha, 1904. 190 It¯ o Tokutar¯ o, ‘Dongchong Xiaocao Shuo’, anonymous (trans.), Nongxue Bao, 1903, (231): 4–8. 191 Xu Kun, Liuya Waibian, Beijing: Jinghua Chubanshe, [1792] 2006, p. 21. 192 Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao, Ercheng Yishu, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 1107]

1981, pp. 79, 162, 199, 237. 193 Zhang Jiebin, Leijing, Beijing: Zhongyi Guji Chubanshe, [1624] 1997, p. 419. 194 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang Sikao Tushuo, p. 386.

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accounts of metamorphoses such as the transformation between the hawk and the dove, Zhao Xuemin ascribed changes of things to the interactions between yin and yang. He listed four modes of yinyang interactions: yin subjugated yang; yang subjugated yin; yin subjugated yin; and yang subjugated yang. The fourth mode could give rise to reversible transformation, while the others led to irreversible transformation. However, the transformation of the caterpillar fungus did not belong to the fourth mode. He stated that the caterpillar fungus came into being after sensing both yin and yang qi. In summer yin started up, and the caterpillar fungus became a blade of grass and remained quietly, while in winter yang started up, and it became a worm and moved. The two phases alternated. Zhao’s praise of its full possession of both yin and yang qi (in harmony) could perhaps explain why there was no relationship of subjugation between yin and yang in its transformation.195 Soon later the Zhejiang physician Wang Xuequan (1728–1810) excerpted Zhao’s special theoretical explanation above and added it into his own collection of medical notes.196 Zhang Nan, another physician in Zhejiang, asserted that the transformation of the caterpillar fungus could hardly be understood if one did not make sense of yinyang as the most truthful doctrine.197 Decades later, at the end of the nineteenth century, the physician Tang Zonghai of Sichuan, travelling in eastern China in his late years, recognised the caterpillar fungus as a lingpin (wondrous substance) or zhiling zhi pin (extremely wondrous substance). He inferred that the caterpillar fungus possessed a pure yang nature because it had the ability to melt snow in winter and could be a worm or animal; it moved into the ground in summer, signifying yang entering yin; while it transformed into a seedling and grew out of the ground, yin also came out of yang.198 Elsewhere he even related his yinyang theory to the hexagrams in the Yijing (Book of Changes, c.

195 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, p. 140. 196 Wang Xuequan, Chongqing Tang Suibi, Nanjing: Jiangsu Kexue Jishu Chubanshe,

[1808] 1986, p. 98. Wang did not indicate the origin of the words quoted in his book. 197 Zhang Nan, Yimen Banghe, Beijing: Zhongyi Guji Chubanshe, [1829] 1987, p. 115. 198 Tang Zonghai, Bencao Wenda, p. 538. For Tang’s life, see Pi Guoli, Jindai Zhongyi De Shenti Guan Yu Sixiang Zhuanxing: Tang Zonghai Yu Zhongxi Yi Huitong Shidai, Beijing: Shenghuo Dushu Xinzhi Sanlian Shudian, 2008, pp. 37–53.

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fourth century BC), pronouncing that the transformation of the caterpillar fungus from a worm to a blade of grass corresponded to yang getting into yin, and thereby represented the forty-fourth hexagram.199 The above contexts and interpretations acculturated the caterpillar fungus into Chinese society after it left the Tibetan highlands and travelled eastward. Some Chinese further integrated it with more cultural elements or personal feelings, ideas and aspirations. For example, Xu Naigu (1785– 1835) once accompanied an army to Xinjiang to put down turbulence there in 1830. During this journey, he wrote twenty poems, one of which personifies the caterpillar fungus and associates it with Zen Buddhism: The caterpillar fungus transforms from an animal to a plant, Remaining cool in hot days Its heart of Zen (Buddhism) shows silence, but it does not really intend to stay silent; Its retreat and hiding lay the basis for change and achievements200

Crossing the boundaries of plants and animals, the caterpillar fungus inspired a sense of mystery and the supernatural. Cao Fugu of Zhejiang, who became a provincial graduate in 1788 and travelled widely, once composed a long poem on the caterpillar fungus, which was occasionally quoted in part or in full by later medical or literary authors. In the poem Cao thought of the change from decayed grass to fireflies. However, ‘such are still transformations between two different things, whereas the caterpillar fungus remains only itself in its transformations, and thereby was wondrous; its transformation eliminates the [plant-animal] boundary and cycles, seeming that it stays in the fairyland and forgets the boundary’.201 199 Tang Zonghai, Yiyi Tongshuo, p. 66. For the description of the forty-fourth hexagram (called gou) in the Book of Changes, see Anonymous, Zhouyi Zhengyi, Wang Bi and Kong Yingda (eds.), Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 2000, pp. 215–220. For the relationship between yinyang and the Book of Changes, see Robin R. Wang, Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 62–74. 200 Xu Naigu, Ruishao Xuan Shichao, in Qingdai Shiwenji Huibian Bianji Weiyuanhui (ed.), Qingdai Shiwenji Huibian (Book 548), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1835] 2010, p. 71. See also Yang Zhongyi, Xueqiao Shihua Xuji, Beijing: Beijing Guji Chubanshe, [1917] 1991, p. 469–470. For Xu’s life and writings, see Li Yang, Xu Naigu Yu Ruishao Xuan Shichao Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Urumqi: Xinjiang Shifan Daxue, 2011, pp. 4–33. 201 Song Xianxi, Naileng Tan, in Zhang Yinpeng (ed.), Qing Shihua Sanbian (Book 6), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1829] 2014, p. 4057. For partial or full quotations

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The poet Sha Chen (1759–1822) also wrote a poem on it, praising the delicacy of its transformation which exceeded that of the irreversible conversion of the roots of Crow’s Feet into maggots and butterflies.202 Chen Yong of Suzhou had requested dozens of pieces of the caterpillar fungus from his uncle returning from Sichuan in the winter of 1803, just in order to flaunt this curiosity to other people.203 Puzzled by its seasonal alternating animal and plant states, Zhou Shouchang (1814–1884) of Hunan admitted his ignorance of its nature.204 Similar to Cao, Qi Xueqiu considered that both plant and animal combined into one qi in the caterpillar fungus, which transcended the transformations of sparrows, clams, pheasants and oysters, and evinced the wonder of creatures.205 Here the idea about the unity of plant and animal accorded with Zhao Xuemin’s discourse of both yin and yang qi sensed and possessed by the caterpillar fungus.206 As its reversible transformation stirred a fascination for icons of immortality, Wu Yangxian (1821–1887) of Zhejiang straightforwardly described it as busi cao (immortal grass).207 Interestingly, the 1907 local chronicle of Guzhangping (Guzhang, Hunan) claimed that the lachong (wax insect) used by local people for economic purposes crossed the categories of flying insects, plants and animals, and thereby was more wonderous than the caterpillar fungus of this poem, see, for example, Qian Yale et al. (eds.), Tangye Bencao Jing Yazheng, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1885] 2015, pp. 26–27; Fan Xinghuan, ‘Cao Fugu Dongchong Xiacao Shi’, Shaoxing Yiyao Xuebao, 1910, (32): 9; Chai Xiaofan, Fantian Lu Conglu, Beijing: Gugong Chubanshe, [1926] 2013, pp. 1156–1157. For a brief account of the life of Cao Sanxuan (stylename: Fugu), see Pan Yantong, Liangzhe Youxuan Xulu, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1685), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1891] 2002, p. 366. 202 Sha Chen, Diancang Shanren Shichao, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1483), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1818] 2002, p. 212. 203 Chen Yong, Chusanxuan Congtan (Book 2, Vol. 4), p. 28. 204 Zhou Shouchang, Siyi Tang Rizha, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 1857] 1987,

p. 236. 205 Qi Xueqiu, Jianwen Xubi, p. 397. 206 This idea persisted into the first half of the twentieth century. For example, the

author of a 1930 collection of miraculous tales described the caterpillar fungus as both a plant and an animal; its transformation rested on merely one qi [which united yin and yang ], see Liuxian Houren, Liaozhai Zhiyi Waiji, Zhao Qinshi (ed.), Shanghai: Jingzhi Tushuguan, 1930, p. 31. 207 Wu Yangxian, Xiaopao’an Shicun, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1548), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1878] 2002, p. 35.

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which could only transform between plants and animals.208 Certainly, it conveys a sense of pride in local economy and material culture. Packaging the Miracle and Trade Trade played an important role in the dissemination of the caterpillar fungus as a marvel, despite private transmission and gifting of it, as illustrated in the cases of Kong Jiyuan’s brother and Yuan Dong, also counted. However, attempts to chronologically and precisely map the trade network for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are more or less frustrating. Extant imperial Chinese literature concerning the caterpillar fungus was written by scholars, officials, physicians and some other intellectuals, rather than merchants who, like the Yangzhou salt merchants, enjoyed relatively low status in the social hierarchies of Confucian humanism.209 Chinese intellectuals studied Confucian classics and were no strangers to Confucius’s advocacy of getting acquaintance with birds, beasts, herbs and woods.210 They left us abundant natural knowledge, but overall seldom centred their attention on specific commercial activities. Relevant Chinese trade information, often fragmental, inadequate, and lacking detailed quantitative data, can nevertheless be examined together with exotic sources especially some statistics from late nineteenth-century Chinese Maritime Customs under British influence. Emily T. Yeh and Kunga T. Lama point out that ‘the fact that the larvae-fungus complex cannot be cultivated means that nonhuman nature determines where it can and cannot be found’.211 This biogeographical feature, together with the political status of Beijing as the dynastic capital and the relatively more developed economy of south-eastern regions, ensured a roughly West–East direction of the trade in the caterpillar fungus.

208 Dong Hongxun, Guzhangping Ting Zhi, in Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe (ed.), Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng (Hunan Fuxian Zhi Ji, Book 70), Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, [1907] 2002, p. 418. 209 Tang Lixing, Merchants and Society in Modern China: Rise of Merchant Groups,

London: Routledge, 2018, pp. 1–34. 210 Kong Qiu, Lunyu Zhushu, He Yan and Xing Bing (eds.), Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 2000, pp. 269–270. 211 Emily T. Yeh and Kunga T. Lama, ‘Following the Caterpillar Fungus: Nature, Commodity Chains, and the Place of Tibet in China’s Uneven Geographies’, Social & Cultural Geography, 2013, 14(3): 322.

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No later than the early 1760s the caterpillar fungus had already been sold in Zhongdian and Weixi in Yunnan.212 In the late eighteenth century, medicine gatherers in Jinchuan, Sichuan were recorded to collect the caterpillar fungus at the end of fourth month and the beginning of the fifth month every year.213 This collection period accords with the time noted down by Chen Denglong at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He stated that gatherers in the Bolanggong mountain and Litang would collect the caterpillar fungus of good quality before the Dragon Boat Festival, i.e. the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.214 Later, its sale in Sichuan and Yunnan also received textual attention.215 At the end of the nineteenth century, Tang Zonghai wrote about the gatherers in Songpan, Sichuan and the grasslands where the Xifan (Western barbarians) dwelled.216 Like many other products, the caterpillar fungus would be packaged before circulating through trade channels. In the eighteenth century, Zhu Zhang of Zhejiang recorded the caterpillar fungus produced in Hualinping, Sichuan, and the Qiang people’s collection of it as a highly esteemed medicinal substance. He had received two bundles of this product.217 The form of bundles once caught the attention of Qin Wuyu. He narrated that local people in Jiazhou, Dajianlu and elsewhere in Sichuan would dissect the caterpillar fungus and eat it, claiming that it had a hot quality, and was very nourishing; they would also dry it in the shade and then tie it in bundles; and the bundles would be given to those who were going to be dispatched away.218 The caterpillar fungus must be bundled up for the sake of convenience in storage, transport and/or sale. These bundles could be used personally and could be sold as a commodity as well.

212 Xie Shenglun, Dianqian Zhilue, Guiyang: Guizhou Renmin Chubanshe, [1763] 2008, p. 116. 213 Li Xinheng, Jinchuan Suoji, p. 64. 214 Chen Denglong, Litang Zhilue, p. 91. 215 Wang Peixun, Tingyu Lou Suibi, p. 349; Qi Xueqiu, Jianwen Xubi, p. 397. 216 Tang Zonghai, Bencao Wenda, p. 538; Tang Zonghai, Yiyi Tongshuo, p. 118. 217 Zhu Zhang, Guanshu Tang Shiji, in Ji Xianlin (ed.), Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu (Jibu, Book 258), Jinan: Qilu Shushe, [c. 1759] 1997, p. 701. 218 Qin Wuyu, Wenjian Banxiang Lu, in Wang Deyi (ed.), Congshu Jicheng Xubian (Book 24), Taipei: Xin Wenfeng Chuban Gongsi, [c. 1783] 1989, p. 506.

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Fortunately, although little is known about what the bundles in Zhu and Qin’s records look like, one can have a general picture from two illustrations in the Mongolian physician Jampel Dorje’s (1792–1855) medical text mDzes mTshar Mig rGyan (Beautiful Marvellous Eye Ornament, in Tibetan). Jampel Dorje was born in Inner Mongolia and had been to Tibet and Wutai Mountain in Shanxi. Each of the two illustrations (one in the main text, the other in the appendix) shows a quantity of the caterpillar fungus bounded together by two strings. Moreover, there are the Chinese name xiacao dongchong (summer grass winter worm) and its Tibetan transliteration on the right side of the illustration in the main text, while the illustration in the appendix, relatively more roughly drawn, only displays the Tibetan name of the caterpillar fungus, i.e. yartsa gunbu.219 The Chinese name indicates his familiarity with the Chinese reception of the caterpillar fungus. He also ought to have seen the bundles as illustrated in his medical text. Given his travels in his life, it was possible that he had a knowledge of the transport of the caterpillar fungus via northern land routes from western regions. Through these routes, the caterpillar fungus could be supplied to Beijing and other Northern cities. The Russian physician Alexander Tatarinov (1817–1886) had gathered the caterpillar fungus and hundreds of other medicinal substances during his stay in Beijing in the period 1840–1850.220 Doubtless Tatarinov’s acquisition of so many drugs benefited as well from the medicine trade. Jampel Dorje’s textual account of the caterpillar fungus does not contain trade information, but concerns its natural habitat, morphological 219 Jampel Dorje, mDzes mTshar Mig rGyan, Lokesh Chandra (ed.), New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, [first half of the nineteenth century] 1971, pp. 168, 391. For Jampel Dorje’s life and works, see Bao Yintu et al., ‘Zhuming Mengyao Xuejia Zhanbula Daoerji Shengping Xinkao’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2004, 34(3): 162–165; Bao Hashen, ‘Zhanbula Daoerji Yu Mengyao Zhengdian Caobenlei Yaowu De Yanjiu’, Zhongyi Wenxian Zazhi, 2010, (1): 24–26. See also Olaf Czaja, ‘The Use of Insects in Tibetan Medicine’, Études Mongoles et Sibériennes, Centrasiatiques et Tibétaines, 2019, (50): 4– 6, 47. Based on Jampel Dorje’s record, some contemporary monographs on Mongolian materia medica include the caterpillar fungus as a Mongolian medicinal substance, see, for example, Song Liren (ed.), Zhonghua Bencao: Mengyao Juan, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2004, pp. 172–174. 220 Alexander Tatarinov, Catalogus Medicamentorum Sinensium, quae Pekini Comparanda et Determinanda Curavit, Petropoli: [Press Unknown], 1856, pp. iii, 45. For his life and activities in Beijing, see Hartmut Walravens, ‘Alexander Tatarinov (1817– 1886) - Russischer Arzt und Sinologe: Eine Biobibliographische Skizze’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 1980, 64(4): 392–396.

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characteristics and medicinal properties. The account was extracted from the earliest extant Mongolian materia medica treatise despite its Tibetan language. The author, the Mongolian physician Sumpa Khenpo Yeshe Paljor (1704–1788), was born in Qinghai and had travelled to Tibet, Mongolia, Wutai Mountain and Beijing. His words about the caterpillar fungus were excerpted from Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje’s text.221 Both the use of the Tibetan language and Tibetan origin of the excerpts demonstrate the influence of Tibetan medical culture on Mongolian physicians. However, the two Mongolian physicians did not offer new information or perceptions about the caterpillar fungus except its bundled form. Probably, they themselves and even their fellow people never or seldom used it and therefore new knowledge surrounding it was hard to generate, or they were primarily concerned with identifying it in its commercial form. With the opening of a series of treaty ports in late Qing China, the Customs administration of import and export trade also underwent transformation. The appointment of three British, French and American inspectors of Customs in Shanghai in 1854 marked the inception of new-style Maritime Customs and regulation, which gradually extended to other treaty ports during the term of the first two Inspectors-General Horatio N. Lay (1859–1863) and Robert Hart (1863–1911), both British.222 From 1859 onwards the Customs began to release trade reports and other types of publications in the English language.223 The 1876 catalogue of the Customs collection at the US international

221 Sumpa Khenpo Yeshe Paljor, gSo dPyad bDud rTsi Chu rGyun Gyi Cha Lag Gi Nang Tshan Gyi sMan So So So’i mNgon brJod Dang nGos’Dzin Shel dKar Me Long, in Sum Pa mKhan Po Ye Shes dPal’Byor Gyi gSung’Bum (Vol. 7), New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, [c. mid-eighteenth century] 1975, p. 300. For his life and works, see Jan Willem de Jong, ‘Sum-pa mkhan-po (1704–1788) and His Works’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1967, 27: 208–216; Sanjit Kumar Sadhukhan, ‘The Life of Sum-Pa mKhan-Po (1704–1788), the Celebrated Author of dPag-bSam lJonbZan’, Bulletin of Tibetology, 1992, 28(2): 12–15; Bao Yintuet al., ‘Zhuming Mengyiyao Xuejia Yixiba Lazhuer Jiqi Xueshu Chengguo Shuping’, Neimenggu Minzu Daxue Xuebao (Ziran Kexue Ban), 2004, 19(5): 554–557. 222 Donna Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 8–17. 223 For an overview of the publications of the Chinese Maritime Customs, see Order of the Inspector of General of Customs, ‘List of Customs Publications, 1859–1940’, in Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development, and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service (Vol. 7), Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1940, pp. 391–409.

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exhibition, for example, records the caterpillar fungus from Kiangsu (Jiangsu) province as ‘a stimulant in general debility’, valued at ‘25 cents per tael’ in the treaty port of Amoy (Xiamen).224 Compared with this smattering of commercial information, the List of Chinese Medicines, printed in 1889, displays a large-scale image of the trade in the caterpillar fungus in the mid-1880s. This list comprises two parts. The first part mainly contains statistics on identified Chinese medicinal substances imported from or exported to the ports of Niuzhuang, Tianjin, Zhifu, Yichang, Hankou, Jiujiang, Wuhu, Zhenjiang, Shanghai, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Shantou, Guangzhou, Qiongzhou, Beihai, Danshui (in Taiwan) and Dagou (in Taiwan) during the period from 1 November 1884 to 31 October 1885. The second part provides a general alphabetical list of medicinal substances as well as their Chinese and English or Latin names, categories and places of production. The second part records four Chinese names of the caterpillar fungus: ‘Hsiats ‘ao-tung-ch ‘ung’, ‘Tung-ch ‘ung-hsia-ts ‘ao’, ‘Ch ‘ung-ts ‘ao’ and ‘Tung-ch ‘ung-ts ‘ao’, reflecting inconsistency in its designations in Chinese society.225 The list classifies the medicinal substances into eight groups: Roots, Barks and Husks, Twigs and Leaves, Flowers, Seeds and Fruits, Grasses, Insects and Sundries.226 But at different ports the caterpillar fungus was assigned to the Sundries, Grasses or Roots group, revealing a varied understanding of its nature within the interior of the Maritime Customs Service. On the other hand, the unstable categorisation, together with the diverse designations, were themselves part of the economic and social life of the caterpillar fungus. Based on the geographical data in this list, it is able to have an overview of the circulation of the caterpillar fungus

224 Order of the Inspector General of Chinese Maritime Customs, Catalogue of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Collection, at the United States International Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1876, p. 76. 225 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of Chinese Medicines, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1889, pp. 442, 447, 486. 226 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of Chinese Medicines, pp. v-vi. In the second part of the List, the eight categories are slightly different: Roots and Bulbs, Barks and Husks, Twigs and Leaves, Flowers, Seeds and Fruits, Grasses and Herbs, Insects, and Sundries.

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between the ports.227 The caterpillar fungus from Sichuan was mainly exported eastward to Shanghai via the ports of Yichang and Hankou. The Yichang Customs, established on 1 April 1877,228 remained the westernmost Customs along the Yangtze River until the Chongqing Customs was opened on 1 March 1891.229 Consignments of the caterpillar fungus from Sichuan converged in Yichang, then passed down the Yangtze River to Hankou in Central China and eventually arrived in Shanghai. From Shanghai, where a significant amount of the caterpillar fungus would be consumed, some of it would also be disseminated to other coastal ports, such as Ningbo and Fuzhou. Though the list does not take into account the medicine trade at the port of Hong Kong, and statistics on the export of the caterpillar fungus to Hong Kong are absent, Hong Kong actually acted as an important transshipment centre for the caterpillar fungus. From Hong Kong some of the caterpillar fungus was returned or dispatched to Shanghai, Danshui, Xiamen, Shantou and Qiongzhou. Notably, Henan, Hubei and Guangdong were alleged to be production areas of the caterpillar fungus that flowed to the ports of Hankou, Xiamen and Shantou. The Customs in these ports probably obtained imperfect or incorrect information about its origins. For example, the caterpillar fungus from Henan was identified as ‘Cordiceps [Cordyceps] Sinensis ’, which actually did not grow in Henan. Here the three production areas had better be treated as transshipment places for the caterpillar fungus from western regions. Besides, the list only records Tibet as a production area once. Given the geographical locations of Tibet and Sichuan as well as the thriving bilateral trade between them for centuries, some of the caterpillar fungus that was claimed to originate from Sichuan was possibly from Tibet. Overall, the relevant geographical data mainly illustrates water routes for the inter-port transport of the caterpillar fungus in southern China in the mid-1880s; and the Yangtze River played a key role in connecting the supply of the caterpillar fungus in western regions with the demand for it in south-eastern cities. According to the 227 For the relevant data, see Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of

Chinese Medicines, pp. 64–65, 80–81, 170–171, 204–205, 238–239, 254–255, 282–283, 332–333, 390–391, 406–407. 228 Robert Nield, China’s Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840–1943, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015, p. 134. 229 Wang Wensheng, Wanqing Chongqing Haiguan De Lishi Kaocha, Hefei: Anhui Daxue Chubanshe, 2012, pp. 19–24.

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Customs data on its value, the caterpillar fungus ranked among the most expensive imports or exports. At the port of Hankou, for example, its ‘standard value per classifier’, i.e. 120 Haikwan taels per picul, significantly exceeded that of any other items in the Grasses group and most of the items in the other groups, while one picul of ginseng (produced in North China and Manchuria) was valued at 40–390 Haikwan taels.230 Obviously, the caterpillar fungus would not only bring commercial benefits to medicine merchants, but also increase the incomes of local gatherers in the economically less developed western regions. Fancy Look Versus Healing Power Probing the rationale behind the circulation of the caterpillar fungus needs to consider the long-standing Chinese culture of interspecies transformation and materia medica, especially aphrodisiacs and tonics. The Chinese had used a variety of such substances long before the exotic caterpillar fungus attracted their attention. For example, a group of herbs called yinyang huo (Epimedium spp.; literally the plants huo that induce estrus in goats), noted for treating yinwei (impotence), appeared in the earliest extant Chinese treatise on materia medica in around the first century and are still in use today.231 The Daoist physician Tao Hongjing (456–536) added that the plants yinyang huo obtained the name because a kind of goat in northwestern Sichuan copulated one hundred times a day after grazing on them.232 As an exotic from western regions, proven efficacies no doubt played an important part in propelling the spread of the caterpillar fungus elsewhere, especially through the medicine trade. As will be explored below, the caterpillar fungus was often prescribed by Chinese physicians before the early twentieth century. But it did not rank among the most frequently used sixty-one kinds of medicinal substances in the Imperial Palace.233 230 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of Chinese Medicines, pp. 66–85. 231 Ma Jixing (ed.), Shennong Bencao Jing Jizhu, p. 214; Guo Baolin and Xiao Peigen,

‘Zhongyao Yinyang Huo Zhuyao Zhonglei Pingshu’, Zhongguo Zhongyao Zazhi, 2003, 28(4): 303–306. 232 Tao Hongjing, Bencao Jing Jizhu, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [c. 492] 1994, pp. 301–302. 233 Xie Yuanhua, Qinggong Yi’an Bingzheng Yu Fangyao De Guanlianxing Yanjiu (PhD Dissertation), Beijing: Beijing Zhongyiyao Daxue, 2008, pp. 54–55.

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Though the caterpillar fungus had flowed into the Imperial Palace since the early eighteenth century, it appears in merely eight prescriptions in extant over thirty thousand Qing royal archival documents on medical case records. The prescriptions concern three patients. The physician Shi Huan used the caterpillar fungus and ten other medicinal substances to treat the emperor Guangxu (r. 1875–1908) on 13 September 1908.234 Earlier, the physician Chen Bingjun (1840–1914) saw the second Chief Eunuch Cui Yugui six times during the period 28–30 June and 2–4 July 1908. Chen wrote six prescriptions for the latter, each of which contains the caterpillar fungus.235 The Chief Eunuch Li Lianying (1848– 1911) with cough and weakness had also been treated with the caterpillar fungus and some other medicinal substances.236 These three medical cases occurred very late. In particular, both Shi Huan and Chen Bingjun were not royal physicians in the true sense, but were temporarily recruited from outside the Imperial Palace to treat the emperor.237 In this way, Chen as a practitioner in Shanghai entered the Imperial Palace five times during the period 1898–1908.238 Moreover, the caterpillar fungus had never been engaged in the treatment of the emperor Guangxu’s involuntary loss of semen.239 Yet the question remains, why was the caterpillar fungus seldom employed by the physicians in the Imperial Palace? Given so many extant Qing royal medical case records, even the incompleteness of these sources cannot well answer the above question. It is also unlikely that the physicians in the Imperial Palace just did not write down related cases and prescriptions even if they used the caterpillar fungus at times. Of course, the relative rarity and uncultivable quality of 234 Chen Keji (ed.), Qinggong Yi’an Jicheng, p. 848. 235 Chen Keji (ed.), Qinggong Yi’an Jicheng, pp. 1047–1048. 236 Chen Keji (ed.), Qinggong Yi’an Jicheng, p. 1197. The year of this case of Li

Lianying is unknown. 237 Xiong Fangsui et al., Qing Shilu (Book 60), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 1914] 1987, p. 11; Zhang Kaiyuan (ed.), Qing Tongjian, Changsha: Yuelu Shushe, 2000, p. 1114. 238 Liu Hui, ‘Qingdai Mingyi Chen Bingjun Zhuanlue’, Zhongyiyao Xuebao, 1989, (4): 36; Wang Lili and Chen Liyun, ‘Qingdai Yuyi Chen Lianfang Zhuanlue’, in Zhonghua Yixuehui Yishixue Fenhui (ed.), Zhonghua Yixuehui Yishixue Fenhui Dishisijie Yici Xueshu Nianhui Lunwenji, Taiyuan: Zhonghua Yixuehui Yishixue Fenhui, 2014, pp. 436–437. 239 Chen Keji (ed.), Qinggong Yi’an Jicheng, pp. 1231–1234. For the medical case records about the emperor Guangxu, see Chen Keji (ed.), Qinggong Yi’an Jicheng, pp. 760–935.

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the caterpillar fungus limited the amount of its production; but in Qing China where the throne was supreme, its supply could give priority to the Imperial Palace. With these considerations, the scarce presence of the caterpillar fungus in the Qing court medical activities, it seems, could be understood from the perspective of medicinal property and experience. In fact, the caterpillar fungus was not irreplaceable in terms of its medicinal properties. There is also little evidence proving it was more effective than other alternatives, such as yinyang huo and ginseng. Zhu Zhang and Tang Bingjun of the eighteenth century, as mentioned before, treated the caterpillar fungus as an analogy for ginseng. But neither of them explicitly regarded it as more potent than the latter. Today, some physicians in China hold similar views.240 Alessandro Boesi and Francesca Cardi find that its use is ‘not particularly common at the popular level in Lithang [i.e. Litang] County and in the other fieldwork areas’, and ‘several Tibetan medical practitioners agree on the fact that, in general, this substance is seldom used as a medicine or diet supplement among Tibetans, who essentially regard it as a trade item’.241 Furthermore, the physicians in the Imperial Palace must treat royalty very cautiously; therefore, reasonably they would tend to base their practice on familiar medicines and predecessors’ experiences embodied in, for example, case records and prescriptions. In this sense, the caterpillar fungus as a latecomer seemed to have no advantage over many other medicines. Looking back, it can be found that the Yangzhou salt merchant Wan Xuezhai boasted of the first dish of the caterpillar fungus as an exotic from afar, with no mention of its potencies. Wan would not show off a distant but ordinary substance, e.g. a herb coming from far away but also growing in Yangzhou. Aside from this salt merchant, though fictional, others such as the official historian Dong Hong also spared no words about its medical uses but only adverted to its production area and life cycle. In fact, none of its medicinal properties recorded in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese medical texts was exaggerated to the point of raising the dead, the alleged power of ginseng. A comparison between its potencies and those of yinyang huo or ginseng described in Wu Yiluo’s 240 Li Yuheng, ‘Dapo Dongchong Xiacao Dongfang Shenyao De Shenhua’, Shoudu Yiyao, 2007, (23): 15–16. 241 Alessandro Boesi and Francesca Cardi, ‘Cordyceps sinensis Medicinal Fungus: Traditional Use among Tibetan People, Harvesting Techniques, and Modern Uses’, HerbalGram, 2009, (83): 57.

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materia medica text enables deconstruction of its medical uniqueness.242 While shifting gaze to imperial Chinese accounts of its life cycle, just as summarised by the name dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass), what made it special then becomes explicit: marvellous transformation. Its importance in the spread of the caterpillar fungus to other regions, especially East China, can be better perceived through a comparison between the caterpillar fungus and another Tibetan medicinal plant ga dur (Rhodiola spp.) recorded in the twelfth-century Tibetan medical text Four Medical Tantras. The latter could treat acute epidemics.243 But it entered Chinese materia medica no earlier than the twentieth century, and it moved into Communist Chinese national pharmacopeias more than a decade later than the caterpillar fungus.244 Apart from occasionality, it probably had neither unique medical nor stimulating morphological attractions for Chinese physicians who had long explored various medicinal substances and prescriptions to treat different types of epidemics.245

242 Wu Yiluo, Bencao Congxin, pp. 1–3, 22, 36. 243 Yuthog Yonten Gonpo, bDud rTsi sNying Po Yan Lag brGyad Pa gSang Ba Man

nGag Gi rGyud Ces Bya Ba bZhugs So, Pecin: Mi Rigs dPe sKrun Khang, [twelfth century] 2005, p. 85; Desi Sangye Gyatso, gSo Ba Rig Pa’i bsTan bCos sMan bLa’i dGongs rGyan rGyud bZhi’i gSal Byed Bai dUrya sNgon Po’i Malli Ka Zhes Bya Ba bZhugs So, Pecin: Mi Rigs dPe sKrun Khang, [c. 1689] 2005, p. 447. For the identification of ga dur, see Qinghai Sheng Shengwu Yanjiusuo and Tongren Xian Longwu Zhenliaosuo (eds.), Qingzang Gaoyuan Yaowu Tujian, Xining: Qinghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1972, p. 50; Song Liren (ed.), Zhonghua Bencao: Zangyao Juan, pp. 178–180. 244 Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Weishengbu Yaodian Weiyuanhui (ed.), Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Yaodian (1963 Nianban), Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1964, p. 77; Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Weishengbu Yaodian Weiyuanhui (ed.), Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Yaodian (1977 Nianban), Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1978, p. 262; Gu Yanli and Chen Yuting, ‘Yaoyong Hong Jingtian Chukao: Jian Yu Zhongguo Yaodian Shangque’, Zhongguo Zhongyao Zazhi, 2004, 29(9): 929– 930. It is called hong jingtian in Chinese, a term referring to some species belonging to the Rhodiola genus. Though a plant named jingtian has long been recorded as a Chinese medicinal substance, it refers to the species Hylotelephium erythrostictum rather than Rhodiola spp., see Wu Qijun, Zhiwu Mingshi Tukao, pp. 268–269; Song Liren (ed.), Zhonghua Bencao (Book 3), Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 1999, pp. 753–755, 763–764. 245 For the history of epidemics and related pharmaceutical and other treatments in Chinese history, see Marta E. Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine, London: Routledge, 2011.

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The mobility of the caterpillar fungus can be easily attributed to the agency of humans. From its early encounters with the Chinese in the early eighteenth century to its nationwide circulation within trading networks in the late nineteenth century, different groups of people contributed to the assimilation of the caterpillar fungus into Chinese society. Collectors wanted to earn their living, but their efforts were premised on its economic value in markets; merchants pursued profits, but the expansion of its market was affected by supply and demand; travellers from non-production areas came across it as a strange and esteemed medicinal substance, but their families, friends or relatives in their hometowns were too far to see or use it; physicians and patients expecting to try its effects would sometimes be troubled by its inaccessibility; owners of drugstores also looked forward to it enriching their medicine cabinets and satisfying their customers. These human actors shared a common interest, that is, to make the caterpillar fungus move. Yet their agency did not grow out of nothing. The widespread transformation theory of the caterpillar fungus embodies the impact of its perplexing appearance and the culture of transformation on human cognition. What motivated the actors to mobilise the caterpillar fungus were grounded in its peculiar appearance and marvellous ability to transform, also in its medicinal uses, exoticism and economic value.

As a Medicine The medical value of the caterpillar fungus was known to the Chinese no later than the early eighteenth century. Evidence of its application in treatment came from both non-physician authors and physicians. The litterateur Shen Weicai (1697–?), a native of Haining, Zhejiang, once wrote a letter to an intellectual surnamed Cheng, which indicates that Cheng was assumed to have recovered from illness; and one year ago, Shen had presented the caterpillar fungus as a medicinal substance to Cheng.246 Little is known about when and where Shen wrote the letter, or any more details about the patient Cheng. But at least Shen must have known something about the medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus and have thought it was beneficial to Cheng’s sick body. The poet Zhu Delin (1742–1798), also a native of Haining, had seen a friend who 246 Shen Weicai, Chuzhuang Wengao, in Luo Lin (ed.), Siku Weishoushu Jikan (Collection 10, Book 21), Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, [1749] 2000, p. 225.

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loved poetry. The latter, though seriously unwell, pointed at an envelope enclosing the caterpillar fungus on the table and said it was a wonderful topic for a poem. However, only after his friend’s death Zhu finished the poem. It starts with the uselessness of medicinal substances fully stored in medical boxes and the oddity of this wondrous organism as a combination of an animal and a plant.247 Conceivably, the enveloped caterpillar fungus, whose origin and use lack clarification, should be sent by someone expecting the sick man to take it and recover his bodily health. While its identity as a remedy reached wider audiences, the caterpillar fungus inevitably provoked affirmative as well as occasional sceptical reactions. Song Xianxi (1766–?) of Huangzhou, Zhejiang, for example, had received it as a medicinal gift from a man returning from Sichuan. But over a year later he transferred it to another person and admitted his own incomprehension of its medicinal properties.248 In contrast to Song’s scrupulosity, Yu Yue (1821–1907) of Deqing, Zhejiang had been presented with the caterpillar fungus from a Sichuan friend and meanwhile learnt about its medical and culinary uses. He praised this transformable organism as a lingyao (wonderful drug).249 Here the transformability added to its medical reputation which, as these cases sensibly suggest, resonated whatsoever within interpersonal gifting networks. Some literati other than Yu also endorsed its therapeutic potential. In 1868, for example, Shen Shourong of Haining, who had spent his official career in Yunnan, described the caterpillar fungus as an esteemed medicine produced in Sichuan when eulogising its mysterious transformation.250 On 24 May 1906, Youtai, the Amban of Tibet, wrote a letter to his

247 Zhu Delin, Yueqinlou Shiji, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1462), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1790] 2002, pp. 677–678. See also Zhang Weiping, Guochao Shiren Zhenglue, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1713), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1819] 2002, p. 3. 248 Song Xianxi, Naileng Tan, in Zhang Yinpeng (ed.), Qing Shihua Sanbian (Book 6), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1829] 2014, p. 4057. 249 Yu Yue, Chunzai Tang Shibian, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1551), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1899] 2002, p. 559. 250 Shen Shourong, Yusheng Lou Shilu, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 1557), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1882] 2002, p. 217. For Shen’s life in Yunnan, see Long Yun et al., Xinzuan Yunnan Tongzhi (Book 8), Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, [1944] 2007, p. 66.

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family, telling his unwillingness to send the caterpillar fungus.251 Despite the reason was unspecified, his family must have requested it possibly for health or gift purposes. Two years later, the physician Du Zhongjun of Yangzhou, Jiangsu completed a medical booklet on social hazards and treatments of opium addiction. In the booklet, he introduced a novel prescription composed of the caterpillar fungus and sixteen other ingredients. When explaining the function of the caterpillar fungus, however, he spared no word of its specific medicinal properties but merely said it possessed the subtleness in yin and yang that were fundamental to each other.252 Obviously, Du’s selection of the caterpillar fungus was grounded, at least in part, in its transformability. The increasing use of the caterpillar fungus advanced new explorations of its medicinal properties. The effects already alluded to in the previous sections include nourishing the lung and the kidney, stopping bleeding, dispersing phlegm, eliminating exhaustion cough, prolonging life, removing pains in between waist and knees, and so on. Moreover, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, probably based on the information provided by his uncle returning from Sichuan, Chen Yong of Suzhou stated that aboriginal people in Sichuan simmered it with fish, chicken or duck, and ate them in order to nourish the kidney; but from someone else he also learnt that one could boil it in water, and then drink the decoction to instantly remove forever the pain in the heart.253 Chen Denglong recorded that the ‘barbarians’ in Litang, Sichuan considered the caterpillar fungus as having warm and tonic qualities; they ate the pork and chicken simmered with the caterpillar fungus for the purpose of benefiting yang (here implying male sexual function); if sterile women often took it, they could get pregnant.254 Zhao Xuemin also noted down a recipe that suggested steaming an old male duck stuffed with three to five pieces of the caterpillar fungus. The effect of such a duck eaten by a feeble patient was equivalent to that of one liang (approx. 37.3 grams) of ginseng. Apart from this, Zhao additionally invoked some new medical 251 Youtai, Youtai Zhuzang Riji, Wu Fengpei (ed.), Beijing: Quanguo Tushuguan Wenxian Suowei Fuzhi Zhongxin, [c. 1907] 1992, p. 241. For Youtai’s life in Tibet, see Kang Xinping, Youtai Zhuzang Riji Yanjiu: Zhuzang Dachen Youtai De Sixiang, Xingwei Yu Xintai, Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe, 2015. 252 Du Zhongjun, Jueyin Chuyan, Beijing: Jinghua Yinshuju, [1908] 1920, pp. 13–14. 253 Chen Yong, Chusanxuan Congtan (Book 2, Vol. 4), p. 28. 254 Chen Denglong, Litang Zhilue, pp. 91–92.

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information: pills made of a mixture of the caterpillar fungus, opium and ginseng were used as aphrodisiacs in Guangdong; women taking the ‘grass’ part of the caterpillar fungus would become infertile; the caterpillar fungus could treat abdominal distension and was elsewhere employed in producing the zhongzi (literally planting infants; here referring to fertility) pills.255 At the end of the nineteenth century, the physician Tang Zonghai even recommended merely using its ‘worm’ part in certain treatments.256 Some of these medicinal properties, such as the warm quality and enhancing sexual and reproductive functions, had their origins in Tibetan medicine, even if ideas about the properties themselves appeared earlier in Chinese society. While some other properties, such as the removal of pains, were originally reported by the Chinese, the integration of the caterpillar fungus into Chinese materia medica would inevitably involve its encounter with varied local health needs, and its participation in new medical trials or applications. In 1843 the exiled official Huang Jun of Taizhou, Zhejiang recalled in distant Xinjiang that physicians in his hometown mostly used the caterpillar fungus to treat douzhen (pox rashes).257 Albeit the emerging healing properties, its tonic and aphrodisiacal effects garnered persistent attention. On the whole, these properties enable us to see both heritage and innovation in the fusion of Tibetan and Chinese medical cultures. The Caterpillar Fungus in Cases and Prescriptions On 10 November 1879, a physician named Ma Xuting wrote three prescriptions to a grandson of the imperial tutor Weng Tonghe in Beijing. Weng’s grandson often coughed and vomited blood. The prescriptions

255 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, pp. 140–141. 256 Tang Zonghai, Bencao Wenda, p. 538. 257 Wang Shirui, Taixue Tong, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 546),

Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [1894] 2002, pp. 584, 591. Exiled to Xinjiang in 1837, Huang Jun arrived in Urumchi, Xinjiang in 1839, and stayed there till 1845, see Li Qiang, ‘Huang Jun Yu Hongshan Suiye’, Xinjiang Daxue Xuebao (Zhexue Shehui Kexue Ban), 1999, 27(1): 69–72; Weng Hui, ‘Huang Jun Qianshu Xinjiang Kao’, Lantai Shijie, 2016, (23): 102–104.

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were used to stop his vomiting of blood. And the second one comprised the caterpillar fungus and over a dozen other medicinal substances.258 Ma did not speak specifically about his selection of the caterpillar fungus and the other ingredients. Possibly he was inspired by its by then known hemostatic and cough-suppressing effects. Similar incidents formed the main content of the Chinese texts categorised as yi’an (medical case records). This type of literature provides first-hand material for historical investigations into the interplay between physicians, patients and medicinal substances, and issues surrounding knowledge production, professionalisation, morality, rhetoric and so forth.259 Historians have revealed that the history of medical case records in China dates at least to the second century BC.260 The physician Chunyu Yi (c. 205–c. 150 BC) once reported to the emperor twentyfive medical cases diagnosed by himself, related case records survive today.261 Elisabeth Hsu further points to the structural similarity between Chunyu Yi’s case reports and some legal case records of Qin (221– 207 BC) times.262 But according to Christopher Cullen, only by the sixteenth century did medical casebooks truly become a distinct genre of Chinese medical literature.263 Of course, one must be careful not 258 Weng Tonghe, Weng Tonghe Riji, Chen Yijie (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1904] 1989, p. 1450. 259 Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the ‘Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories’, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003; Charlotte Furth et al. (eds.), Thinking With Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History, Honolulu: University of Hawai ‘i Press, 2007, pp. 125–202; Yi-Li Wu, ‘A Trauma Doctor’s Practice in Nineteenth-century China: The Medical Cases of Hu Tingguang’, Social History of Medicine, 2017, 30(2): 299–322. 260 Asaf Goldschmidt, ‘Reasoning with Cases: The Transmission of Clinical Medical

Knowledge in Twelfth-Century Song China’, in Benjamin A. Elman (ed.), Antiquarianism, Language, and Medical Philology: From Early Modern to Modern Sino-Japanese Medical Discourses, Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 19–51; Asaf Goldschmidt, Medical Practice in Twelfth-Century China: A Translation of Xu Shuwei’s Ninety Discussions [Cases] on Cold Damage Disorders, Cham: Springer, 2019, pp. 22–24. 261 Sima Qian, Shiji, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 91 BC] 1959, pp. 2794–2817. 262 Elisabeth Hsu, ‘Pulse Diagnostics in the Western Han: How Mai and Qi Determine

Bing ’, in Elisabeth Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese Medicine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 51–91. 263 Christopher Cullen, ‘Yi’an (Case Statements): The Origins of a Genre of Chinese Medical Literature’, in Elisabeth Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese Medicine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 297–323.

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to always read them as true accounts of practice, especially the somewhat formulaic stories featuring accurate prognoses and successful cures. Because now and then they served as ‘a propaganda medium suited to attract customers and to expound one’s theoretical views and clinical approaches in contrast to those cherished by one’s competitors’.264 In contrast to merely a few and very late imperial case records involving the caterpillar fungus, as mentioned above, there were at least dozens of such case records written beyond the Imperial Palace from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. They contain various prescriptions. Leaving aside their respective authenticity, these case records altogether still provide a general picture of how the caterpillar fungus was utilised by physicians’ prescribing habits. Nevertheless, whether the caterpillar fungus played or would play a major role in treatment is hard to ascertain, because it is merely one of the ingredients in prescriptions, and physicians seldom elucidated why they chose each of the ingredients. For example, in his 1778 medical text on infants, the physician Zhou Shimi of Fuzhou, Fujian introduced a multi-ingredient prescription containing the caterpillar fungus to treat impotence, involuntary nocturnal ejaculation and perspiration.265 The first two of these symptoms could orient our attention to the caterpillar fungus. But ginseng and shan zhuyu (Cornus officinalis ) in the same prescription were also effective medicines for impotence and involuntary nocturnal ejaculation.266 The physician Miao Zunyi (1710–1793) of Suzhou, Jiangsu also used the caterpillar fungus and other medicinal substances in two cases of blood loss, two cases of the liver (wood) exploiting the spleen (earth), and one case of acid reflux.267 Again,

264 Paul U. Unschuld and Zheng Jinsheng, Chinese Traditional Healing: The Berlin Collections of Manuscript Volumes from the 16th through the Early 20th Century, Leiden: Brill, 2012, p. 136. 265 Zhou Shimi, Ying’er Lun, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1778] 1990, pp. 206–207. 266 Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, pp. 162, 1404. 267 Miao Zunyi, Miao Songxin Yi’an, in Jiang Yiping (ed.), Wuzhong Zhenben Yiji

Sizhong, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [c. 1793] 1994, pp. 9, 14, 25–26; Miao Zunyi et al., Sanjia Yi’an Heke, in Cao Bingzhang (ed.), Zhongguo Yixue Dacheng (Book 36), Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [c. 1793] 1990, pp. 35–36. The case of acid reflux was also cited elsewhere, see Qian Minjie, Yifang Xiedu, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [c. 1911] 2004, pp. 137–138.

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without further explication one is unable to determine the extent of its contribution to hemostasis, among others. Here it is necessary to discuss He Lianchen (1861–1929) in light of the early history of prescribing the caterpillar fungus. He, a physician of Shaoxing, Zhejiang, finalised his editing of Dai Tianzhang’s (1644–1722) treatise on febrile epidemics in 1911. This edited version introduces a kind of replenishing ointment made from duck, the caterpillar fungus and some other ingredients. A related prescription is claimed to be extracted from Gu Songyuan’s 1718 medical text.268 However, the caterpillar fungus does not exist in the prescription of this ointment in Gu’s text.269 Dai’s treatise, too, lacks traces of it.270 The caterpillar fungus must have been later added to Dai’s treatise. In fact, the edited version by He also contains a nineteenth-century case record concerning the caterpillar fungus from one of Wang Shixiong’s casebooks.271 Perhaps He’s aim was to insert some later or new remedies and ideas to the old medical text in order to increase its utility in a new era. Wang Zhizheng (1753–1815), Wang Shixiong (1808–1863) and Qian Yi (1831–1911) contributed most of the extant case records relating to the use of the caterpillar fungus before the end of the nineteenth century. Wang Zhizheng grew up in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu; Wang Shixiong was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang; and Qian Yi was a native of Taicang, Jiangsu. These three physicians provided us with, respectively, seventeen, twentyfour and twelve cases treated with the caterpillar fungus and other medicinal substances together. Ten of Wang Zhizheng’s cases dealt with tuxue (vomiting blood), while the other seven dealt with feiwei (lung atrophy), xusun (deficiency and impairment) and xiaochuan (asthma).272 Of the symptoms in Wang Shixiong’s cases, the most common were cough 268 Dai Tianzhang and He Lianchen, Chongding Guang Wenre Lun, Fuzhou: Fujian Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1911] 2005, pp. 234–235. 269 Gu Jingyuan, Gu Songyuan Yijing (Book 2), Zhengzhou: Henan Renmin Chubanshe, [1718] 1961, pp. 135–136. 270 Dai Tianzhang, Guang Wenyi Lun, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [1675] 1992, pp. 1–81. 271 Dai Tianzhang and He Lianchen, Chongding Guang Wenre Lun, Fuzhou: Fujian Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1911] 2005, p. 258. Cf. Wang Shixiong, Wangshi Yi’an Xubian, in Sheng Zengxiu (ed.), Wang Mengying Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1850] 1999, p. 344. 272 Wang Zhizheng, Wang Jiufeng Yi’an, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [c. 1815] 2004, pp. 46–47, 51, 75–78, 80, 83–88 93–95, 102–103.

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and phlegm, followed by feebleness, headache, sleeplessness, dry mouth, diarrhoea, constipation, vomiting, limb oedema, chest pain, abdominal pain and distention, and so on.273 Qian Yi’s cases involved abdominal pain, headache, soreness of waist, diarrhoea, vomiting (of blood), postpartum disorders, oedema, pale tongue, etc.274 Notwithstanding some blurry connections between these symptoms and the medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus, the combination of medicinal ingredients in the prescriptions or symptomatic descriptions differs from each other. The caterpillar fungus constituted part of differential medication and diagnosis. From the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, there were a variety of other physicians employing the caterpillar fungus in their cases or prescriptions.275 From a geographical perspective, most of these physicians came from and practised medicine in south-eastern coastal regions of 273 Wang Shixiong, Wangshi Yi’an Xubian, pp. 323, 340–341, 344, 349; Wang Shixiong, Jiming Lu, in Sheng Zengxiu (ed.), Wang Mengying Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1852] 1999, p. 585; Wang Shixiong (ed.), Gujin Yi’an An Xuan, in Sheng Zengxiu (ed.), Wang Mengying Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1853] 1999, p. 755; Wang Shixiong, Wangshi Yi’an Sanbian, in Sheng Zengxiu (ed.), Wang Mengying Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [c. 1854] 1999, pp. 367, 371, 375–376, 378–379, 382, 384– 386, 391, 397–398; Wang Shixiong, Guiyan Lu, pp. 447–448, 453–454, 459; Wang Shixiong, Suixiju Chongding Huoluan Lun, in Sheng Zengxiu (ed.), Wang Mengying Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1862] 1999, p. 173. See also Wei Zhixiu, Xu Mingyi Lei’an, Wang Shixiong (ed.) Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [1863] 1997, p. 191. 274 Qian Yi, Shenwu Tang Zhiyan Lu, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1884] 2004, pp. 10, 45, 69–70, 74, 87–88, 119, 125, 153, 173, 209, 214. 275 These physicians include at least Cai Yiji (c. 1752– c. 1823) of Youxian, Hunan, Bao Xiang’ao (fl. the nineteenth century) of Shanhua, Hunan, Liu Jinfang (1825–1888) of Huai’an, Jiangsu, Wu Shiji (1806–1886) of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Pan Mingxiong (1807–c. 1886) of Panyu, Guangdong, Shen Juren (fl. the late nineteenth century) of Suzhou, Jiangsu, Ding Yaochen (fl. the late nineteenth century) of Kuaiji (Shaoxing), Zhejiang, Tang Zonghai (1851–1897) of Pengxian (Pengzhou), Sichuan, Ling Huan (1822–1893) of Huzhou, Zhejiang, Tongyizi (1825–?) of Jiangyin, Jiangsu, the Buddhist monk Xinchan (fl. the late nineteenth century) of Putuo Shan, Zhejiang, Ma Peizhi (1820–1903) of Wujin, Jiangsu, Zhou Xuehai (1856–1906) of Jiande, Zhejiang, Zhang Naixiu (1844–1905) of Wuxi, Jiangsu, Yuan Renxian (fl. the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) of Liuyang, Hunan, Zhao Lü’ao (1829–1904) and Zhao Guan’ao of Gaoyou, Jiangsu, Woyun Shanren, Fei Shengfu (1851–1914) of Wujin, Jiangsu, Chen Bingjun (1840–1914) of Qingpu, Jiangsu, Lu Jinsui (fl. the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) of Suzhou, Jiangsu, Shao Lansun (1864–1922) of Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and Ding Ganren (1866–1926) of Wujin, Jiangsu.

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China, namely Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. Tang Zonghai and Yuan Renxian from elsewhere also had experience of practising or travelling in eastern or south-eastern cities such as Hangzhou, Shanghai and Nanjing. Some of the physicians, namely Ma Peizhi, Fei Shengfu and Ding Ganren, belonged to the lineage of those versed in the influential Menghe learning.276 Reasonably, because of the availability of the caterpillar fungus in these regions, the physicians would prescribe it for local patients. The previous outline of the inter-port transport of the caterpillar fungus in the mid-1880s also reflected a demand for it in coastal China. Of course, the uneven geographical distribution of these physicians might result in part from the incompleteness of extant relevant records. Some physicians would remain obscure all their life. While others, such as Wang Shixiong, would become reputable, their case records would be collected, printed, circulated and quoted. Some of Wang Shixiong’s case records, for example, were cited in the entry of the caterpillar fungus in Zhang Shanlei’s (1872–1934) treatise on materia medica.277 These physicians prescribed personalised therapy. None of their prescriptions have the same composition. Though the caterpillar fungus was far less frequently used than a few dozens of other ingredients,278 partly due to its rarity and late entry into Chinese society, relevant new prescriptions continued to emerge. While it was being widely prescribed, its expensiveness must have to a large extent confined its use to the wealthy class, as is happening today. At any rate, the prescriptions enriched the tradition of what Asaf Goldschmidt terms ‘Prescription Medicine’.279 In particular, the composition, preparations and usage of the prescriptions differ from those recorded by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje. Through prescriptions the exotic caterpillar fungus not only further integrated into Chinese materia medica and medical practice, but also diversified therapeutics.

276 Menghe is a town of Wujin, Jiangsu. For the history of the Menghe learning, see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006; Li Xiating (ed.), Menghe Yipai Sanbai Nian, Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, 2010. 277 Zhang Shanlei, Bencao Zhengyi, in Yu Shijun et al.(eds.), Zhang Shanlei Yiji, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [1932] 1995, pp. 221–222. 278 Jiang Zhibin, Jiyu Shuju Wajue De Fangji Peiwu Guilü Yanjiu Fangfa Tantao (PhD Dissertation), Nanjing: Nanjing Zhongyiyao Daxue, 2015, pp. 45–47. 279 Asaf Goldschmidt, The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 8, 10–11.

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Conclusion In retrospect, the caterpillar fungus-duck food advertised in the Shanghai News on New Year’s Day 1925 was not really ‘newly’ invented by the food company. This recipe was known to the Chinese at least by the eighteenth century but its origin can be traced back to the yartsa gunbu-sparrow formula mentioned by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje of fifteenth-century Tibet. The history of the caterpillar fungus from the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century remains a blank due to the absence of written records, albeit uninterrupted communication between those involved in Tibetan and Chinese medicine. The Qing colonial expansion into western regions facilitated its circulation across geographical boundaries. It spread to Beijing by the early eighteenth century in trade and as tribute. Through trade, interpersonal gifting and private transmission, it also travelled to economically more developed south-eastern regions of China. A variety of collectors, travellers, traders, physicians, officials, consumers, writers, scholars and other people witnessed, described, used and/or mobilised the caterpillar fungus for their own ends. The natural constraints of its cultivability and narrow distribution within the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding highlands helped shape the roughly West–East direction of its flow. Sichuan was the earliest documented and most frequently mentioned production area in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese literature. Given its strategic position on trade routes from the western borderlands, however, Sichuan might also have been a transshipment station for the caterpillar fungus from Tibet and Yunnan. Such western production areas blurred the geographical boundaries between the Tibetan or ‘barbarian’ and the Chinese, adding a multicultural dimension to perceptions of what was then considered to be an exotic organism. The increasing Chinese information about its production involved not only economic and medical concerns, but also ethnocentrism, colonial consciousness, advocacy of imperial strength and imagination of exotic spaces and nature. The ‘soft power’ of the caterpillar fungus played an important part in its transmission in a Sino-Tibetan context. Its strange shape and alleged marvellous transformative ability fascinated the Chinese people and inspired their wonder and praise. They recounted again and again its seasonal and reversible transformation between a blade of grass and a worm, associated it with similar interspecies transformations described in ancient Chinese natural knowledge, linked it with similar creatures and

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endowed its transformation with Chinese cultural connotations involving the notions of qi and yin and yang. These contexts and interpretations helped eliminate possible doubts over the authenticity of its unverified transformability, and acculturated it into Chinese society. Moreover, the caterpillar fungus has been known as a medicinal substance since its early emergence in Chinese literature. Its medicinal properties in fifteenthcentury Tibetan medical culture, centring on aphrodisiacal effects, also valued by the Chinese, assisted the dissemination through how the testimonies of efficacy and healing were represented. Despite its novelty to Chinese materia medica, Chinese physicians further analogised it to the wondrous herb ginseng, exploited new medicinal properties and used it in a variety of medical cases. The disparate multi-ingredient prescriptions they wrote, whose effects could hardly be mainly ascribed to the caterpillar fungus as merely a single constituent, though, integrated it into Chinese medical practice. The medical value, like its peculiar ‘worm-grass’ appearance and alleged marvellous transformation from one form to another, granted another type of agency to the caterpillar fungus among both ‘barbarian’ and Chinese actors. Through two hundred years of cross-cultural and transregional interactions, the caterpillar fungus was integrated into Chinese natural history and materia medica, while also attesting to their heterogeneity.

CHAPTER 3

The Caterpillar Fungus Travels Overseas

In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674–1743) in Paris, dated 8 October 1736, François Xavier d’Entrecolles (1664–1741), a Jesuit missionary in Beijing, reported a ‘racine’ (root) described in a Chinese herbal. The quotation he gave says, ‘What are you doing underground? You will find there neither mulberry leaves to feed you, nor a stand to climb, spin silk, and make your cocoon: your destiny will be snatched away, and you will become a jam fit to be served up at our tables’.1 Though d’Entrecolles provided neither its name nor the title of the herbal, the plant can still be firmly identified as the previously mentioned Chinese artichoke ganlu zi. The words he anonymously quoted originate from the Chinese literatus Yang Wanli’s (1127–1206) poem on ganlu zi.2 D’Entrecolles complained in the letter that the language would

1 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 24), Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1739, p. 413. 2 Yang Wanli, Yang Wanli Ji Jianjiao, Xin Gengru (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 1190] 2007, pp. 1425–1426. According to the plants and knowledge referred to in d’Entrecolles’s letter, the herbal should be the Caomu Dian (Vegetable Canons, in 320 volumes) section of the voluminous imperial encyclopaedia Gujin Tushu Jicheng (Complete Collection of Old and New Illustrations and Texts, 1726). For the account of ganlu zi in this encyclopaedia, see Chen Menglei (ed.), Gujin Tushu Jicheng (Book 545, Vol. 179), Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, [1726] 1934, p. 53.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1_3

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lead one to believe the root to be a veritable silkworm. But he was able to see through the delusion simply because, in his opinion, what sometimes remained marvellous to certain Chinese authors was, however, ordinary for the Europeans. Indeed, the Chinese characterisation of ganlu zi obscures its attribution to the plant or the animal and may thereby lead to confusion with the caterpillar fungus. More importantly, the literary and imaginative description fortified d’Entrecolles’s hierarchical conception of natural knowledge which celebrated European epistemological superiority. This sense of superiority was not unique to him, but had wide currency in eighteenth-century Europe and constituted a claim to ‘exercise authority over other people’.3 With the great Age of Discovery, the footsteps of myriad border crossers such as traders, missionaries, naturalists, envoys and colonists considerably strengthened the links between most regions of the world, intensifying global networks for intellectual and material exchanges. Lots of specimens, species, commodities and scientific data from the New World and beyond expanded visions of European natural history and medicine.4 The exotica meanwhile urged many Europeans to explore their own local plants, minerals and medicines.5 Such global interactions tightened connections between Europe and China, in which the efforts of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century European Jesuit missionaries as intermediaries have raised increasing historical attention.6 Carla Nappi finds that 3 Peter J. Marshall, ‘Europe and the Rest of the World’, in Timothy C. W. Blanning (ed.), The Eighteenth Century: Europe, 1688–1815, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 218–246, 245. 4 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; David Attenborough et al., Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007; Glyn Williams, Naturalists at Sea: Scientific Travellers from Dampier to Darwin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013; Londa Schiebinger, Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017; Jaime Marroquín Arredondo and Ralph Bauer (eds.), Translating Nature: Cross-Cultural Histories of Early Modern Science, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 5 Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 6 For some recent relevant publications, see Bianca M. Rinaldi, The ‘Chinese Garden in Good Taste’: Jesuits and Europe’s Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in the 17th and 18th Centuries, München: Meidenbauer, 2006; Noël Golvers and Efthymios Nicolaidis, Ferdinand Verbiest and Jesuit Science in 17th Century China, Athens: Institute

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early modern Chinese natural history and materia medica evolved while appropriating exotic substances and knowledge that had always travelled by both land and sea routes across the shifting boundaries of China.7 This truly transnational context saw the arrival of a multitude of new materials such as American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius ) and Portuguese distilled medicinal liquid.8 Significant to the practice of transnational history is how the materials flowed between cultures and how new information and epistemologies that accompanied the mobile materials enriched cognition and, in different ways, participated in intellectual transformation. Historians have demonstrated that global economies emerged in part as responses to the search for effective medicines, foodstuffs and economic species.9 Harold J. Cook, in particular, stresses the role of trading networks in the circulation of local knowledge and European scientific innovations in the early modern period.10 While contributing for Neohellenic Research, 2009; Florence C. Hsia, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009; Qiong Zhang, Making the New World Their Own: Chinese Encounters with Jesuit Science in the Age of Discovery, Leiden: Brill, 2015. 7 Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot, pp. 69–135; Carla Nappi, ‘Bolatu’s Pharmacy Theriac in Early Modern China’, Early Science and Medicine, 2009, 14(6): 737–764. 8 For the import and medical use of American ginseng, see, for example, Anonymous, Changshui Zeli, in Gu Tinglong (ed.), Xuxiu Siku Quanshu (Book 834), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 1727] 2002, p. 442; Wu Yiluo, Bencao Congxin, p. 6; Xu Dachun, Huixi Yi’an, in Xu Dachun, Xu Dachun Yishu Quanji, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [c. 1771] 1988, p. 582. For the transmission of Portuguese distilled medicinal liquid to the Qing court, see, for example, Yuntao et al., Qinding Daqing Huidian Zeli, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange Siku Quanshu (Book 622), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1764] 1983, p. 908. 9 Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004; Londa Schiebinger, ‘Prospecting for Drugs: European Naturalists in the West Indies’, in Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005, pp. 119–133; Timothy D. Walker, ‘The Early Modern Globalization of Indian Medicine: Portuguese Dissemination of Drugs and Healing Techniques from South Asia on Four Continents, 1670–1830’, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, 2010, 17–18: 77–97; Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions & Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 17–41; Harold J. Cook and Timothy D. Walker, ‘Circulation of Medicine in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, Social History of Medicine, 2013, 26(3): 337–351. 10 Harold J. Cook, ‘Quanqiu Yixueshi Huishi Shenme Yangzi?’, Zhou Xun (trans.), in Wang Shumin and Vivienne Lo (eds.), Xingxiang Zhongyi: Zhongyi Lishi Tuxiang

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to the accumulation of detailed and accurate information, global trade also boosted materialistic exchanges and bred new ways of knowing in Europe.11 The revelation of the close relationship between the rise of global trade and the structural changes in the ‘inquisition of nature’ lends inspiration to further investigation of the caterpillar fungus alien to Europe.12 Emergent patterns of identification, observation, illustration and description that came with new territories for commerce went hand-in-hand with collecting for scientific purposes, and occurred across private and public spheres, such as the English East India Company, the British Museum, the Horticultural Society of London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Jessica Ratcliff’s inquiry into the English East India Company’s growing natural history collections in the early nineteenth century brings into sight the entanglement of scientific practice, institutionalisation, financial capital, colonisation and military campaigns, adding a political dimension to the material connection between the flourishing collections-based disciplines and imperial economy.13 The decentralised organisational structure of the Company, Emily Erikson argues, advanced multilateral exchange of diverse experiences and materials from around the world.14 Anna Winterbottom traces the exercise of political power to the early period of the Company’s settlements. While the indigenous encountered variously the European, the creation and circulation of natural knowledge, Yanjiu, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 1–9; Harold J. Cook, ‘Sciences and Economies in the Scientific Revolution: Concepts, Materials, and Commensurable Fragments’, Osiris, 2018, 33(1): 25–44. 11 Harold J. Cook, ‘Global Economies and Local Knowledge in the East Indies: Jacobus Bontius Learns the Facts of Nature’, in Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, pp. 100– 118; Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 42–132, 175–225, 304–416. 12 The phrase ‘inquisition of nature’ here is borrowed from Francis Bacon (1561–1626), see Francis Bacon, ‘The Great Instauration’, in Jerry Weinberger (ed.), New Atlantis and the Great Instauration, Chichester: Wiley, [1620] 2017, p. 17. 13 Jessica Ratcliff, ‘The East India Company, the Company’s Museum, and the Political Economy of Natural History in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Isis, 2016, 107(3): 495– 517; Jessica Ratcliff, ‘Hand-in-Hand with the Survey: Surveying and the Accumulation of Knowledge Capital at India House During the Napoleonic Wars’, Notes and Records, 2019, 73(2): 149–166. 14 Emily Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757 , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 77–124.

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medical practice and material culture in these interrelated settlements also exhibited certain hybridity.15 As Bruno Latour contends point blank, ‘we live in a hybrid world’.16 The materiality and hybridity of knowledge and networks then draw our attention additionally to political, religious, linguistic and other circumstances of little or lesser commercial relevance. Unlike the Chinese artichoke which reached Europe (France) as late as the early 1880s,17 the caterpillar fungus landed in the same continent in the 1720s. It played out at the interface of the local and rapidly globalising philosophies of nature, inviting a microhistorical approach to the tensions and transactions surrounding Chinese natural objects and medicinal substances within transnational networks of knowledge production. Contextualised within the history of Sino-foreign interaction, this chapter examines the transmission of the caterpillar fungus from China to France and the UK in Western Europe, Japan in East Asia, and the geographically intermediate Russia. One major concern here involves how its overseas expeditions came into being, and how it encountered a new philosophy of nature. The movements of its specimens that animated the material culture of hierarchical natural knowledge further provided opportunities to scrutinise the intersection between the compulsive human desire to dominate the world through collection and control of its flora and fauna, as a part of the soft power of informal empire, and the intellectual practice of a scientific modernity. Following trips to the outside, by and large, the caterpillar fungus merged with broader trends in academic transformation as well as the reconfiguration of power relations in a global context.

Debuting in France via the Jesuit Mission Catholic missionaries were notably the first actors to establish relatively extensive contacts between France and China in the seventeenth century. Before this period, however, there had already been certain French elements in the direct communication between Europeans and 15 Anna Winterbottom, Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World,

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 8–15, 112–162, 196–207. 16 Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 16. 17 Auguste Paillieux, ‘Nouvelle Composition de Pickles’, Bulletin de la Société Nationale d’Acclimatation de France, 1883, 10: 235–246, 246; Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 178.

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the Mongols in the Far East in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The expansion of the Mongol empire into Eastern Europe fuelled fear in the Latin West. To spread Christianity, discourage aggression and inquire about their future intentions, Pope Innocent IV dispatched in Lyon in 1245 at least three diplomatic missions to the Mongols, headed respectively by the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini and the Dominicans Ascelin of Lombardy and Andrew of Longjumeau.18 Ascelin and Andrew departed for the Near East, while Carpini eventually arrived near the Mongol capital of Karakorum on 22 July 1246, and later witnessed the enthronement of Güyük Khan on 24 August.19 Two years later, King Louis IX of France received a Mongol mission in Cyprus on 20 December 1248 and was advised to make a military alliance against the Muslims. In return, Louis IX sent an embassy led by the French Dominican Andrew of Longjumeau to the Great Khan. Andrew met the regent Oghul Qaimish, widow of Güyük Khan, near Emil in 1250.20 Conversant with this mission, the French Franciscan William of Rubruck set out to evangelise the Mongols then under the reign of Möngke Khan in 1253, bearing in mind Louis IX’s requirement for recording whatever he saw among them. Rubruck met Möngke on 4 January 1254, three months before his arrival in Karakorum on 5 April. In Karakorum,

18 Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410, London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 87–112; Gregory G. Guzman, ‘Simon of Saint-Quentin and the Dominican Mission to the Mongol Baiju: A Reappraisal’, in James D. Ryan (ed.), The Spiritual Expansion of Medieval Latin Christendom: The Asian Missions, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 85–102; Michael Keevak, Embassies to China: Diplomacy and Cultural Encounters Before the Opium Wars, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 13–37. 19 For Carpini’s own account of this journey, see William W. Rockhill, The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–55, as Narrated by Himself, with Two Accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian de Carpine, London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1900, pp. 1–32; Christopher Dawson (ed.), The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955, pp. 1–76. 20 Paul Pelliot, ‘Les Mongols et la Papauté: André de Longjumeau’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 1932, 28: 3–84; John B. Friedman and Kristen M. Figg (eds.), Trade, Travel and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 20– 22; Denise Aigle, ‘The Letters of Eljigidei, Hülegü and Abaqa: Mongol Overtures or Christian Ventriloquism?’, Inner Asia, 2005, 7(2): 143–162.

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he found many Chinese and noticed that their physicians were versed in herbs and pulse diagnosis.21 In the second half of the thirteenth century, Qubilai Khan (r. 1260– 1294) ascended the throne, established the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and conquered Southern Song China (1127–1279). Khanbaliq (Beijing), as the capital, also became a bridgehead for the Franciscan or Catholic mission in Yuan China. The Italian Franciscan John of Montecorvino, reaching Khanbaliq via the port of Zaitun (Quanzhou) in around 1294, was consecrated the first Archbishop of Khanbaliq and Patriarch of the Orient in 1307. Later, a Suffragan See came into existence in Zaitun in 1313.22 Before the decline of the mission, which was coupled with the collapse of Mongol rule in China and establishment of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Nicholas of Botras, former Professor of Theology at the University of Paris, succeeded Montecorvino as Archbishop on 18 September 1333; and William of Prato, a professor at the same university, was appointed Archbishop of Khanbaliq on 11 March 1370. Little is known, however, whether they had ever reached Khanbaliq. Besides, on 31 October 1338, Pope Benedict XII addressed a letter to his legates to Khanbaliq. One of them was Nicolas Bonet, a Parisian theologian, while in Constantinople, however, he returned to Europe.23 Contrary

21 Peter Jackson (ed.), The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255, London: The Hakluyt Society, 1990, pp. 59–60, 161–162, 176–178, 211–213; Peter Jackson, ‘William of Rubruck in the Mongol Empire: Perception and Prejudices’, in Zweder von Martels (ed.), Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery and Observation in Travel Writing, Leiden: Brill, 1994, pp. 54–71. 22 Anastase van den Wyngaert, ‘Jean de Montcorvin. o. f. m., Premier Évêque de Khanbaliq (Péking) 1247–1328’, La France Franciscaine, 1923, (1): 135–186; Arnulf Camps, ‘The First Franciscans in the East’, in Arnulf Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History, 1956–1998, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 175–190; Pacifico Sella, ‘Aspetti Storici Della Missione di Giovanni da Montecorvino nel Cathay’, Antonianum, 2002, 77(3): 475–502. 23 Henri Cordier, ‘Le Christianisme en Chine et en Asie Centrale Sous les Mongols’, T’oung Pao, 1917, 18(1): 49–113; Marion A. Habig, ‘Marignolli and the Decline of Medieval Missions in China’, Franciscan Studies, 1945, 5(1): 21–36; Paul Stanislaus Hsiang, The Catholic Missions in China During the Middle Ages (1294–1368) (STD Dissertation), Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1949, pp. 22–31; James D. Ryan, ‘Preaching Christianity Along the Silk Route: Missionary Outposts in the Tartar ‘Middle Kingdom’ in the Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Early Modern History, 1998, 2(4): 350–373; Vladimír Lišˇcák, ‘The Christian Nobles at the Court of Great Khan, as Described in Mediaeval European Sources’, Golden Horde Review, 2017, 5(2): 276–289.

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to the Europeans heading east, Rabban Sauma (c. 1225–1294), a Nestorian Christian born in Khanbaliq, trekked westward. The Ilkhan Arghun once designated him to build a military alliance with European Christendom. En route he met King Philip IV of France in Paris in 1287.24 Such medieval travels, which significantly fertilised the European imagination, cultivated ‘the growing popular and scholarly taste for tales of oriental lands’.25 Following a temporary eclipse for reasons such as the turbulent Yuan-Ming transition, European missionary efforts to convert the Chinese to Christianity were rekindled by Jesuits in the second half of the sixteenth century. The Society of Jesus was founded at Montmartre, Paris on 15 August 1534, and approved by Pope Paul III on 27 September 1540.26 The Spanish missionary Francis Xavier (1506–1552), a founding member of the Society of Jesus, was the first Jesuit to China. He landed on Shangchuan Island (off the coast of present-day Taishan, Guangdong) in August 1552, but shortly afterwards died there in December.27 Among his successors, Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) of Douai, Belgium, was arguably the first French Jesuit in China, since Douai became French after his death.28 Trigault arrived in Macao and Zhaoqing in 1610, and Nanjing, Hangzhou and Beijing the next March, May and December.

24 Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (trans.), The Monks of Kûblâi Khân, Emperor . of China, London: The Religious Tract Society, 1928, pp. 182–185; Morris Rossabi, Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, p. 140. 25 Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, p. 9. 26 Thomas J. Campbell, The Jesuits, 1534–1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time (Vol. 1), New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1921, pp. 24–32; John W. O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 53–70. 27 Louis Pfister, Notices Biographiques et Bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’Ancienne Mission de Chine, 1552–1773 (Vol. 1), Chang-hai: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1932, pp. 1–7; Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800, Roma: Institutum Historicum S. I., 1973, pp. 297–299. 28 Louis XIV’s army seized Douai in 1667. Though the Duke of Marlborough expelled

the French in 1710, Douai fell into the hands of the French again in 1712, see La Société d’Agriculture, Sciences et Arts Centrale du Département du Nord, Douai, Son Histoire Militaire - Ses Fortifications, Douai: Dechristé, 1892, pp. 71–172; John A. Lynn, The French Wars, 1667–1714: The Sun King at War, Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002, pp. 12, 40, 70–75.

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He returned to Europe at the end of 1614. This time he recruited a group of Jesuits and led them to China in 1618, first reaching Macao on 22 July 1619, and then proceeding to the mainland.29 While in Europe, Trigault finished his Latin translation and augmentation of Matteo Ricci’s (1552–1610) memoirs, which soon appeared in print in Augsburg in 1615.30 In addition, he also collected a large number of European books in order to establish Jesuit libraries in China. These books dealt not only with theology but also with natural philosophy. These books accompanied Trigault on his second trip to China and laid a partial basis for the transmission of European religious, philosophical and natural knowledge.31 Not much later, the Italian Jesuits Alfonso Vagnone (1566–1640) and Giulio Aleni (1582–1649) introduced the outline of Western learning (e.g. philosophia, medicina and theologia) to Chinese audiences.32 Realising that the power of European scientific expertise could be used to establish their great renown among natives, the Jesuits then elaborately employed it to spread the faith and defend the mission.33 Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, had ambitions in Asia. On 28 January 1685, he appointed six French Jesuits as the King’s mathematicians to set up ‘a French academic outpost’ in Beijing.34 They were Jean de Fontaney (1643–1710), Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), Louis 29 Louis Pfister, Notices Biographiques et Bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’Ancienne Mission de Chine, 1552–1773 (Vol. 1), pp. 111–120; Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800, pp. 274–275. 30 David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989, pp. 46–48. 31 Nicolas Standaert, ‘The Transmission of Renaissance Culture in Seventeenth-Century China’, Renaissance Studies, 2003, 17(3): 367–391; Noël Golvers, Libraries of Western Learning for China: Circulation of Western Books Between Europe and China in the Jesuit Mission (ca. 1650–ca. 1750) (Vol. 1, Logistics of Book Acquisition and Circulation), Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, 2012. 32 Alfonso Vagnone, Tongyou Jiaoyu Jinzhu, Thierry Meynard and Tan Jie (eds.), Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, [c. 1632] 2017, pp. 216–221; Giulio Aleni, Xixue Fan, in Ji Xianlin (ed.), Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu (Zibu, Book 93), Jinan: Qilu Shushe, [1623] 1995, pp. 630–638. 33 Liam M. Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 52, 75–76; Florence C. Hsia, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 51–76. 34 Liam M. Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 158.

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le Comte (1655–1728), Jean-François Gerbillon (1654–1707), Claude de Visdelou (1656–1737) and Guy Tachard (1648–1712). In Siam, where they arrived on 23 September of the year, Guy Tachard became involved in Siamese-French diplomacy, while the rest eventually left on 19 June 1687, anchored in the port of Ningbo on 23 July and reached Beijing on 8 February 1688.35 Before these Jesuits set out from Brest on 3 March 1685, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris had already watched for proper figures to perform geographical observations in India and China.36 The Academy once drew up a questionnaire consisting of thirty-four queries on the plants, animals, religions, climate and other little-known facets of China.37 It was probably entrusted to the Belgian Jesuit missionary Philippe Couplet who, having returned from China to Europe in 1682, along with Shen Fuzong, a Chinese Christian convert from Nanjing, met Louis XIV on 15 September 1684 and prompted the dispatch of the six French Jesuits due to religious and scientific considerations.38 The Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722), who showed much interest in European sciences, asked Gerbillon and Bouvet to stay in Beijing, and permitted the others to assume missionary work elsewhere. The two

35 Charles Le Gobien (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 7), Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1707, pp. 61–266. See also François-Timoléon de Choisy, Journal du Voyage de Siam Fait en 1685. et 1686, Paris: Chez Sebastien MabreCramoisy, 1687, pp. 1, 178; Louis le Comte, Nouveaux Memoires sur l’Etat Present de la Chine (Tome 1), Paris: Chez Jean Anisson directeur de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1696, pp. 6–71. Comte recorded the date of their final departure from Siam for China as 17 June 1687. 36 Charles Le Gobien (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 7), pp. 64–65; Louis Pfister, Notices Biographiques et Bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’ancienne Mission de Chine, 1552–1773 (Vol. 1), pp. 420–423. 37 Virgile Pinot, Documents Inédits Relatifs a la Connaissance de la Chine en France de 1685 a 1740, Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1932, pp. 7–9. 38 Guy Tachard, Voyage de Siam, des Peres Jesuites, Envoyez par le Roy aux Indes & à la Chine, Paris: Chez Arnould Seneuze, ruë de la Harpe, à la Sphere et Daniel Horthemels, ruë de la Harpe, au Mécenas, 1686, pp. 1–15; Jerome Heyndrickx (ed.), Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693): The Man Who Brought China to Europe, Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1990, pp. 121–161; Isabelle Landry-Deron, La Preuve par la Chine: La «Description» de J.-B. Du Halde, Jésuite, 1735, Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2002, pp. 150–151, 176–179.

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French Jesuits later lectured the emperor about European mathematics, astronomy and anatomy.39 Upon Kangxi’s request some Jesuits, probably Bouvet and Gerbillon, compiled a Manchu text on Western materia medica in around 1693. They imbibed certain elements of Chinese medicine while introducing dozens of illnesses and related medicaments (e.g. cinchona) unknown to the Manchu.40 Before this, the Belgian Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest composed a short Chinese text on snakestones in around 1686, which, followed by a Manchu translation,41 is considered the earliest Chinese treatise on European materia medica.42 In 1693 de Fontaney and de Visdelou entered the Imperial Palace with some ‘quinquina’ obtained from the French Jesuit Charles François Dolu in ‘Pondichery’ (now known as Puducherry), India. It quickly came in handy for curing Kangxi’s ‘fiévre maligne’ (malignant fever).43 This incident, often repeated by historians of medicine, happened about sixty years later than the first introduction of the South American anti-malarial plant cinchona, alias Jesuit’s bark or quinquina, to Europe in the 1630s.44 39 Joachim Bouvet, Portrait Historique de l’Empereur de la Chine, Paris: Estienne Michallet, 1697, pp. 116–155; Charles Le Gobien (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 7), pp. 143–144, 186–187; Marta E. Hanson, ‘Jesuits and Medicine in the Kangxi Court (1662–1722)’, Pacific Rim Report, 2007, (43): 1–10. 40 Joachim Bouvet and Jean-François Gerbillon, Xiyang Yaoshu, in Zhu Jiajin (ed.), Gugong Zhenben Congkan (Book 727), Haikou: Hainan Chubanshe, [c. 1693] 2001, pp. 289–442; Liu Shih-Hsun, ‘Xiyang Yaoshu Jiedu Fang Yishu’, Gugong Xueshu Jikan, 2017, 35(2): 115–140. 41 Ferdinand Verbiest, Xidu Shi Yuanyou Yongfa, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de

France, Chinois 5321–5322; Ferdinand Verbiest, Hi Du Ši Wehe-i Turgun be Fetehe Baitalara be Tucibuhe Bithe, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Mandchou 288. The snakestones did not originate from Europe but first arrived in Europe primarily through India in the 1650 s, see Martha Baldwin, ‘The Snakestone Experiments: An Early Modern Medical Debate’, Isis, 1995, 86(3): 394–418. 42 Zhen Xueyan and Zheng Jinsheng, ‘Xidushi Jiqi Chuanru Kao’, Zhongguo Yaoxue Zazhi, 2003, 38(7): 552–554; Chen Ming, ‘‘Xidushi’ Yu ‘Qingxinwan’: Yanxingshi Yu Chuanjiaoshi De Yaowu Jiaoliu’, Zhonghua Wenshi Luncong, 2009, (1): 311–346. 43 Joachim Bouvet, Portrait Historique de l’Empereur de la Chine, Paris: Estienne

Michallet, 1697, pp. 160–162; Charles Le Gobien (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 7), pp. 217–232. 44 Jaime Jaramillo-Arango, ‘A Critical Review of the Basic Facts in the History of Cinchona’, Journal of the Linnean Society of London: Botany, 1949, 53(352): 272–311;

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The clinical trials in some patients before the emperor’s intake of quinquina, as Harold J. Cook remarks, display ‘the experimental attitude of many people in the early modern period, when many new medicines were both developed and tried out in circumstances far from their point of origin’.45 Moreover, after his recovery the emperor severely punished three Chinese royal physicians for their ineffective treatment and procrastination of other medication.46 This case of the interplay between medicines and power demonstrates a tension between the Chinese physicians and European Jesuits. The triumph of the ‘European’ quinquina made the ineffective treatment no longer an ordinary event in the practice of Chinese medicine, but to some extent legitimated European medicine and reinforced the Jesuits’ reputation in the imperial court. Thirsting for more such French Jesuit elite, the Kangxi emperor commissioned Bouvet as his emissary to Louis XIV. Over five years later, Bouvet eventually brought ten French Jesuits to China, among them Dominicus Parennin (1665–1741).47 Parennin was to be the first person to send the caterpillar fungus to France, indeed to Europe. Dominicus Parennin’s Tale of the Curative Caterpillar Fungus Dominicus Parennin and his confrères anchored at Macao on 24 October 1698 and then reached Guangzhou on 4 November. In Guangzhou, Joachim Bouvet learnt that the Kangxi emperor intended to select five of the newly arrived French Jesuits to serve in the Imperial Palace, while the others were permitted to evangelise elsewhere in the country. For the first time Kangxi, then on a tour of inspection of the empire, received

Wouter Klein and Toine Pieters, ‘The Hidden History of a Famous Drug: Tracing the Medical and Public Acculturation of Peruvian Bark in Early Modern Western Europe (c. 1650–1720)’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2016, 71(4): 400–421. 45 Harold J. Cook, ‘Testing the Effects of Jesuit’s Bark in the Chinese Emperor’s

Court’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2014, 107(8): 326–327. 46 Zou Ailian (ed.), Qingdai Qijuzhu Ce (Kangxi Chao, Book 4), Taipei: Lianjing Chuban Shiye Gongsi, [1693] 2009, pp. 1981–1985. 47 Charles Le Gobien (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 2), Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1703, pp. 57–59, 119–124; Henri Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica (Vol. 3), Paris: Librairie Orientale & Américaine, 1907, p. 2089.

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the five chosen Jesuits on Jinshan Island, Zhenjiang.48 Parennin ranked among those to settle in Beijing, where he stayed until his death on 29 September 1741.49 While in Beijing, he co-authored an imperially endorsed Manchu anatomy translation (c. 1713), which relied mainly on two late seventeenth-century medical texts by the Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin (1616–1680) and the French surgeon Pierre Dionis (1643–1718).50 Parennin’s quick mastery of the Chinese and Manchu languages facilitated his efforts to acquaint the studious and curious Kangxi with European geometry, botany and medicine as well as world cultures. During a conversation with Kangxi, Parennin indicated the emperor’s mistake about the latitudes of Shenyang and Beijing. This episode, according to the French Jesuit Valentin Chalier (1693–1747), eventually resulted in the grand project of mapping the whole empire under the charge of missionaries.51 Mario Cams argues that this project, lasting from 1708 to 1718, integrated both European cartography and Chinese map-making techniques, and fitted the needs of imperial control and management of the vast territory and frontiers.52 In the Qing court’s diplomatic interactions

48 Charles Le Gobien (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 2), pp. 91, 98, 134–136, 144–145; Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800, p. 195. 49 For the Chinese epitaph on the tombstone of Parennin, see Wu Menglin and Xiongying, Beijing Diqu Jidujiao Shiji Yanjiu, Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2010, pp. 147–148. 50 A copy of this Manchu translation, consisting of eight volumes, entitled ‘Ge Ti Ciowan Lu Bithe’ (Manchu transliteration of the Chinese phrase ‘Geti Quanlu’ [Complete Record of the Body]), is now preserved at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, see Joachim Bouvet and Dominicus Parennin, Ghé Ti Tchiowan Lou Bithé, Paris: Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Catalogue No.: MS 2009. For different extant copies of this Manchu text on European anatomy, see Marta E. Hanson, ‘On Manchu Medical Manuscripts and Blockprints: An Essay and Bibliographic Survey’, Saksaha, 2003, (8): 1–32, 24–26. 51 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 26), Paris: P. G. Le Mercier et Marc Bordelet, 1743, pp. 146–171. 52 Mario Cams, ‘Not Just a Jesuit Atlas of China: Qing Imperial Cartography and Its European Connections’, Imago Mundi, 2017, 69(2): 188–201. See also Mario Cams, Companions in Geography: East–West Collaboration in the Mapping of Qing China (c. 1685–1735), Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. 86–176.

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with the Russians, Parennin often acted as interpreter and translator.53 He had also tutored some talented Manchu students in the Latin language at the Imperial College (1729–1744), a school established to train Manchu youth for the Qing state’s diplomacy with Russia. His tutorials were later taken over by the French Jesuit Antoine Gaubil (1689–1759).54 The historian Gregory Afinogenov thinks that the private communications between Parennin and other Jesuits in Beijing and certain scholars at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg made it possible for the Russian state to exert influence on the Qing court through the Academy in St. Petersburg.55 Following the death of Kangxi and the succession of the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1722–1735) who banned Catholicism, Parennin then had more leisure time for writing.56 His connection with France conveyed much information about an exotic but intellectually valuable China to Parisian scholars. In 1723, Parennin sent two letters to Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757), perpetual secretary to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. James E. McClellan III believes that in the eighteenth century this Royal Academy, whose members extended from France to the Far East, was the foremost institutional centre for both science and scientific researchers.57 The first letter, written in Beijing on 1 May, mainly recounts his impressions of the Manchu language, and his own theory and practice of translation. Parennin enclosed with the letter his Manchu translations on European anatomy, medicine and physics,

53 Louis Pfister, Notices Biographiques et Bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’Ancienne Mission de Chine, 1552–1773 (Vol. 1), pp. 501–517. 54 Anonymous (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 31), Paris: De Hansy le jeune, rue Saint-Jacques, 1774, pp. 1–30. Cf. Yang Naiji, ‘Qingdai Beijing Diyisuo Guanban De Waiyu Xuexiao: Yongzheng Qinian Chuangban De ‘Xiyang Xueguan’’, Beijingshi Yanjiu Tongxun, 1981, (7–8): 5–6; Guo Fuxiang, ‘Ba Duoming Yu Qinggong Xiyang Xueguan’, Zijin Cheng, 1997, (4): 22–23. 55 Gregory Afinogenov, Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020, pp. 120–135. 56 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 26), pp. 165–166. 57 James E. McClellan III, ‘The Académie Royale des Sciences, 1699–1793: A Statistical Portrait’, Isis, 1981, 72(4): 541–567.

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originally intended for the Kangxi emperor.58 According to the second letter, written in Beijing on 15 October, Parennin’s dispatch to the Royal Academy of 1st May also included some ‘racines particulieres’ (particular roots) of the empire of China, and the second letter aimed to provide some descriptions of them.59 In the second letter he introduced the following five medicinal substances in turn: ‘Hia tsao tom chom’ (Xiacao Dongchong; the caterpillar fungus); ‘Santsi’ (Sanqi; Panax notoginseng ); ‘Tai hoam’ (Dahuang; rhubarb, or Rheum spp.); ‘Tam coué’ (Danggui; Angelica sinensis ); and ‘Ngo kiao’ (E’Jiao; donkey-hide gelatin).60 The caterpillar fungus comes first, indicating his emphasis on it. In fact, it was the only one of the five medicinal substances whose efficacies he had personally experienced. But he also attested to the effectiveness of rhubarb and donkey-hide gelatin in other ailing missionaries. Though Parennin did not explain why he sent the caterpillar fungus to Paris, his experience of being cured by this drug must have been an important factor that drew his attention to effective local remedies. The second letter said that three years ago the Governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi (i.e. Nian Gengyao) brought the caterpillar fungus and other ‘plus singulier’ (most singular) products of his prefecture and neighbouring areas to the emperor. He dropped in on Parennin, who was then extremely feeble and seemed unable to regain health by any medicinal substance. They knew each other beforehand, perhaps through Nian’s elder brother Nian Xiyao (1671–1738) who, enthusiastic about European ceramics glaze technology, mathematics and perspective drawing,

58 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 17), Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1726, pp. 344–408. 59 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 17), pp. 409–446. For the date of the second letter, which is not explicitly indicated in its published version, see Yvonne Grover, ‘La Correspondance Scientifique du Père Dominique Parrenin (1665–1741)’, in Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaire de Chantilly (ed.), Actes du IIe Colloque International de Sinologie, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980, pp. 83–99. 60 The scientific names for some of these medicinal substances are tentatively added in

case they may interest pharmacognosists, see Michael Heinrich, ‘Ethnopharmacology: A Short History of a Multidisciplinary Field of Research’, in Michael Heinrich and Anna K. Jäger (eds.), Ethnopharmacology, Chichester: Wiley, 2015, pp. 3–9; Andreas Lardos, ‘Historical Approaches in Ethnopharmacology’, in Michael Heinrich and Anna K. Jäger (eds.), Ethnopharmacology, Chichester: Wiley, 2015, pp. 333–341.

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had interaction with Parennin and other Jesuits.61 The Governor gave Parennin some caterpillar fungus, and instructed the latter in its usage: namely, put five drachmas of the caterpillar fungus into a duck’s belly and simmer them; when the duck is cooked, remove the caterpillar fungus and then eat up the duck in eight to ten days in the morning and evening. Parennin followed these directions. His appetite finally increased, and he also recovered his physical energy. Parennin further developed an interest in this potent but odd ‘root’. As he observed, it looked very much like a yellow worm, which rationalised its name; if put aside and exposed to the air, it would over time decay and turn black. However, he claimed to have been unable to discover the shape of its leaves, the colour of its flowers or the height of its stem. Parennin was clearly enthused with the wonders of the Chinese world, and the spirit of adventure that had characterised the Age of Discovery in the centuries leading up to the Jesuit presence in China. His interest in materia medica linked him to communities of scholars working in both religious and secular organisations and, within another century or so, standing at the forefront of the creation of a self-consciously distinct and modern science. As the second letter reveals, his understanding of the five medicinal substances rested not only on Chinese and European medical texts but also on his own observations and fresh information from the Governor and Chinese medical and commercial practitioners. Probably from the Governor and royal physicians, he learnt that the caterpillar fungus could restore and increase physical strength lost due to overwork or long-term illness; and its efficacies were similar to those of ginseng; but unlike ginseng, it would not cause bleeding even if it was taken frequently. The French pharmacist Pierre Pomet’s (1658– 1699) Histoire Générale des Drogues (General History of Drugs) was in Parennin’s hand and so enabled him to compare European and Chinese pharmacy and therefore ensure the novelty and necessity of his narrative. However, apart from the new global networks of knowledge distribution, at this point there was little to distinguish Parennin’s observations of Chinese materia medica from the experiential observations that Chinese

61 Elisabetta Corsi, ‘Nian Xiyao De Shengping Jiqi Dui Yishu He Kexue De Gongxian’, Zhongguo Shi Yanjiu, 2000, (3): 155–165; Elisabetta Corsi, ‘Perspectiva Iluminadora e Iluminación de la Perspectiva. La Versión del Arte Occidental de la Perspectiva, de Nian Xiyao (1671–1738) en los Prólogos a la ‘Ciencia de la Vision’’, Estudios de Asia y Africa, 2001, 36(3): 375–418.

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had made of Tibetan materia medica. And the transfer of the knowledge about the caterpillar fungus and the other medicinal substances across lingual and cultural boundaries embodied an earlier belief in a general commensurability between Chinese and Europe medicine.62 The second letter also details Parennin’s effort to ascertain the geographical distribution of the caterpillar fungus. The relevant information he acquired, as also revealed in the previous chapter, includes its growth in Tibet and the frontier areas of Sichuan that bordered Tibet, as well as ‘Hou-quam’ (present-day Hunan and Hubei) as a possible area of procurement. He obtained some specimens of it via a friend in the latter area. Parennin’s story of this little organism echoes Steven J. Harris’s assessment of Jesuit overseas science, reflecting the ability of Jesuit missionaries to ‘become intimate with a wide range of cultures and to appropriate natural knowledge held by indigenous peoples, especially in the fields of materia medica and geography’.63 By means of land (via St. Petersburg) or sea routes, Parennin and other French Jesuits in eighteenth-century China were able to send letters, parcels, and (medicinal) plant specimens and seeds to France.64 The second letter additionally mentions some ‘Botanistes’ (botanists) and ‘Droguistes’ (druggists) who had journeyed from Paris to Guangzhou. But Parennin doubted they would achieve success in collecting ‘bonnes plantes’ (good plants), because they could not go to the southwestern provinces of Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou where he thought

62 Marta Hanson and Gianna Pomata have discussed this commensurability in their examination of the Polish Jesuit Michael Boym’s and others’ (c. 1612–1659) translation of Chinese medicinal formulas in the 1682 printed Specimen Medicinae Sinicae, see Marta Hanson and Gianna Pomata, ‘Medicinal Formulas and Experiential Knowledge in the Seventeenth-Century Epistemic Exchange between China and Europe’, Isis, 2017, 108(1): 1–25. 63 Steven J. Harris, ‘Jesuit Scientific Activity in the Overseas Missions, 1540–1773’, Isis, 2005, 96(1): 71–79, 71. 64 Marie-Pierre Dumoulin-Genest, ‘Note sur les Plantes Chinoises dans les Jardins Français du XVIIIe Siècle. De l’Expérimentation à la Diffusion’, Études Chinoises, 1992, 11(2): 141–158; Marie-Pierre Dumoulin-Genest, ‘Itinéraire des Plantes Chinoises Envoyées en France: Voie Maritime - Voie Terrestre Saint-Pétersbourg Ville de Confluence’, in Edward J. Malatesta, et al. (eds.), Echanges Culturels et Religieux Entre la Chine et l’Occident, San Francisco: Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, 1995, pp. 129–146; Marie-Pierre Dumoulin-Genest, ‘Les Plantes Chinoises en France au XVIIIe Siècle: Médiation et Transmission’, Journal d’Agriculture Traditionnelle et de Botanique Appliquée, 1997, 39(1): 27–47.

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such plants could only be found and for a long time there had been no resident missionaries. What the missionaries in China were able to do, as Parennin commented, was to make some translations of ‘l’Herbier Chinois’ (the Chinese Herbal). Still, he believed that his communication with the Royal Academy in Paris would inform the latter about what the missionaries lacked in China and what was useless in their research.65 Parennin’s opinion of the geography of ‘good plants’ was somewhat arbitrary. The French Jesuit Pierre Jartoux, for example, discovered the celebrated (arguably good) herb ginseng (Panax ginseng ) in a village near Korea in northeastern China in July 1709.66 His report and speculation about Canada as another potential production region led within a decade to the discovery and commercial exploitation of a similar species, that is, American ginseng.67 From 1711 to 1743, the French Jesuit historian Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, who had never been to China, acted as the editor of the Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Edifying and Curious Letters, Written from Foreign Missions, Vols. 9–26).68 Parennin’s above two letters appeared in print in the seventeenth volume of this work in 1726. A synopsis of the two letters also turned up in the 1726 Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (History of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris).69 Later, Du Halde quoted Parennin’s words on the geography, natural history, medicinal properties and other aspects 65 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 17), pp. 435–437. 66 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 10), Paris: Jean Barbou, 1713, pp. 159–185; Pierre Jartoux, ‘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 at Paris in Octavo, 1713’, Philosophical Transactions, 1713, 28(337): 237–247. 67 Christopher M. Parsons, ‘The Natural History of Colonial Science: Joseph-François Lafitau’s Discovery of Ginseng and Its Afterlives’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 2016, 73(1): 37–72; Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh, ‘Galenizing the New World: Joseph-François Lafitau’s ‘Galenization’ of Canadian Ginseng, CA 1716–1724’, Notes and Records, 2021, 75(1): 59–72. 68 For the editorial process of this voluminous work, see Sarah Barthélemy, ‘Français et Jésuite. Les Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses de Chine, Entreprise Éditoriale de la Mission Jésuite Française (1702–1783)’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 2019, 114(1–2): 224–264. 69 Anonymous, ‘Diverses Observations de Physique Generale’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1726, 1: 17–20.

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of the caterpillar fungus, with slight revisions, in his four-volume general history of China published in Paris in 1735.70 This history introduced the caterpillar fungus in the context of the art of medicine among the Chinese. It also included some selective translations of the famed Chinese herbal Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, finalised in 1578), which ‘were frequently studied and cited by Western scholars well into the nineteenth century’.71 Du Halde’s history enjoyed its popularity in Europe. The following year saw the emergence of a pirated edition of it in The Hague as well as its English translation in London.72 Not long afterwards, a rival English translation was published during the period 1738–1741; and the second and third editions of the previous English translation also came out in 1739 and 1741.73 This increasing publicity would doubtless advance the transmission of information about the caterpillar fungus among anglophones. In Parennin’s late years, the Chinese Rites Controversy among Catholic missionaries eventually triggered the Qing court’s ban on

70 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, et Physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, Enrichie des Cartes Générales et Particulieres de Ces Pays, de la Carte Générale & des Cartes Particulieres du Thibet, & de la Corée, & Ornée d’un Grand Nombre de Figures & de Vignettes Gravées en Taille-Douce (Tome 3), Paris: Chez P. G. Le Mercier, Imprimeur-Libraire, rue Saint Jacques, au Livre d’Or, 1735, pp. 490–491. Du Halde transliterated the Chinese name of the caterpillar fungus as ‘Hia Tsao Tong Tchong’, which also appeared as ‘Hiao Tsao Tong Tchong’ in the main text. 71 Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot, p. 144. 72 For the descriptions of the caterpillar fungus in these editions, see Jean-Baptiste Du

Halde, Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, et Physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, Enrichie des Cartes Générales et Particulieres de Ces Pays, de la Carte Générale & des Cartes Particulieres du Thibet, & de la Corée; & Ornée d’un Grand Nombre de Figures & de Vignettes Gravées en Taille-Douce (Tome 3), Haye: Henri Scheurleer, 1736, pp. 607–608; Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History of China (Vol. 4), Richard Brookes (trans.), London: John Watts, 1736, pp. 41–42. 73 For the description of the caterpillar fungus in the rival English translation, see JeanBaptiste Du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, Together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet: Containing the Geography and History (Natural as well as Civil) of Those Countries (Vol. 2), John Green and William Guthrie (trans.), London: T. Gardner in Bartholomew-Close, for Edward Cave, 1738–1741, p. 228.

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Catholicism.74 Though the persecution of missionaries rarely affected those having the useful secular expertise demanded in the Imperial Palace, many others in Beijing and elsewhere were banished to Guangzhou or Macao.75 On 21 July 1773, Pope Clement XIV decreed the suppression of the Society of Jesus, leading to the dissolution of the Jesuit China mission on 15 November 1775.76 Despite the restoration of the Society in 1814, the dispatch of Jesuits to China had been discontinued until 1841 when three new Jesuit missionaries, all French, reached the country.77 From the early eighteenth century to the 1840s, the overall situation for the Catholic mission in China deteriorated. This perhaps explains in part the interruption of subsequent transmission of the caterpillar fungus to France, which, in terms of the phenomenon itself, certainly was neither necessarily contingent nor necessarily inevitable.78 For sure, however, specimens of the caterpillar fungus left for the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris against the background of the Jesuits’

74 The Chinese Rites Controversy mainly revolved around the secular or religious nature of the Chinese rites dedicated to Confucius, ancestors and Heaven, see David E. Mungello, ‘An Introduction to the Chinese Rites Controversy’, in David E. Mungello (ed.), The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning, Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994, pp. 3– 14; Nicolas Standaert, ‘Chinese Voices in the Rites Controversy: The Role of Christian Communities’, in Ines G. Županov and Pierre Antoine Fabre (eds.), The Rites Controversies in the Early Modern World, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 50–67. 75 Yves Mathurin Marie Tréaudet de Querbeuf (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Nouvelle Édition, Tome 23), Paris: Chez J. G. Merigot le Jeune, Libraire, Quai des Augustins, au Coin de la Rue Pavée, 1781, pp. 440–443; Tang Kaijian, ‘Yongzheng Jiaonan Qijian Quzhu Chuanjiaoshi Zhi Guangzhou Shijian Shimo Kao’, Qingshi Yanjiu, 2014, (2): 1–33. 76 Henri Cordier, ‘La Suppression de la Compagnie de Jésus et la Mission de Peking’, T’oung Pao, 1916, 17(4–5): 561–623; Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, ‘The End of the Jesuit Mission in China’, in Jeffrey D. Burson and Jonathan Wright (eds.), The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 100–116. 77 Paul Rule, ‘Restoration or New Creation?: The Return of the Society of Jesus to China’, in Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan Wright (eds.), Jesuit Survival and Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 261–277. 78 However, a new batch of the caterpillar fungus, collected by Vicomte Brenier de

Montmorand, the Consul General of France in Shanghai, arrived in France again in the late nineteenth century. It was later displayed as a Chinese medicine at the meeting of the Société de Pharmacie de Paris (Society of Pharmacy of Paris) on 4 May 1870, see Louis Mialhe, ‘Séance de la Société de Pharmacie de Paris du 4 Mai 1870’, Journal de Pharmacie et de Chimie, 1870, 11: 489–491, 491.

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missionary enterprise and their exploration of local natural history and medicine in China. A variety of networked actors, including the Governor, Parennin himself, royal physicians, Parennin’s friend, the letters and specimens, transnational messengers, and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, all contributed to the dynamic production of an emergent and globalising knowledge of flora and fauna in the early eighteenth century.

Joining British Networks of Natural Knowledge In the last decades of the life of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), she addressed three letters to the Wanli emperor (r. 1572–1620) in China, with the intention of furthering England’s trading interests abroad. The letters were sent out in 1583, 1596 and 1602, respectively, but none finally reached the destination.79 In 1636, the English Captain John Weddell (c. 1583–c. 1640) led a fleet to the East under a royal decree on trade issued by King Charles I (r. 1625–1649). The following year he approached Macao in June and then Canton (Guangzhou, Guangdong) in August. Owing to the intervention of the Portuguese and communication issues between him and Chinese officials, Weddell did not establish a direct Sino-British trade relation, but just sailed back to England with cargoes of sugar and some other commodities in December.80 After the Ming-Qing transition, the English East India Company traded at times with the Chinese in Macao, Taiwan and Xiamen before the new regime formally lifted the ban on maritime trade in 1684.81 Later, the Qing court

79 Rayne Allinson, ‘The Virgin Queen and the Son of Heaven: Elizabeth I’s Letters to Wanli, Emperor of China’, in Carlo M. Bajetta et al. (eds.), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence: Letters, Rhetoric, and Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 209–228. 80 Hosea B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (Vol. 1), London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910, p. 51; Hosea B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China (Vol. 1), Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1926, pp. 14–30. For Weddell’s life, see John K. Laughton and Trevor Dickie, ‘John Weddell’, in Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Vol. 57), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 905–907. 81 Hosea B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China (Vol. 1), pp. 31–65; Huang Guosheng, Yapian Zhanzheng Qian De Dongnan Sisheng Haiguan, Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe, 2000, pp. 12–39, 125–141; Gang Zhao, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757 , Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013, pp. 57–98.

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issued an order to restrict Sino-European trade to Guangzhou in 1757.82 This initiated the Canton System of China’s foreign trade which, as Paul A. Van Dyke argues, collapsed in 1842 when the era of Treaty Ports began.83 The Company’s first ship to Guangzhou set out in 1689; over two decades later, the Company established a factory with a permanent staff in Guangzhou in 1715.84 Until the end of the Company’s monopoly in 1833, a total of 1 453 Company ships had berthed at the Whampoa port of Guangzhou.85 The English East India Company’s trading networks contributed to the collecting activities of the Scotsman James Cuninghame (c. 1665– 1709), the first European who brought a rich herbarium of plants he collected in China to England. He had sailed twice from England to China through a private trading ship and a Company’s ship, staying and collecting specimens of plant and animal species for natural history enthusiasts, such as James Petiver and Sir Hans Sloane on the islands of Xiamen (1698–1699) and Zhoushan (1700–1703), respectively, before his untimely death.86 He did not, however, described caterpillar fungus. During the period of the Canton System, the Company strengthened its

82 Qinggui et al., Qing Shilu (Book 15), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1807] 1986, pp. 1023–1024; Wang Hongbin, ‘Qianlong Huangdi Congwei Xialing Guanbi Jiang, Zhe, Min San Haiguan’, Shixue Yuekan, 2011, (6): 40–45. 83 Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700– 1845, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007, pp. xiv, 5–33. In 1842 the Qing court signed the Treaty of Nanking with the UK, which provided for the opening of five coastal treaty ports (Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai) to British trade, see Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, p. 108. 84 Hosea B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (Vol. 1), pp. 53, 64–65; Hosea B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China (Vol. 1), pp. 78–84. 85 Emily Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757 , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 139–143. 86 Charles E. Jarvis and Philip H. Oswald, ‘The Collecting Activities of James Cuning-

hame FRS on the Voyage of Tuscan to China (Amoy) Between 1697 and 1699’, Notes and Records, 2015, 69(2): 135–153; Charles Jarvis, ‘The Chinese Tallow Tree: From Asset in Asia to Curse in Carolina’, in Adriana Craciun and Simon Schaffer (eds.), The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 191–193.

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rule over parts of the Indian subcontinent87 ; the British empire undergoing the industrial revolution also shifted its centre of gravity from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean.88 George Macartney (1737– 1806) and William Pitt Amherst (1773–1857) led two British embassies to Beijing in 1793 and 1816, respectively. They did not accomplish their purpose of expanding Sino-British trade89 ; but on the other hand, the embassies to a certain extent promoted scientific communication between the two empires.90 Regardless that the Qing court thwarted British imperial ambitions, throughout the nineteenth century, Guangzhou and later Hong Kong functioned as salient international transhipment centres where people, objects and information from China, the UK and other countries converged. Trade facilitated the arrival of Western doctors, naturalists and missionaries in nineteenth-century China. There had been thirteen British doctors serving at the Canton factory of the English East India Company from 1775 to 1834. Among them, the surgeon Alexander Pearson (1780– 1874) successfully inoculated some Chinese in Macao with the Jennerian cowpox vaccine from Manila in 1805, and soon later promoted cowpox

87 Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern

Foundations of the British Empire in India, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; Huw V. Bowen, ‘Britain in the Indian Ocean Region and Beyond: Contours, Connections, and the Creation of a Global Maritime Empire’, in Huw V. Bowen et al. (eds.), Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 45–65. 88 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994, p. 123. 89 George Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (Vol. 2), London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1797, pp. 250– 346; Clarke Abel, Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, and of a Voyage to and from that Country, in the Years 1816 and 1817 , London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818, pp. 92–129. 90 John L. Cranmer-Byng and Trevor H. Levere, ‘A Case Study in Cultural Collision: Scientific Apparatus in the Macartney Embassy to China, 1793’, Annals of Science, 1981, 38(5): 503–525; Roberta E. Bivins, Acupuncture, Expertise and Cross-Cultural Medicine, New York: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 18–28, 41–45, 100–103; Simon Schaffer, ‘L’Inventaire de l’Astronome: Le Commerce d’Instruments Scientifiques au XVIIIe Siècle (Angleterre - Chine - Pacifique)’, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2005, 60(4): 791–815; Simon Schaffer, ‘Instruments as Cargo in the China Trade’, History of Science, 2006, 44(2): 217–246.

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vaccination, much safer than Chinese variolation, in Guangzhou.91 John Livingstone (?–1829), another Company surgeon, disclosed in 1820 that his missionary friend Robert Morrison (1782–1834) generously bought him a Chinese medical library of eight-hundred volumes and a complete assortment of Chinese medicines, so as to satisfy his interest in Chinese materia medica and its potential contribution to European pharmacopeia. Livingstone himself worked with a Chinese physician in Morrison’s dispensary in Macao and thus was able to observe Chinese medical practice. Both European and Chinese medicine achieved success in this institution. In the end, he concluded that ‘both they [i.e. the Chinese] and we have much useful information to impart to each other’.92 Elected a corresponding member of the Horticultural Society of London in 1817,93 Livingstone also occasionally discussed about Chinese plants and gardening and the like in the Society’s Transactions,94 and sent plant specimens and seeds to Britain.95 The Scottish botanist John C. Loudon (1783–1843) wrote that Livingstone had introduced the American Magnolia tree (Magnolia grandiflora) to Macao before 1830.96

91 Alexander Pearson, ‘Vaccination’, The Chinese Repository, 1833, 2(1): 35–41; Su Jing,

Xiyi Laihua Shiji, Taipei: Yuanhua Wenchuang Gufen Youxian Gongsi, 2019, pp. 1–46. 92 Eliza Morrison, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison (Vol. 2), London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839, pp. 20–24. 93 John Livingstone, ‘Account of a Method of Ripening Seeds in a Wet Season; With Some Notices of the Cultivation of Certain Vegetables and Plants in China’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, 1820, 3: 183–186. 94 For example, see John Livingstone, ‘Observations on the Difficulties which Have Existed in the Transportation of Plants from China to England, and Suggestions for Obviating Them’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, 1820, 3: 421–429; John Livingstone, ‘Account of the Method of Dwarfing Trees and Shrubs, as Practised by the Chinese, Including Their Plan of Propagation from Branches’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, 1822, 4: 224–231. 95 Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1898, pp. 266–268. 96 John C. Loudon, Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (Vol. 1), London: Printed for the Author and Sold by Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838, p. 177. However, the original article to which Loudon referred said nothing about Livingstone, but merely mentioned a ‘Mr Beale’ in Macao, see John Reeves, ‘American Magnolias in China’, The Gardener’s Magazine, 1835, 11: 437–438. Given that the article appeared in The Gardener’s Magazine, which was edited by Loudon, he probably abridged Reeves’s original manuscript and deleted the information about Livingstone.

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Pearson, Morrison and Livingstone were among the early and key unofficial actors that broadened Anglo-Chinese medical and natural-historical connections. John Reeves, another naturalist in the service of the English East India Company, was instrumental in disseminating the caterpillar fungus among Britons. The Caterpillar Fungus Between John Reeves and British Naturalists The entomological book The Natural History of Insects (1835), authored by both James Rennie (1787–1867) and John O. Westwood (1805– 1893), provides the reader with the following description: In China is found a geometrical larva, which has a long, rather thick stem growing from the head; this is about two inches and a quarter long, while the insect itself is not quite one inch and a half in length… The Chinese suppose, that this is a plant during the summer season; but that in winter its stalk dies, and the root becomes a worm… On opening the body of a larva, however, we find, that the root of the fungus entirely occupies the whole interior portion from the head to the opposite end.97

The development of entomology in Britain created a favourable environment for the influx of exotic insect specimens. John Westwood, an English entomologist and also a founding member of the Entomological Society of London,98 stated in 1838 that ‘it is true we continue to receive numerous boxes of insects from China, chiefly purchased in the shops of Canton’.99 Obviously, Westwood and/or Rennie had already seen and examined specimens of the caterpillar fungus before 1835. Though the origin of the specimens is not unveiled in the book, Westwood offered a clue at the meeting of the Entomological Society of London held on 1 March 1841 and chaired by the English naturalist William W. Saunders (1809–1879). At the meeting he exhibited 97 James Rennie and John O. Westwood, The Natural History of Insects (Vol. 2), London: John Murray, 1835, pp. 299–300. 98 Anonymous, ‘List of Members’, Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, 1836, 1: xxix–xxxiv; Yolanda Foote, ‘John Obadiah Westwood’, in Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Vol. 58), pp. 318– 319. 99 John O. Westwood, Natural History of the Insects of China, London: Robert Havell, 1838, p. ii.

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‘dried specimens of a Chinese larva, from the back of the neck of each of which a slender fungus, twice as long as the body of the insect, had been produced’. The caterpillar fungus named ‘Hea Tsaon Taong Chung’, as Westwood stressed, was ‘esteemed of great efficacy as a drug in China’. He spoke of a ‘Mr Reeves’, who had forwarded a number of specimens of the caterpillar fungus from Guangzhou to the Linnean Society of London. Probably based on Reeves’s information, he reported that the caterpillar fungus was brought to Guangzhou tied up in small bundles, ‘each containing about a dozen individuals’, and in Guangzhou, it was ‘better known under the name of Ting Ching Hea Tsam’.100 Here the two spellings actually denote the names of the caterpillar fungus in the local dialect, corresponding to xiacao dongchong (summer grass winter worm) and dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass). Considering Westwood was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London as early as 1 May 1827,101 the specimens in his possession could come from the Society or directly from Reeves who obtained membership in the same society ten years earlier. This Mr Reeves was the English naturalist John Reeves (1774–1856). Martyn Rix deems him to have made ‘the greatest contribution to the knowledge of Chinese plants and animals in the early nineteenth century’.102 In 1808, he entered the English East India Company, serving at the office of inspector of tea in England. Four years later, he was appointed assistant inspector at the Company’s factory in Guangzhou, where he subsequently became chief inspector of tea. Reeves remained in Guangzhou and Macao during the period 1812–1831, except two homeward journeys in 1816 and 1824.103 During his leisure time in China, Reeves devoted himself ‘to investigating the resources of the country, and to the pursuit of various branches of science, making it his principal object

100 William W. Saunders, ‘March 1st.-W. W. Saunders, Esq., F.L.S., President, in the Chair’, Journal of Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London, 1841, 1: 22–26. 101 Linnean Society of London, List of the Linnean Society of London, London: Linnean

Society of London, 1827, p. 12; Linnean Society of London, List of the Linnean Society of London, London: Linnean Society of London, 1855, p. 18. 102 Martyn Rix, The Golden Age of Botanical Art, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 161. 103 Fa-ti Fan, ‘John Reeves’, in Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Vol. 46), pp. 352–353.

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to procure specimens of the natural productions of the country, and especially those which promised to be either useful or ornamental, and to transmit them to England to such individuals or societies as appeared most likely to turn them to account’.104 On 15 April 1817, he was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London.105 While in Macao, Reeves and his son John Russell Reeves (1804–1877) and the chaplain George Harvey Vachell (1798–1834) even co-founded the ‘British Museum in China’ (1829–1834).106 Because Reeves retired in 1831 and then returned finally to England, his specimens of the caterpillar fungus must have been transmitted to Britain no later than this year. In Reeves’s time, there was a growing fascination with Chinese flora in the West. As the American missionary Samuel W. Williams (1812– 1884) commented in Guangzhou in June 1834, not long after his arrival in China, ‘the number of plants shipped to Europe and America yearly is considerable, and the demand is increasing’.107 Reeves himself was keen on sending specimens, seeds and living plants that he had collected in China to England, while entering into correspondence with British naturalists and societies such as Joseph Banks (1743–1820) and the Horticultural Society of London.108 In light of his substantial contribution to the introduction of Chinese plants, the English botanist John Lindley (1799–1865) named the genus Reevesia in honour of him in 1827.109 Moreover, at least from the late eighteenth century, the English East India Company set out to gather and purchase drawings of exotic species valuable to its pursuit of profits from economic and medicinal plants, and to provide support to collecting activities of naturalists and 104 Anonymous, ‘Obituary: John Reeves’, Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology, 1857, 1: xliii–xlv, xliv. 105 Linnean Society of London, List of the Linnean Society of London, London: Linnean Society of London, 1855, p. 15. 106 Rogério Miguel Puga, ‘The First Museum in China: The British Museum of Macao (1829–1834) and Its Contribution to Nineteenth-Century British Natural Science’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2012, 22(3–4): 575–586. 107 Samuel W. Williams, ‘Natural History of China’, The Chinese Repository, 1834, 3(2):

83–89, 86. 108 Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), pp. 256–263; Euan H. M. Cox, Plant-Hunting in China: A History of Botanical Exploration in China and the Tibetan Marches, London: Collins, 1945, pp. 52–59. 109 John Lindley, ‘An Account of a New Genus of Plants Called Reevesia’, The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art, 1827, 2: 109–112.

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its own staff in the Orient.110 The Horticultural Society of London also laid emphasis on such visual information about exotica. It had requested Reeves to send coloured drawings of ornamental Chinese plants for the purpose of selecting those appropriate for British gardens.111 Now it is found that Reeves had sent to England over two thousand natural history drawings made by Chinese artists under his supervision.112 Unfortunately, none of them illustrate the caterpillar fungus. Perhaps influenced by his friend John Livingstone, Reeves developed an interest in Chinese materia medica. Robert Morrison had consulted Reeves about botanical matters during his compilation of a dictionary of the Chinese language.113 Reeves drew up an ‘Index to the Pun-tsaou’ in May 1821, based on Li Shizhen’s Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1578). An extract from the Index was soon inserted into the entry for ‘Botany’ in the third part of Morrison’s dictionary

110 James Main, ‘Reminiscences of a Voyage to and from China, in the Years 1792-34 (To Be Continued)’, The Horticultural Register, 1836, 5: 62–67; Kwa Chong Guan, ‘Drawing Nature in the East Indies: Farming Farquhar’s Natural History Drawings’, in Laura Dozier (ed.), Natural History Drawings: The Complete William Farquhar Collection, Malay Peninsula 1803–1818, Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2010, pp. 316–327; Khyati Nagar, ‘Between Calcutta and Kew: The Divergent Circulation and Production of Hortus Bengalensis and Flora Indica’, in Bernard Lightman et al. (eds.), The Circulation of Knowledge Between Britain, India and China, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 153–178. 111 Letter from John Livingstone to Sir William Jackson Hooker, from Canton, 24 December 1823, Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors’ Correspondence 43/13; John Lindley, ‘Report Upon the New or Rare Plants Which Have Flowered in the Garden of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, 1826, 6: 62–100, 80; Felix E. Fritsch, ‘President’s Reception’, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 1953, 164(1): 42–47. 112 Peter J. P. Whitehead, ‘The Reeves Collection of Chinese Fish Drawings’, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical Series, 1969, 3(7): 191–233; Peter J. P. Whitehead and Phyllis I. Edwards, Chinese Natural History Drawings: Selected from the Reeves Collection in the British Museum, London: Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), 1974; Judith Magee, Chinese Art and the Reeves Collection, London: Natural History Museum, 2011; Kate Bailey, John Reeves: Pioneering Collector of Chinese Plants and Botanical Art, New York: ACC Art Books, 2019, pp. 11–42, 107–120. For an analysis of John Reeves’s scientific drawings of Chinese species, see Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 49–57. 113 Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Part 1, Vol. 1), Macao: The Honorable East India Company’s Press, 1815, p. 707; Robert Morrison, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Part 3), Macao: The Honorable East India Company’s Press, 1822, pp. vi, 172–174.

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published in 1822.114 This also evinces the botanical value of Chinese materia medica texts. In an article written in Guangzhou on 7 March 1826 and afterwards published in London in 1828, Reeves recounted that ‘the Chinese are almost as fond of physic as of food; hence, the consumption of drugs is almost incalculable, and the dealers therein are chiefly persons of some opulence.’ Besides, at the new year, he observed, the roots of the ‘Polypodium aureum, (or Scythian lamb)’ were sold ‘not only as objects of curiosity, from their singular appearance, but also for the golden down or hair upon them’, which was used by the Chinese as ‘a styptic medicine’, and of which an amount had been ‘taken home to England this reason for similar use there’.115 Evidently, both the singular appearance and medicinal property promoted the mobility of the roots within human society. Reeves’s concern with Chinese materia medica affected the circulation of the caterpillar fungus in Britain. On 1 March 1843, the English pharmacognosist Jonathan Pereira (1804–1853), an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, published an article about ‘summer-plant-winter-worm’ in the Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions in London.116 Intended for the members of the Pharmaceutical Society, it aimed to introduce the caterpillar fungus, ‘a remarkable and very interesting natural production’, and ‘highly valued in China as an article of the Materia Medica’. Pereira wrote, The Chinese appear to regard it as partaking at one season of the animal, at another of the vegetable nature. …Mr. Reeves, to whom I am indebted for some specimens of it, tells me that it is better known at Canton in the common dialect as Tong chong ha cho, which means winter-worm-summerplant. …Mr Reeves states that it is brought to Canton tied up in bundles, each containing about a dozen individuals. Each individual is about three

114 Robert Morrison, A also Anonymous, ‘Chinese Eliza Morrison, Memoirs of London: Longman, Orme,

Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Part 3), pp. 48–49. See Botany’, The Chinese Repository, 1833, 2(5): 225–230, 226; the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison (Vol. 2, Appendix 9), Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839, pp. 30–31.

115 John Reeves, ‘An Account of Some of the Articles of the Materia Medica Employed by the Chinese’, Transactions of the Medico-Botanical Society of London, 1828, 1(2): 24–27, 25. 116 For Pereira’s membership in the Society, see Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, ‘List of the Founders of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, 1841’, Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 1842, 1(7): 363–386, 363.

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inches (a little more or less) long. About one-half of it is a caterpillar of the usual cylindrical form, and having a light yellowish brown colour. …Mr. Doubleday, of the Zoological department of the British Museum, who has very carefully examined a very perfect larva, given to me by Mr. Reeves, is of opinion that the insect is a species of Agrotis.117

Reeves’s contact with Pereira exposes his awareness of its potential value for European materia medica. His paraphrase of its Chinese name conveyed its more popular designation in Guangzhou as well as the idea of its transformation. The description of its bundle form was nearly the same as that provided by Westwood two years previously, inferring Reeves’s provision of the information for Westwood. Thanks to Pereira’s careful illustrations of a single specimen and a bundle of the caterpillar fungus (tied with two strings), contemporary readers had a chance to have some visual knowledge of the actual appearance of this commodified natural production in early nineteenth-century China. However, it seems that Reeves did not try to trace, or remained uncertain about, its geographical origin. But we understand that he could not proceed beyond Guangzhou to, for example, Sichuan even if he wanted to, because EuroAmericans were prohibited from entering the interior of China until the signature of the Sino-British Treaty of Tientsin in 1858.118 Some of Reeves’s specimens of the caterpillar fungus also flowed to the British Museum, and then the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Kew Gardens). In 1843, the English mycologist Miles J. Berkeley (1803–1889), ‘the founding father of British mycology’,119 published his taxonomic study of some entomogenous species including the caterpillar fungus identified by himself as Sphaeria Sinensis. It was drawn and described as to Reeves’s collection of specimens preserved at the British Museum. He wrote, ‘It is sold in little bundles tied up with silk. I have

117 Jonathan Pereira, ‘Notice of a Chinese Article of the Materia Medica, Called

‘Summer-Plant-Winter-Worm’’, Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 1843, 2(9): 591–594. 118 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, p. 162. 119 Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, ‘British Mycologists: 1. M J Berkeley (1803–89)’, Mycologist, 1987, 1(3): 126.

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seen several of these’.120 However, he recorded its production area generally as China, suggesting again Reeves’s unfamiliarity with their specific origin. In 1879, Berkeley unconditionally presented Kew Gardens with his collection of over eleven thousand fungal species, of which 4,866 were types described by himself.121 Berkeley’s collection, now deposited in the Fungarium at Kew Gardens, contains five specimens of the caterpillar fungus, attached to an herbarium sheet, on which is printed the year 1879. The scientific networks invigorated by the caterpillar fungus were not confined to these polymaths and prestigious academic institutions and societies, but sometimes extended unexpectedly in Britain to lesser-known people. In 1850, a ‘Mr. Short’ of Stranmillis, near Belfast, published some remarks on ‘two plants’ which, in his mind, were perhaps ‘more extraordinary’ than the others in the vegetable world, and were both ‘equal objects of wonder’. One of them was the caterpillar fungus. He said, ‘the specimen I possess of this rare fungus was brought to England by Mr. Reeves’. But Short did not derive the specimen directly from Reeves. At the end of the article, he wrote, ‘I cannot in justice omit to mention that I am indebted to ... the Rev. Gerard Smith, Ashton Hays, Cheshire, for my Chinese specimen’.122 The ‘Rev. Gerard Smith’ here was the English cleric Gerard E. Smith (1804–1881), who was perpetual curate of Ashton Hayes, Cheshire from 1849 to 1853 and vicar of Osmaston by Ashbourne, Derbyshire during the period 1854–1871. He was also obsessed with botany, collecting specimens and conducting botanical research in his spare time. His herbarium passed to University College,

120 Miles J. Berkeley, ‘On Some Entomogenous Sphaeriae’, The London Journal of Botany, 1843, 2: 205–211. 121 George Massee, ‘Redescriptions of Berkeley’s Types of Fungi’, The Journal of the

Linnean Society: Botany, 1896, 31(218): 462–525, 462. See also Joseph D. Hooker, Report on the Progress and Condition of the Royal Gardens at Kew, during the Year 1878, Kew: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1878, p. 52; George Massee, ‘Miles Joseph Berkeley, 1803–1889’, in Francis W. Oliver (ed.), Makers of British Botany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913, pp. 225–232, 231–232. 122 Short, ‘Remarks on Sphaeria robertsi and S. sinensis ’, The Floricultural Cabinet,

and Florists’ Magazine, 1850, 18: 200–202. In the article ‘Mr. Short’ mentioned his extensive collection from New Zealand. He was perhaps Thomas K. Short (fl. 1830s), who ‘collected plants in New Zealand from 1836’, see Ray Desmond, Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists, London: The Natural History Museum, 1994, p. 625.

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Nottingham (present-day the University of Nottingham) on his death.123 How Smith obtained the caterpillar fungus from Reeves remains unclear. But a connection between them was established as early as 1829. In this year, Smith published a taxonomic treatise on some Phaenogamous plants in South Kent, to which Reeves, then in Macao, was a subscriber.124 Reeves is most remembered for his contribution to Britain’s acquisition of Chinese plants both in the nineteenth century and today. In contrast, his service with the English East India Company seems to be dispensable in its tea trade. The caterpillar fungus and many other species that passed through his hands and came to Britain also had little direct relationship with the Company’s own collections of the natural history of Asia. However, Reeves could not establish his fame without the Company’s trading networks that facilitated the exchange of people, materials and information between Britain and China. Also, as Fa-ti Fan elaborates, his efforts in natural history benefited much from the assistance of Chinese locals.125 Fan’s anatomy of scientific imperialism enriches our understanding of British research and the expansion of British imperialism after the Sino-British Opium War (1839–1842).126 But during the two decades since Reeves embarked for Guangzhou, legal entry of Western naturalists into the vast interior of China had been impossible, and the presence of British imperialism in this country had been minimal. This remained the case when Peter Parker (1804–1888), the American medical missionary who ‘opened the gates of China with a lancet, when European cannon could not heave a single bar’, arrived in Guangzhou three years after Reeve’s final return to England.127 Not only did Reeves’s collection of the caterpillar fungus hardly exemplify scientific imperialism, but the discourse of scientific imperialism also did not yet ripple throughout early nineteenth-century Chinese society.

123 For Gerard E. Smith’s life, herbarium and botanical research, see George S. Boulger and Alexander Goldbloom, ‘Gerard Edwards Smith’, in Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Vol. 51), p. 148. 124 Gerard E. Smith, A Catalogue of Rare or Remarkable Phaenogamous Plants, Collected in South Kent, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1829, p. 5. 125 Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China, pp. 21–25, 28–30, 34–38, 43–57. 126 Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China, pp. 4, 83–89. 127 Elias R. Beadle, The Sacredness of the Medical Profession, Philadelphia: James S.

Claxton, 1865, p. 22.

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From Guangzhou to London, the caterpillar fungus travelled a long distance across the sea. It remained attractive and circulated between different people and places, becoming part of the flourishing material and visual culture of Victorian natural history sciences. The transmission of this small organism did not directly involve economic concerns on Reeves’s part, but indicated his awareness of specific practices in the discipline of natural history and their relation to medical value. Before Reeves’s specimens entered British society, some Chinese knowledge about the caterpillar fungus had already been available to Britons. Westwood, for example, invoked the relevant record in the 1736 English translation of Du Halde’s general history of China at the aforementioned meeting of the Entomological Society of London. Pereira referred to the 1735 original French edition of Du Halde’s history in his above article. Based on what he had seen and heard in Guangzhou, Reeves was then able to add new information to contemporary perceptions of what they considered to be a wondrous object in Europe. In addition to Reeves, there were also other people who brought the caterpillar fungus to the UK, such as James E. Home and Henry Frewin. Samples from James E. Home and Henry Frewin and Medical Concern The Englishman James Everard Home (1798–1853) joined the royal navy in 1810 and was promoted to captain on 5 December 1837. He collected specimens and was engaged in the Sino-British Opium War during the period 1841–1846, when he was captain of the North Star.128 He once presented the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England with ‘a series of specimens of Sphaeria Sinensis, Berk., tied up in a bundle with silk, as sold in the market of Canton’. Probably based on Home’s information, the museum remarked that ‘they are used medicinally in cases where the powers of the system have been reduced by over-exertion or

128 For Home’s life and marine career, see Anonymous, ‘Obituary: Capt. Sir Jas. Everard Home, Bart.’, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, 1854, 41(4): 423; Eric J. Godley, ‘Captain Sir James Everard Home (1798–1853)’, New Zealand Botanical Society Newsletter, 2010, (100): 16–19. For his collection of specimens, see Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), p. 362; William H. Flower, Catalogue of the Specimens Illustrating the Osteology and Dentition of Vertebrated Animals, Recent and Extinct, Contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (Part 1), London: Printed for the College, 1879, p. 205.

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sickness’.129 The focus of this remark on the caterpillar fungus is squarely on medicine. Home’s sending the specimens to the College also hints at his realisation of its potential medicinal value. Decades later, in 1886, ‘E. B. Ivatts’ of Dublin read a paper about the effects of the caterpillar fungus on his own body before the Dublin Philosophical Club. His motive for the self-experiment originated in his reading of an unattributed article on the organism in about 1877. He was attracted by ‘its semi-animal and semi-vegetable reputation’, and ‘had conjectured a theory that most, if not all, parasitic plants might also have a special affinity for the male or female generative system’. Therefore, through a friend he got into correspondence with a ‘Mr. Frewin’ residing in Swatow (Shantou, Guangdong), China, the latter then obtained and sent Ivatts some specimens of the caterpillar fungus.130 The word ‘parasitic’ indicates an epistemic understanding apparently different from the transformation theory prevalent in Chinese society. Ivatts was a practitioner of homoeopathy. One of his articles on this branch of medicine recorded his address, that is, ‘21, Phibsborough Road, Dublin’.131 This address is the same as that which Harold Edmund Ivatts provided to the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland, where he was a student in 1889,132 but admitted as a fellow in 1897.133 According to some archival information, Harold Edmund Ivatts’s father was Edmund Bachelor Ivatts (1834–1911).134 The latter was a railway

129 Royal College of Surgeons of England, Catalogue of the Contents of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (Part 1), London: Taylor and Francis, 1860, p. 23. Cf. Royal College of Surgeons of England, Synopsis of the Contents of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, London: Taylor and Francis, 1865, p. 7. 130 E. B. Ivatts, ‘Torrubia Sinensis’, The New York Medical Times, 1886, 14(5): 137– 138. A synopsis of this paper was published elsewhere, see Anonymous, ‘Clinic of the Month: Torrubia Sinensis’, The Practitioner, 1886, 37(10): 290. 131 E. B. Ivatts, ‘Homoeopathy and the Potato Disease’, The Homoeopathic World, 1874, 9(101): 125–126. 132 Anonymous, ‘Fellows and Associates Recently Elected’, Proceedings of the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland, 1889, (3): 69–71, 71. In this list, his address information is ‘21, Phibsboro[ugh] Road, Dublin’. 133 Richard B. Pilcher, The Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland: Register of Fellows, Associates, and Students, London: The Institute, 1905, p. 30. 134 For the relationship between Edmund Bachelor Ivatts and Harold Edmund Ivatts, see The National Archives, Kew, England, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1901, Class RG 13, Piece 481, Folio 150, Page 34. For Edmund Bachelor Ivatts’s death and

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station manager, also author of a 1885 book on railway management.135 He should be the same person as ‘E. B. Ivatts’. The ‘Mr Frewin’ was the Englishman Henry Frewin (1830–?). A 1908 book on the treaty ports of China describes his expatriate life as follows: CAPTAIN HY. FREWIN is the oldest foreign resident in Swatow, and a pioneer of trade in this district. His career has been varied and interesting. Born in London, in 1830, he went to sea at the age of fourteen, and for many years was trading in the Indian and Chinese seas. As gunner of the frigate Sesostrio, he saw a good deal of fighting in the Burmese War, of 1852-53, and was awarded the silver medal. Now he carries on the business of a marine surveyor, living a quiet and retired life. He is a vegetarian, and to this fact, coupled with his simple habits, he attributes his longevity. He is married, and has one son and one daughter.136

Some late nineteenth-century directories of China record Frewin’s identity as a pilot or marine surveyor in Shantou,137 or a merchant owning the company ‘Frewin & Co’ in that city.138 One of his business partners was the British merchant Edward Herton who was reportedly living in Shantou in 1881 and then owning a 415-ton British sailing vessel registered at the port of Hong Kong.139 In a letter written in Shantou on

marriage, see General Register Office, England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837–1915, London, England: General Register Office, Page 375; General Register Office, England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837–1915, London, England: General Register Office, 1862, Vol. 1a, Page 242; 1904, Vol. 1a, Page 2. 135 Edmund B. Ivatts, Railway Management at Stations, London: McCorquodale & Co., 1885. 136 Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and

Other Treaty Ports of China, London: Lloyd’s Greater Britain Publishing Company, 1908, pp. 835–836. 137 The Daily Press Office, The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, & the Philippines, Hong Kong: The ‘Daily Press’ Office, 1869, p. 199; The Daily Press Office, The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, & the Philippines, Hong Kong: The ‘Daily Press’ Office, 1875, p. 97. 138 The China Mail Office, The China Directory for 1874, Hong Kong: The ‘China Mail’ Office, 1874, p. 33. 139 Letter from William Ashmore to John Murdock, 1 May 1875, Missionary Correspondence, Box 45, Folder William Ashmore, Sr., 1875–1879, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia, United States; Robert Jackson, The Mercantile Navy List and Maritime Directory for 1881, London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1881, p. 370.

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3 June 1905, Frewin said, ‘I am seventy-five years old, and have been in Swatow since 1858, working as a pilot until 1899, when I gave up that business’.140 As is well known, the Treaties of Tientsin (1858) for the first time officially provided for the opening of Chaozhou (including Shantou) to American, British and French trade,141 which afterwards became a reality on 1 January 1860.142 During Frewin’s residence in Shantou, he clearly still maintained commercial or private connections with his friends and others outside China, which ensured Ivatts’s acquiring the caterpillar fungus. However, unlike Reeves or Home whose specimens of the caterpillar fungus were not purposefully procured as to targeted instructions, Frewin collected such specimens at the request of Ivatts. When the caterpillar fungus came into Ivatts’s notice, John Reeves had been deceased for about two decades. Even though Ivatts knew the whereabouts of Reeves’s specimens, he would be unable to obtain them from herbaria for private consumption. His self-experiment, reasonably, also entailed fresh specimens from China. So Ivatts resorted to calling on Frewin’s local expertise to procure a batch. Meanwhile, he must have provided Frewin with some information essential for identifying this organism, especially possibly in consideration of Frewin’s unrevealed interest in natural history. In this story of transnational collaboration, the unattributed article speaking for the animal-vegetable composite nature aroused Ivatts’s curiosity about its putative medical properties, and initiated a series of actions that mobilised different human and nonhuman agents including Ivatts, Frewin, the intermediary between them, and Ivatts’s message to Frewin. More basically, the original impetus for the specimens’ voyage from China to Dublin emanated from the organism’s own properties. As will be seen below, such properties remained fascinating to ‘the last of the great plant hunters’.

140 Edwin H. Wilbur, ‘From the Workers: From China’, The Medical Missionary, 1905,

14(10): 334. 141 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, pp. 163, 329, 411. 142 Lewis Cass, Letter of the Secretary of State, Transmitting a Statement of the Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Nations, for the Year Ending September 30, 1859, Washington: Thomas H. Ford, 1860, p. 380.

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Frank Kingdon Ward’s Specimens and Cambridge The English naturalist Frank Kingdon Ward (1885–1958) was regarded by Charles Lyte as ‘the last of the great plant hunters’.143 His interest in exotic flora had already been kindled by the German botanist Andreas F. W. Schimper’s book on plant geography before his admission into the University of Cambridge in 1904. Unfortunately, he had to drop out of university in 1906, because his father Harry M. Ward (1854–1906) died from diabetes, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. On the recommendation of a family friend, Herbert A. Giles (1845–1935), Professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge, Ward obtained the position of junior master at the Shanghai Public School. He sailed for Shanghai in March 1907 with an ardent desire to see the Asian tropics. But he finally resigned from this post in 1910 due to its uncongeniality with his botanical aspirations as well as his dislike of teaching.144 Before the end of his teaching career in Shanghai, Ward, through an introduction from the English Zoologist Michael R. O. Thomas (1858–1929) of the British Museum (Natural History), joined the American zoologist Malcolm P. Anderson’s (1879–1919) specimen hunting expedition to western China during the period from September 1909 to September 1910.145 After that, Ward sent his own collection of plant specimens to the botanist Albert C. Seward (1863–1941) at the University of Cambridge. The subsequent identification of the specimens involved taxonomists from both the University of Cambridge and Kew Gardens.146 Ward set out on his first independent plant hunting expedition at the beginning of 1911. The Liverpool merchant Arthur K. Bulley (1861– 1942) planned to employ a new specialist plant hunter to collect Chinese alpine plants for his nursery business. The Scottish botanist Isaac B. 143 This is the subtitle of Charles Lyte’s biography of Ward, see Charles Lyte, Frank Kingdon-Ward: The Last of the Great Plant Hunters, London: John Murray, 1989. 144 Frank Kingdon Ward, Pilgrimage for Plants, London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1960, pp. 20–22, 25–26; Charles Lyte, Frank Kingdon-Ward, pp. 10–15. 145 Frank Kingdon Ward, Pilgrimage for Plants, p. 25. See also Michael R. O. Thomas, ‘The Duke of Bedford’s Zoological Exploration of Eastern Asia.—XIV. On Mammals from Southern Shen-si, Central China’, Proceedings of the General Meetings for Scientific Business of the Zoological Society of London, 1911, 81(3), pp. 687–695; Frank Kingdon Ward, Modern Exploration, London: Jonathan Cape, 1945, p. 58. 146 Robert S. Adamson, ‘Plants from Western China’, The Journal of Botany: British and Foreign, 1913, 51: 129–131.

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Balfour (1853–1922), a friend of Ward’s father, then linked Ward with Bulley.147 In addition to Bulley, who had funded a few of his plant hunting expeditions since 1911,148 Ward had also gradually established extensive networks with different individuals, societies and institutions, such as the Royal Geographical Society,149 the Linnean Society of London,150 the India Office and the Keeper of Botany at the British Museum (Natural History).151 When the first lot of seeds of about 250 species collected by Ward on the Tibetan Plateau in 1924 and 1925 reached England, they were ‘distributed and planted immediately’; when the last lot arrived, ‘all the seeds had been planted at Kew, at Edinburgh, at Wisley and in a hundred other gardens in Britain’. Moreover, ‘seeds were also promptly dispatched to New Zealand, South and East Africa, South and North America, and elsewhere’.152 Ward first saw and collected the caterpillar fungus during his third expedition. In February 1913, he left England for eastern Tibet, passing through Burma and then Yunnan. En route, he collected botanical specimens, gathered plants for Bulley and investigated geography for the Royal Geographical Society.153 Five months later, in July, an unusual species around his tent in the ‘Ka-kar-po’ mountain in Yunnan came to his attention:

147 Frank Kingdon Ward, Pilgrimage for Plants, pp. 26–27. See also Euan H. M.

Cox, Plant-Hunting in China, pp. 158–159, 181; Charles Lyte, Frank Kingdon-Ward, pp. 26–28. 148 Charles Lyte, Frank Kingdon-Ward, pp. 44–45, 61. 149 George N. Curzon and Lewis Beaumont, ‘Meetings of the Royal Geographical

Society, Session 1911–1912’, The Geographical Journal, 1912, 39(1): 84–85. 150 Ward was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1930, see ‘Certificates of Recommendation’, 1930, Archival Ref. No.: CR/143, preserved at the Library of the Linnean Society of London. See also Sidney F. Harmer, ‘Proceedings of the Meeting Held on 23rd January 1930’, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 1931, 142(1): 31–35. 151 Frank Kingdon Ward, ‘The Himalaya East of the Tsangpo’, The Geographical Journal, 1934, 84(5): 369–394. 152 Frank Kingdon Ward, The Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges, London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1926, p. 185. 153 Frank Kingdon Ward, Pilgrimage for Plants, pp. 13–14; Charles Lyte, Frank Kingdon-Ward, pp. 44–48.

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Of all the plants which clothed the spur round my tent, none was more curious than a small fungus which grew up from the short alpine turf like a black finger; for each was the living tombstone of a caterpillar, out of whose decayed body it grew. The Chinese, who set a high value on it as medicine (for which excellent reason my ‘boy’ spent all his spare time lying on his belly looking for these little curiosities to sell for a fabulous sum on his return to Talifu), call it chung-ts‘ao, that is, ‘insect plant’. Naturally, they believe that the insect turns into the plant—an idea not so uncouth as it sounds. Anyway it is a most grotesque growth, the little black fungus finger above and the shrivelled brown skin, retaining the shape of the dead caterpillar, below. It well deserves its honoured place in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, entry into which is obtained only by intrinsic merit in the realm of natural curiosity.154

It is noteworthy that Ward was not the earliest British naturalist to have seen the caterpillar fungus in western China. The English naturalist Antwerp E. Pratt (1852–1924) had travelled with the task of collecting insect specimens for the entomologist John Henry Leech (1862–1900) in interior China during the period 1887–1890.155 During his second stay in the port city of Yichang, commencing at the beginning of October 1887, he witnessed the export of medicines brought down from Sichuan and Tibet. One of them was ‘Tchöng-Tsäo’, ‘a most curious plant, growing at a great elevation in the eastern part of Tibet’. Further, he described that ‘it has a single spathe-shaped leaf about three inches long, and the root bears the most extraordinary resemblance to a caterpillar, all the segments, legs, eyes, &c. being faithfully represented’.156 On 16 May 1890, he came across nearly fifty Chinese collectors of medicine in ‘Yachow-kun’, Sichuan. Among the medicines collected by them, there was 154 Frank Kingdon Ward, The Mystery Rivers of Tibet, London: Seeley Service & Co., 1923, p. 81. 155 John H. Leech, ‘On a Collection of Lepidoptera from Kiukiang’, Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London, 1889, 37(1): 99–148; Albert Günther, ‘On a Collection of Reptiles from China’, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1888, 1(3): 165–172. Pratt’s tombstone is located in Teddington Cemetery, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Greater London, England. It shows that he was born on 6 March 1852, and died on 4 January 1924. See also James Joicey and George Talbot, ‘Editorial’, The Bulletin of the Hill Museum, 1924, 1(3): i–ii. 156 Antwerp E. Pratt, To the Snows of Tibet Through China, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1892, p. 17.

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‘Tchöng-Tsäo (Sphaeria sinensis )’, ‘a plant the root of which bears an almost exact resemblance to the body of a caterpillar’.157 Obviously, Pratt did not realise the ‘root’ had already been treated a true caterpillar in England for decades; otherwise, he would have probably sent one more insect species to Leech for identification. Besides, the English naturalist Ernest H. Wilson (1876–1930) had also noticed a high-altitude medicine market in Maogong, Sichuan during his trip from Chengdu to Dajianlu in 1908. The market was famous for ‘‘Ch’ung-tsao’ (a caterpillar infested with the fungus Cordyceps sinensis )’ and three other medicines collected and sold by ‘the tribesfolk’.158 Yet no evidence indicates that both naturalists had gathered the caterpillar fungus and deposited in the UK or elsewhere. Ward not only described the caterpillar fungus, but also sent some specimens of it to the English mycologist Frederick T. Brooks (1882–1952) of the University of Cambridge, whose position of Demonstrator in Botany then was initially arranged by Ward’s father in 1905.159 Brooks later informed Ward that it was a fungal species of the genus ‘Cordiceps ’.160 Through such active networks of specimens and knowledge that linked Ward in Yunnan and Brooks in Cambridge, the natural world in European perceptions of Asia was being rediscovered. The Chinese boy, also Ward’s attendant, surnamed Li,161 brought the caterpillar fungus to Ward’s notice. He interacted with both medicine dealers in ‘Tali-fu’ (Dali, Yunnan) and Ward as a foreign naturalist. Even though his scientific mind

157 Antwerp E. Pratt, To the Snows of Tibet Through China, London: Longmans, Green,

and Co., 1892, pp. 187–188. In this book, there is an illustration of ‘Tchong-Tsao (Sphaeria sinensis )’ between the end of the main text and the appendices. 158 Ernest H. Wilson, A Naturalist in Western China (Vol. 1), London: Methuen &

Co., 1913, p. 186. 159 Joseph R. Tanner, The Historical Register of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917, p. 139; Walter C. Moore, ‘Frederick Tom Brooks, 1882–1952’, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1953, 8(22): 340–354. 160 Frank Kingdon Ward, The Mystery Rivers of Tibet, p. 81. ‘Cordiceps ’ was a seldom used synonym of ‘Cordyceps ’, see, for example, Miles J. Berkeley, Outlines of British Fungology, London: Lovell Reeve, 1860, p. 66. ‘Cordiceps ’ was an irregular spelling of ‘Cordyceps ’ and is absent from the entry for ‘Cordyceps’ in the recent authoritative dictionary of fungi, see Paul M. Kirk et al. (eds.), Ainsworth & Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi, Wallingford: CAB International, 2008, p. 171. 161 Frank Kingdon Ward, The Mystery Rivers of Tibet, pp. 35, 135–136.

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actually rejected the idea about transformation, Ward was still allured by this ‘insect plant’ and became its new agent. His curiosity and uncertainty about its taxonomic identity launched another transnational voyage of the caterpillar fungus. At that time Burma, through which Ward entered and exited Yunnan, was then under British imperial rule.162 His routes through British Burma facilitated his expedition as well as the transmission of his specimens of the ‘insect plant’ and other species. These travels of the caterpillar fungus to the UK bore no direct relation to the Christian mission but occurred against the backdrop of British economic and imperial expansion in the Far East. However, what drove the caterpillar fungus to travel was not grounded in its economic value, but originated from its characteristics that could make potential naturalhistorical or pharmaceutical contributions. This little border-crossing curiosity energised the scientific networks that functioned in connection with those of the commercial and political actors in the emergence of British ‘informal empire’ in late Qing China.163 While those based at the important loci such as Kew Gardens were at the forefront of the new natural sciences, their activities had far-reaching impacts across the world, serving to assert various forms of cultural dominance over areas outside of British political control. This observation is key to how we understand the subsequent growth and influence of modern science. While the presence of the caterpillar fungus in British society was increasing, Russian acquisition of it did not lag far behind.

Encountering Medical Concerns of Russians Russia’s direct official communication with the court of China can be traced back to 1618. In response to Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov’s (r. 1613–1645) request, the military Governor of Tobolsk sent an embassy to seek out a land route to China and to collect first-hand information about the country in this year. The Siberian Cossack Ivashko 162 Godfrey E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma, 1824–1942, London: Faber and Faber, 1946; Stephen L. Keck, British Burma in the New Century, 1895–1918, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 163 Fa-ti Fan, ‘Victorian Naturalists in China: Science and Informal Empire’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 2003, 36(1): 1–26; Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China, pp. 61–90; Fa-ti Fan, ‘Science in Cultural Borderlands: Methodological Reflections on the Study of Science, European Imperialism, and Cultural Encounter’, East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 2007, 1(2): 213–231.

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Petlin, leader of the embassy, set out from Tomsk on 9 May 1618, then crossed Mongolia and reached Beijing on 1 September. Petlin and his fellows did not see the Wanli (r. 1572–1620) Emperor, but received the hospitality of his representative. After four days’ residence in Beijing, Petlin set off on his journey back, with Wanli’s rescript authorising Russia to trade with China. He left the territory of China on 10 October 1618 and returned to Tomsk on 16 May of the following year.164 His debriefings on this mission chart China’s foreign trade and, in particular, a variety of vegetables, medicinal substances (e.g. rhubarb) and other products on the market in Zhangjiakou.165 Broadly speaking, Petlin’s mission was associated with Russia’s efforts to fend off European (especially English) attempts to traverse its territory to trade with China and India, and meanwhile to develop its own (trade) connections with China.166 Before this mission, the Russian expansion into Siberia had facilitated Russia’s acquaintance with China from Inner Asian intermediaries.167 However, there seemed to be no causation between Petlin and the first formal embassy under the leadership of Feodor Isakovich Baykov who, on 3 March 1656, arrived in Beijing, for the purpose of establishing diplomatic and trading relationships with China.168 164 Natalya F. Demidova and Vladimir S. Miasnikov, Pervye Russkie Diplomaty v Kitae, Moscow: Nauka, 1966, pp. 1–26. See also Vincent Chen, Sino-Russian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966, pp. 35–39; Rosemary K. I. Quested, Sino-Russian Relations: A Short History, Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, p. 28. For the content of the rescript, see Nikolay N. Bantysh-Kamensky and Vasily M. Florinsky (eds.), Diplomatiˇceskoe Sobranie del Meždu Rossijskim i Kitajskim Gosudarstvami s 1619 po 1792 God, Kazan: Tipografija Imperatorskogo Universiteta, 1882, pp. 6–7. 165 Natalya F. Demidova and Vladimir S. Miasnikov, Pervye Russkie Diplomaty v Kitae, Moscow: Nauka, 1966, pp. 41–64. 166 Christopher I. Trusevich, Posol’skie i Torgovye Snošenija Rossii s Kitaem, Moscow: Tipografija T. Malinskogo, 1882, p. 3; Mark Mancall, Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 41–44; Nancy S. Kollmann, The Russian Empire, 1450–1801, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 36. 167 Mikhail I. Sladkovskij, Istorija Torgovo-Èkonomiˇceskih Otnošenij Narodov Rossii s Kitaem (do 1917 g.), Moscow: Izdatelstvo ‘Nauka’, 1974, pp. 43–69; James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony, 1581–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 28–38; Gregory Afinogenov, Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020, pp. 25–30. 168 Natalya F. Demidova and Vladimir S. Miasnikov, Pervye Russkie Diplomaty v Kitae, Moscow: Nauka, 1966, pp. 87–96; Mark Mancall, Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 44–53.

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Due to factors such as languages, rites and the regime transition in China, however, a bilateral trade relation between Russia and China was not formalised until the conclusion of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689.169 Later, the Treaty of Kyakhta, signed in 1727, confined Sino-Russian border trade sites to Nerchinsk and Kyakhta.170 Kyakhta had more geographical advantages and thus played a pivotal role in this trade till the mid-nineteenth century.171 The sinologist Nikita Y. Bichurin (1777–1853) had compiled a Russian textbook on Chinese grammar for a school recently established in that town for SinoRussian trade. It contains two bilingual glossaries of Russian and Chinese goods traded in Kyakhta, including a few herbs and vegetables from China.172 Previously, Bichurin led the ninth Orthodox mission to Beijing via Kyakhta, arriving at the destination in 17 January 1808, and staying there until 15 May 1821.173 The gradual opening of China to European maritime trade was a major reason for the decline of Kyakhta in Sino-Russian trade. Still, Kyakhta remained for a later period to serve as a key station for travellers. On his first scientific expedition to Inner Asia, the Russian explorer Nikolay M. Przhevalsky (1839–1888) set off 169 Mikhail I. Sladkovskij, Istorija Torgovo-Èkonomiˇceskih Otnošenij Narodov Rossii s Kitaem (do 1917 g.), Moscow: Izdatelstvo ‘Nauka’, 1974, pp. 102–115; Mikhail I. Sladkovskii, History of Economic Relations Between Russia and China, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008, pp. 15–18. For the content of the treaty, see Dmitry Alekseevich Peshchurov (ed.), Sbornik Dogovorov Rossii s Kitaem, 1689–1881 gg., St. Petersburg: Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1889, pp. 1–10. See also Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, pp. 3–7. 170 Dmitry Alekseevich Peshchurov (ed.), Sbornik Dogovorov Rossii s Kitaem, 1689–1881 gg., St. Petersburg: Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1889, pp. 50–83. See also Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States, pp. 8–16. 171 Mikhail I. Sladkovskij, Istorija Torgovo-Èkonomiˇceskih Otnošenij Narodov Rossii s Kitaem (do 1917 g.), Moscow: Izdatelstvo ‘Nauka’, 1974, pp. 149–176; Eva-Maria Stolberg, ‘Interracial Outposts in Siberia: Nerchinsk, Kiakhta, and the Russo-Chinese Trade in the Seventeenth/Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of Early Modern History, 2000, 4(3–4): 322–336; Michal Wanner, ‘Russian-Chinese Trade in Kyakhta—Trade Development and Volume Indicators, 1727–1861’, Prague Papers on the History of International Relations, 2015, 1: 17–27. 172 Nikita Y. Bichurin, Kitajskaja Grammatika, St. Petersburg: Litografija Gemil’jana, 1838, pp. 220–237. 173 Petr V. Denisov, Zhizn’ Monakha Iakinfa Bichurina, Cheboksary: Chuvashskoe Knizhnoe Izdatel’stvo, 1997, pp. 40–57.

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from Kyakhta in November 1870, heading to Beijing to obtain a travel passport at first.174 The Russian Orthodox missions to Beijing also often passed through there.175 These missions had religious, diplomatic and cultural significance for both countries.176 Normally the transmission of Eastern Orthodox Christianity to China dates back to 1685. At the end of this year, the Qing court, following its capture of Albazin on the Amur River, granted some Albazinian Russians and their priest Maxim Leontev, who chose to reside in Beijing, a temple for their religious activities. It was later transformed into an Orthodox church and then became a base of Russian Orthodox missions in China.177 After the death of Leontev, the Qing court approved the Russian request for sending a new Orthodox priest. Consequently, the first Russian Orthodox mission departed for Beijing in 1715, while the fifth article of the Treaty of Kyakhta stipulated the subsequent dispatch of Orthodox clergy. By 1917 when the Bolshevik Revolution broke out, there had been eighteen Russian Orthodox missions to Beijing.178 It was partly against this religious backdrop that the caterpillar fungus flowed to the Russian empire. Particularly, at the request of the Kangxi emperor who recognised European medicine and desired its practitioners, Thomas Garvine of

174 Nikolay M. Przhevalsky, Mongolija i Strana Tangutov (Vol. 1), St. Petersburg: Izdanie Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, 1875, pp. 1–4; Nikolay M. Przhevalsky, Mongolia, the Tangut Country, and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet (Vol. 1), Edward D. Morgan (trans.), London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1876, pp. 1–6. 175 Vasily V. Chasovnikov, Kratkaja Istorija Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Missii v Kitae, Beijing: Tipografija Uspenskago Monastyrja, 1916, pp. 153–154. 176 Albert Parry, ‘Russian (Greek Orthodox) Missionaries in China, 1689–1917; Their Cultural, Political, and Economic Role’, Pacific Historical Review, 1940, 9(4): 401–424; Xiao Yuqiu, ‘Shilun Eguo Dongzhengjiao Zhu Beijing Chuanjiaotuan Wenhua Yu Waijiao Huodong’, Shijie Lishi, 2005, (6): 66–75. 177 Nikolaj Adoratskij, Pravoslavnaja Missija v Kitae za 200 Let ee Suscestvovanija, Kazan: Tipografija Imperatorskogo Universiteta, 1887, pp. 8, 32–39; Vasily V. Chasovnikov, Kratkaja Istorija Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Missii v Kitae, Beijing: Tipografija Uspenskago Monastyrja, 1916, pp. 14–18. 178 Vasily V. Chasovnikov, Kratkaja Istorija Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Missii v Kitae, Beijing: Tipografija Uspenskago Monastyrja, 1916, pp. 17–194; Eric Widmer, The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking During the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1976, pp. 9–51; Rolf G. Tiedemann (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in China (Vol. 2), Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 193–211.

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Ayrshire, a Scottish surgeon working in St. Petersburg, was dispatched in company with a Russian trade mission to China. Garvine left St. Petersburg in September 1715 and arrived in Beijing in November 1716. More than half a year later, he departed from Beijing in June 1717 and reached Moscow in February 1718; after a two-month stay in Moscow, he returned home via St. Petersburg.179 Thereafter seven doctors from Russia set out for Beijing during the period 1719–1857; the last five of them went in company with Orthodox missions.180 They not only practised their own medicine in Beijing, but also studied Chinese medicine and collected Chinese medical texts and medicinal plants.181 Alexander A. Tatarinov (1814–1886), who ranked among the most eminent of these doctors, brought the caterpillar fungus to Russia. Alexander A. Tatarinov Brings the Caterpillar Fungus to St. Petersburg Alexander A. Tatarinov was born in the village of Stolypino, Penza, on 23 November 1814. He enrolled at the Imperial Medico-Surgical Academy, St. Petersburg on 22 September 1834 and graduated as a doctor on 10 July 1839. Eight days later, he began his service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and meanwhile enlisted as a candidate in the twelfth Orthodox mission to China. The Academy, his alma mater, selected him as doctor 179 Renate Burgess, ‘Thomas Garvine—Ayrshire Surgeon Active in Russia and China’, Medical History, 1975, 19(1): 91–94. A Qing official archival document, dated 29 May 1717, details the royal recognition of Garvine’s healing art, and the royal approval of his request to return home due to the loss of acclimatisation and his missing mother, see Lifanyuan, ‘Lifanyuan Zou Pai Tulichen Song Eluosi Dafu Gaerfen Huiguo Zhe’, in Guan Xiaolian and Qu Liusheng (eds.), Kangxi Chao Manwen Zhupi Zouzhe Quanyi, Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, [1717] 1996, p. 1185. 180 Petr Emel’janovich Skachkov, ‘Russkie Vrachi pri Rossijskoj Duhovnoj Missii v

Pekine’, Sovetskoe Kitaevedenie, 1958, (4): 136–148; Guo Wenshen, ‘Eguo Dongzhengjiao Zhu Beijing Chuanjiaoshi Tuan Yisheng Kaolue’, Shijie Zongjiao Wenhua, 2012, (6): 36–40. 181 Li Min and Leonid P. Churilov, ‘Kitajskie Rukopisi i Staropechatnye Knigi po Medicine v Fondah Vostochnogo Otdela Nauchnoj Biblioteki Imeni M. Gor’kogo SanktPeterburgskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta’, Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 2014, 11(2): 259–277; Xiao Yuqiu, ‘17–19 Shiji Eguoren Dui Zhongyi De Yanjiu’, Shixue Yuekan, 2014, (3): 60–67; Li Min, ‘Eluosi Sheng Bidebao Daxue Dongfangxi Zhongyi Hanji Cangshu’, Guoji Hanxue, 2016, (1): 190–197; Li Min et al., ‘Tradicionnye Kitajskie Lekarstvennye Sredstva i Rossijskaja Medicina: Proshloe, Nastojashee i Budushee’, Klinicheskaja Patofiziologija, 2019, 25(4): 3–25.

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to the mission, instructing him to care for the members of the mission, study Chinese medicine and collect specimens of natural history.182 The mission passed through Kyakhta on 21 July 1840, and, more than two months later, arrived in Beijing on 4 October. It remained stationed in the capital until 2 May 1850.183 During the nearly ten years in Beijing, Tatarinov mastered the Chinese language, dug into the Chinese art of healing and sustained an interest in natural history. His articles about violent death and numbing medication in Chinese medicine came out in Russia.184 His essay on Chinese acumoxa earned him the title of Doctor of Medicine on 8 February 1847.185 Some plant specimens he collected locally also flowed to Friedrich Ernst Ludwig von Fischer (1782–1854), director of the Imperial Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg.186 Under his supervision, a Chinese artist produced coloured drawings of 452 wild plants in Beijing, with their Chinese names in Chinese characters added. The drawings

182 Conference of the Academy, ‘Instruction to Alexander A. Tatarinov, related to the Medical Part’, St Petersburg: Library of the S. M. Kirov Military Medical Academy, originally dated 4 May 1839, copied 9 January 1842, Fond I. N.22. For the latest archival research on Tatarinov’s life, see Mark G. Guchninsky, ‘Novye Svedenija dlja Biografii Vypusknika IMHA 1839 Goda Doktora Mediciny, Sinologa, Diplomata A. A. Tatarinova (1814–1886)’, in Ramil U. Habriev et al. (eds.), Stochikovskie Chtenija, Moscow: Nacional’nyj Nauchno-Issledovatel’skij Institut Obshestvennogo Zdorov’ja Imeni N. A. Semaško, 2019, pp. 106–110. 183 Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), p. 559; Vasily V. Chasovnikov, Kratkaja Istorija Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Missii v Kitae, Beijing: Tipografija Uspenskago Monastyrja, 1916, pp. 112–122. 184 Alexander A. Tatarinov, ‘Sposoby Issledovanija Prichin Nasil’stvennoj Smerti, Upotrebljaemye Kitajcami’, Otechestvennye Zapiski, 1847, 50(8): 22–41, 117–142; Alexander A. Tatarinov, ‘Kitajskie Sredstva, Proizvodjashchie Beschuvstvie’, Farmacevticheskij Vestnik, 1850, 3(8): 511–512. 185 Mark G. Guchninsky, ‘Novye Svedenija dlja Biografii Vypusknika IMHA 1839 Goda Doktora Mediciny, Sinologa, Diplomata A. A. Tatarinova (1814–1886)’, in Ramil U. Habriev et al. (eds.), Stochikovskie Chtenija, Moscow: Nacional’nyj NauchnoIssledovatel’skij Institut Obˆsestvennogo Zdorov’ja Imeni N. A. Semaško, 2019, pp. 106– 110, 108. 186 Emil Bretschneider, ‘On Some Old Collections of Chinese Plants’, The Journal of Botany: British and Foreign, 1894, 32(382): 292–299, 297–298; Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), p. 559.

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were ‘executed from nature’, showing ‘the botanical details of each specimen’.187 This also illustrates Tatarinov’s training in modern botany. While returning to Russia, Tatarinov brought back collections of botanical and entomological specimens and Chinese drugs. These collections were later examined by scientists including Paul F. Horaninov (1796–1865) of the Imperial Medico-Surgical Academy, Otto Bremer, William Grey and Carl J. Maximovich.188 In 1857 the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences purchased an herbarium of 566 species of plants from Beijing, a collection of Chinese drugs bought in Beijing, three Chinese botanical works and a set of 450 botanical drawings, all from Tatarinov, at the price of 800 roubles.189 Tatarinov’s studying Chinese medicine corresponded to the instruction he received in Russia, or, more generally, the Russian quest for useful information about China. However, Tatarinov himself also developed an interest in Chinese medicine. Most of his publications dealt with Chinese medical ideas, treatments and materia medica. And most of such publications appeared after his service with the mission; three of them had even been translated into German.190 These research efforts

187 Emil Bretschneider, ‘Botanicon Sinicum: Notes on Chinese Botany from Native and Western Sources’, Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1881, 16(1): 18–230, 123. 188 Otto Bremer and William Grey, Beiträge zur Schmetterlings-Fauna des Noerdlichen China’s, St. Petersburg: Publisher Unknown, 1853, p. 4; Carl J. Maximovich, Primitiae Florae Amurensis, St. Petersburg: Buchdruckerei der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1859, pp. 112, 120, 138, 144, 177, 179, 180–182, 199, 202, 208, 211, 217–218, 220, 236, 246, 289, 299, 306, 316, 327–328, 329–330, 335, 341, 470, 472–474; Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), pp. 559–560. 189 Franz J. Ruprecht, ‘Zur Geschichte der Museen der Kaiserl. Akademie der

Wissenschaften’, Bulletin de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, 1864, 7(4): 1–10, 5, 9. 190 Alexander A. Tatarinov, ‘Über den Zustand der Medizin in China’, Medizinische Zeitung Rußlands, 1853, (6, 8–13): 45–47, 63–64, 70–72, 77–80, 85–86, 93–95, 101–103; Alexander A. Tatarinov, ‘Die Chinesische Medizin’, in Carl Abel and F. A. Mecklenburg (eds.), Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking, über China (Band 2), Berlin: F. Heinicke, 1858, pp. 421–464; Alexander A. Tatarinov, ‘Bemerkungen über die Anwendung Schmerzstillender Mittel bei den Operationen und über die Hydropathie in China’, in Carl Abel and F. A. Mecklenburg (eds.), Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking, über China (Band 2), pp. 465–473. For a list of Tatarinov’s publications, see Hartmut Walravens, ‘Alexander Tatarinov (1817–1886)

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did not conflict with his natural history activities. Readers of nineteenthcentury European works on medical botany may find that a plant could be (re)discovered as a new cure, and identification of medicinal plants could assist the procurement of remedies. As early as the late seventeenth century, according to Harold Cook, an English physician acknowledged a certain identity of interest between physicians and naturalists, stating that both a physician and a naturalist were well versed in the knowledge of nature and natural things.191 In Russia, the study of plants almost remained a part of materia medica until the mid-eighteenth century when Carl Linnaeus’s system of botany and its pupils began to thrive in the European part of Russia.192 The transmission of Tatarinov’s collections and writings displays again the scientific networks across Eurasia, especially the ties between the actors in such networks and their home countries. Of all Tatarinov’s publications, one uniquely bears a Latin title, that is, the Catalogus Medicamentorum Sinensium: quae Pekini Comparanda et Determinanda Curavit. This catalogue, sixty-five pages long, and printed in St. Petersburg on 13 November 1856, records the caterpillar fungus and 496 other Chinese medicinal substances. Most of them are medicinal plants. Each of the entries in the catalogue provides a Chinese name in Chinese characters, its Russian and Latin transliterations, and scientific identification of the substance. In the preface to the catalogue, Tatarinov stated that during his ten years’ residence in Beijing, he tried to acquaint himself with the principles of Chinese medicine and natural history. When he returned to St. Petersburg in 1851, many dried Chinese plants and drugs also accompanied him there. Professor Horaninov examined his specimens and identified most of the drugs listed in the catalogue. Tatarinov mainly intended the catalogue to assist in the determination of - Russischer Arzt und Sinologe, Eine Biobibliographische Skizze’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 1980, 64(4): 392–396. 191 Harold Cook, ‘Physick and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Peter Barker and Roger Ariew (eds.), Revolution and Continuity: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Early Modern Science, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1991, pp. 63–80, 72–73. 192 Margery Rowell, ‘Russian Medical Botany Before the Time of Peter the Great’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 1978, 62(4): 339–358; Dmitry D. Sokoloff et al., ‘The History of Botany in Moscow and Russia in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries in the Context of the Linnaean Collection at Moscow University (MW)’, Huntia: A Journal of Botanical History, 2002, 11(2): 129–191.

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hieroglyphic names of Chinese drugs preserved in European museums. Moreover, he also expected it occasionally to support the Chinese natives wishing to examine such museum collections.193 The presence of the caterpillar fungus in this catalogue not only indicates the use of this object as a drug in Beijing in the mid-nineteenth century, but also demonstrates its transmission to St. Petersburg and related research in a European taxonomic context. In the catalogue, the Chinese name for the caterpillar fungus is recorded as ‘xiacao dongchong ’ and is transliterated as ‘sja cao dun'' chun'' ’ in Russian and ‘sia-cao-dun-czun’ in Latin. The fungus is identified as ‘Sphaeria chinensis ’; additionally, the ‘larva’ is considered to be ‘Agrotidis’.194 The specific epithet ‘chinensis’ appeared no later than 1753, when Carl Linnaeus adopted it to denote species in China in his consequential work Species Plantarum.195 Literally, it stands synonymous with ‘sinensis’ in the binomial Sphaeria sinensis proposed by Miles J. Berkeley in 1843. Besides, ‘Agrotidis’ may be reminiscent of the aforementioned ‘Mr. Doubleday’ of British Museum, who treated the larva as an Agrotis species. Despite the popularity of Latin it began to decline in Europe from the early eighteenth century,196 but this language sustains its vitality at least in the binomial nomenclature which, first systemically applied by Carl Linnaeus, assigns each species a unique scientific name in Latin.197 The importance of Latin to taxonomists perhaps explains why Tatarinov gave a Latin title to the catalogue and wrote a preface in Latin. Of course, the Latin scientific names also presented as attempts to situate Chinese species within the Linnaean binomial system of classification. After the publication of the catalogue, Horaninov sent a copy of it to the English botanist and pharmacognosist Daniel Hanbury (1825–1875), 193 Alexander A. Tatarinov, Catalogus Medicamentorum Sinensium, quae Pekini Comparanda et Determinanda Curavit, Petropoli: Publisher Unknown, 1856, p. iii. 194 Alexander A. Tatarinov, Catalogus Medicamentorum Sinensium, quae Pekini Comparanda et Determinanda Curavit, p. 45. 195 Caroli Linnaei, Species Plantarum (Tomus 1), Holmiae: Impensis Laurentii Salvii, 1753, p. 16. 196 David Butterfield, ‘Neo-Latin’, in James Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011, pp. 303–318, 314. 197 John L. Heller, ‘The Early History of Binomial Nomenclature’, Huntia, 1964, 1: 33–70; Gordon M. Reid, ‘Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778): His Life, Philosophy and Science and Its Relationship to Modern Biology and Medicine’, Taxon, 2009, 58(1): 18–31.

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who had previously also received and examined many Chinese drugs collected through his friends in China. Hanbury understood the Latin title and preface well, and then introduced the catalogue in a London pharmaceutical journal in 1860.198 Somewhat unexpectedly, however, Hanbury did not mention the caterpillar fungus in his own publications on Chinese materia medica. More broadly considered, Tatarinov’s collecting the caterpillar fungus and other specimens of Chinese materia medica did not merely grew out of his personal interest. His fellow alumnus Porfirij E. Kirilov (1801– c. 1864), who accompanied the eleventh Orthodox mission to Beijing and stayed there during the period 1830–1841, also brought back collections of plants and drugs from China.199 In 1848 Tsar Nicholas I Pavlovich (r. 1825–1855) commanded the Imperial Medico-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg to test Kirilov’s collection of Chinese drugs and report the results. The Academy accordingly established a committee consisting of Kirilov himself and three other experts. They selected thirty-eight drugs (not including the caterpillar fungus) for clinical trials, but finally obtained unsatisfactory results due to loss of effectiveness during the long period of storage. Then, through those dispatched to relay the twelfth Orthodox mission in Beijing, the committee entrusted Tatarinov with the task of buying new stocks of a total of eighty-nine fresh drugs. After Tatarinov’s arrival in St. Petersburg, the committee actually received ninety-seven drugs, including the caterpillar fungus. On 10 September 1851, the experts administered seventeen of the fresh drugs to twelve Russian patients. Additionally, they performed pharmacognostic and chemical analyses of the seventeen and another drugs, all of which were medicinal plants. These analyses and clinical trials, however, did not involve the caterpillar fungus. Remarkably, each time the patients were often treated with one single drug, rather than a compound medicine preferred in Chinese medical practice. Their illnesses were also often described in scientific medical terminology. In the end, the experts concluded that some of the Chinese drugs did have certain therapeutic effects, but 198 Daniel Hanbury, ‘Notes on Chinese Materia Medica (To Be Continued)’, Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 1860, 2(1): 15–18. See also Daniel Hanbury, Notes on Chinese Materia Medica, London: John E. Taylor, 1862, p. 4. 199 Emil Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (Vol. 1), pp. 346–352. See also Petr Emel’janovich Skachkov, Ocherki Istorii Russkogo Kitaevedenija, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1977, pp. 145–147.

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none of them was irreplaceable by European remedies.200 Such critical assessments of Chinese drugs continued thereafter. Nearly two decades later, Emil Bretschneider (1833–1901), a prominent Russian historian of Chinese flora and also physician to the Russian Legation in Beijing from 1866 to 1884, remarked that ‘our materia medica can learn nothing more from the Pên-ts‘ao. It is undeniable, that the Chinese possess several very good medicaments, especially stomachics, amara &c., but we possess either the same plants, or others of a similar action’.201 About one decade after he left China, Bretschneider held a slightly different but still similar view: ‘In our opinion European science can learn nothing in this department of Chinese knowledge [i.e., Chinese pharmacy and therapeutics]. We do not mean to deny that there are in China vegetable drugs possessed of powerful medical virtues, but the Chinese Faculty in employing them in their practice of medicine are seldom guided by experience, but rather by fanciful suppositions regarding the virtues of drugs’.202 On the whole, these words manifest his sense of the superiority of European materia medica over its Chinese counterpart in terms of the range of available remedies as well as medication methodologies. His distinction between ‘experience’ and ‘fanciful suppositions’ epitomises the epistemic change in Europe from the seventeenth century, that is, the passion for facts overrode that of reasoning

200 Imperatorskoj Mediko-Hirurgicheskoj Akademii, ‘Otchet o Dejstvii Kitajskih Lekarstv, Ispytannom, po Vysochajshemu Poveleniju, Osobennoj Komissiej, Sostavlennoj pri Imperatorskoj Mediko-Hirurgicheskoj Akademii’, Voenno-Medicinskij Zhurnal, 1852, 60: 21–46; Li Min and Leonid P. Churilov, ‘Pervoe Nauchno-Klinicheskoe Ispytanie Kitajskih Lekarstv v Rossii v Seredine XIX Veka’, Zdorov’e - Osnova Chelovecheskogo Potenciala: Problemy i Puti ih Reshenija, 2013, 8(2): 624–634; Li Min, ‘19 Shiji Shangbanye Eguo Dui Zhongyao De Shiyanxing Yanjiu’, Jinan Shixue, 2013, 8: 423–436. The caterpillar fungus is the only drug whose weight and price are not indicated in Tatarinov’s recording of the purchased drugs, possibly because Tatarinov probably bought it without using the money from the Academy, and/or the caterpillar fungus was not originally listed as one of the eighty-nine drugs demanded by the committee. 201 Emil Bretschneider, ‘The Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works (To Be Continued)’, The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, 1870, 3(6): 157–163, 159. Bretschneider temporarily left China in 1871 and 1878. He retired in 1884, and then went to St. Petersburg, and finally died there. For his life and writings, see Henri Cordier, ‘Le Docteur Emile Vasilievitch Bretschneider’, T’oung Pao, 1901, 2(3): 192–197. 202 Emil Bretschneider, ‘Botanicon Sinicum: Notes on Chinese Botany from Native and Western Sources’, Journal of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1895, 29(1): 1–623, 7–8.

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and speculation, which occasioned new trends that valued experience, experiment and observation in European natural history and medicine.203 Whether the drugs should be used as they were in Chinese medicine so as to exert their expected effects is debatable. But obviously the experts in St. Petersburg did not discover new potencies or therapeutic chemical ingredients even though they studied the drugs in the context of European science and medicine. Nonetheless, their research demonstrates the intention of the Tsar and some Russians to seek effective medicinal substances from China. Under the joint influence of these enthusiasts and his own concerns with Chinese materia medica and European museums, Tatarinov became a new agent of the caterpillar fungus. As he treated Chinese medicine as having been stagnant since antiquity,204 he would also have been desirous to see Chinese drugs being investigated by new European sciences in St. Petersburg. Scientific and medical considerations impelled the transmission of the caterpillar fungus to St. Petersburg, which, as we shall see, also had deep roots in commercial, religious and political connections between China and a Russia that was seeking to expand its role in East Asia. This corresponded with Tatarinov’s disparate roles as a physician, a specimen hunter, a sinologist, an interpreter, a diplomat and a Foreign Office member in the 1840s–1860s.205 The Russians did not carry out research into the medical effects of the caterpillar fungus. Its subsequent transmission to Russia, so far as known, also did not happen before the end of the nineteenth century, probably in part due to the influence of the Russian ideas about the replaceability of Chinese drugs and the overall backwardness of Chinese medication.

203 Harold J. Cook, ‘The New Philosophy in the Low Countries’, in Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (eds.), The Scientific Revolution in National Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 115–149; Harold J. Cook, ‘Physicians and Natural History’, in Nick Jardine et al. (eds.), Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 91–105; Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550– 1720, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 105–167; Richard W. Serjeantson, ‘Proof and Persuasion’, in Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science (Vol. 3), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 132–175. 204 Alexander A. Tatarinov, ‘Die Chinesische Medizin’, pp. 423–425. 205 Petr E. Skaˇckov, ‘Russische Ärzte bei der Russischen Geistlichen Mission in Peking’,

Central Asiatic Journal, 2002, 46(2): 269–290, 281–285.

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Spreading Eastward to Japan Japan is a close neighbour of China in terms of the geography of East Asia. There is a distance of merely 463 nautical miles between the ports of Nagasaki and Shanghai.206 Some historians speculate that some thousands of people sent out by Ying Zheng (r. 221–210 BC), the first emperor of China, to the sea to seek celestial beings and elixirs actually settled in Japan.207 The earliest official contact between Japan and China dates back to 57 AD, when the Wa state of Na sent a tribute mission to the Han court. The Guangwu emperor (r. 25–57 AD)then presented a gold seal to the ruler of Na.208 Nearly two centuries later, in 240 AD, some envoys from the kingdom of Wei in China were dispatched with an imperial rescript, a gold seal and some gifts to Queen Himiko of Wa, marking the first Chinese embassy to Japan.209 Such personnel exchanges occurred dozens of times from the first through the ninth centuries.210 This period also witnessed unprecedented cultural, economic and political ties between a reunited China under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and a Japan first mostly unified as a state in the fifth century.211 Particularly, in 623 the Japanese physician Enichi and some others, who all had studied in China before, 206 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Distances Between Ports, Bethesda: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 2001, p. 102. 207 Sima Qian, Shiji, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 91 BC] 1959, pp. 247, 263, 3086; Sugimura Shinji, ‘Jo Fuku Wataribi Setsuwa no Seiritsu: Gensetsu Toshite no Jo Fuku Kara Miru Nichi Ch¯u Bunka K¯ory¯u no Kiseki’, Ajia Bunka K¯ ory¯ u Kenky¯ u, 2007, (2): 323–337; He Guowei and Yang Xuefeng, ‘Jiu Qindai Hanghai Zaochuan Jishu Xi Xu Fu Dongdu Zhiju’, Haijiaoshi Yanjiu, 2018, (2): 86–95; Teng Jun, The History of Sino-Japanese Cultural Exchange, London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 6–13. 208 Fan Ye, Hou Hanshu, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [445] 1965, p. 2821; Joshua A.

Fogel, Japanese Historiography and the Gold Seal of 57 C.E.: Relic, Text, Object, Fake, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 15–53. 209 Chen Shou, Sanguo Zhi, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 285] 1959, p. 857; Jonathan E. Kidder, Himiko and Japan’s Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007, p. 17. 210 Zhenping Wang, Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period, Honolulu: University of Hawai ‘i Press, 2005, pp. 229–232. 211 Wang Xiaoqiu and Oba ¯ Osamu, Zhongri Wenhua Jiaoliu Shi Daxi: Lishi Juan, Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1996, pp. 101–132; Charlotte von Verschuer, ‘Japan’s Foreign Relations 600 to 1200 A.D.: A Translation from Zenrin Kokuh¯ oki’, Monumenta Nipponica, 1999, 54(1): 1–39; Douglas S. Fuqua, The Japanese Missions to Tang China and Maritime Exchange in East Asia, 7th–9th Centuries (PhD Dissertation),

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suggested the empress Suiko often send people to the Great Tang, which he considered to be a marvellous country with a well-established legal system. Seven years later, the emperor Jomei sent Enichi and Inugami no Mitasuki westward, initiating the dispatch of Japanese embassies to Tang China.212 The geographical proximity between Japan and China redounded to the sharing of ideas, texts, merchandise, arts, technology and religious beliefs. Objects of natural history and materia medica also circulated across the sea. The Chinese Buddhist monk Jianzhen (688– 763), skilled in distinguishing authentic from counterfeit drugs by his nose,213 had brought with him some medicinal aromatics such as musk, benzoin, myrobalan fruits and peppercorns on his second unsuccessful voyage from Yangzhou to Japan at the beginning of 744.214 The Sh¯os¯oin repository of the Todaiji temple in Nara, Japan, now still holds dozens of medicinal substances originally presented by the dowager empress Komyo in 756.215 Some of them, such as ginseng, myrobalan fruits, peppercorns and musk, were also employed for medical purposes in China and recorded in Tang medical texts, for example, a work of materia medica officially compiled in the mid-seventh century.216 Prior to the nineteenth century, Japan at large maintained much closer and more multidimensional relationships with China than with European

Manoa: University of Hawaii, 2004; Kawauchi Haruto, Higashi Ajia K¯ ory¯ ushi no Naka no Kent¯ oshi, Tokyo: Ky¯uko Shoin, 2013. 212 Toneri Shinn¯ ¯ no Yasumaro, Nihon Shoki, Tokyo: Keizai Zasshisha, [720] o and O 1897, pp. 391, 403. 213 Sugano no Mamichi et al., Shoku Nihon Ki, Tokyo: Keizai Zasshisha, [797] 1897, p. 411. 214 Mahito Genkai, Tang Da Heshang Dongzheng Zhuan, Wang Xiangrong (ed.),

Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [779] 2000, p. 47. 215 Asahina Yasuhiko (ed.), Sh¯ os¯ oin Yakubutsu, Osaka: Shokubutsu Bunken Kank¯o Kai, 1955; Kunaich¯o Sh¯os¯oinjimusho (ed.), Zusetsu Sh¯ os¯ oin Yakubutsu, Tokyo: Ch¯uo ¯ K¯oron Shinsha, 2000. 216 Su Jing et al., Tang Xinxiu Bencao, Shang Zhijun (ed.), Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [659] 1981, pp. 160–161, 358–359, 363–364.

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countries.217 Sino-Japanese interactions, long-standing and extensive, can hardly be simplified as part of the China-centred tributary system.218 The transmission of Chinese natural knowledge to Japan, to give one illustration, was vividly embodied in Fujiwara no Sukeyo’s (847–898) catalogue of Chinese texts in Japan, which recorded about one thousand and five hundred Chinese texts on agriculture, medicine and thirtyeight other subjects.219 Roughly one century later, the Japanese physician Tamba Yasuyori (912–995), a descendent of a Chinese immigrant, integrated copious information from about two hundred Chinese texts into his Ishinp¯ o (Prescriptions from the Heart of Medicine), which survives as one of the earliest extant Japanese medical works.220 The inflow of Chinese texts persisted to the Edo era (1603–1868), when import trade in such texts and innovations in local Kampo medicine with origins in Chinese medicine became even more brisk.221 Mayanagi Makoto finds that during the period 1601–1870, there was a total of 1,917 records of 804 separate Chinese medical texts transmitted to Japan; and 314 of the texts were republished in Japan, and were reprinted 680 times in total. Whether the original Chinese texts or the Japanese reprints, most of these sources dealt with materia medica and prescriptions. Partly due to the suppression of indigenous medicine in the Meiji era (1868–1912), many Japanese medical texts and Japanese reprints and transcripts of Chinese

217 Marius B. Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992; Shogo Suzuki, Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 140–176; Kiri Paramore, Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 16–117. 218 Peter C. Perdue, ‘The Tenacious Tributary System’, Journal of Contemporary China,

2015, 24(96): 1002–1014. 219 Fujiwara no Sukeyo, Nihonkoku Genzaisho Mokuroku Akirak¯ o (Ribenguo Jianzaishu Mulu Xiangkao), Sun Meng (ed.), Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, [c. 891] 2015, pp. 3–24, 1218–1223, 1614–1821. 220 Tamba Yasuyori, Ishinp¯ o, Masamune Atsuo (ed.), Tokyo: Nihon Koten Zensh¯u Kank¯okai, [984] 1935; Tamba Yasuyori, Ishinp¯ o, Gao Wenzhu et al. (eds.), Beijing: Huaxia Chubanshe, [984] 2011, pp. 1252–1261. 221 For the book trade between Edo Japan and Qing China, see Oba ¯ Osamu, Edo Jidai Ni Okeru Ch¯ ugoku Bunka Juy¯ o No Kenky¯ u, Kyoto: D¯ oh¯osha Shuppan, 1984, pp. 3–108. For the history of Kampo medicine, see Takeo Nagayo, History of Japanese Medicine in the Edo Era: Its Social and Cultural Backgrounds, Nagoya: The University of Nagoya Press, 1991; Kosoto Hiroshi, Kanp¯ o no Rekishi, Tokyo: Taish¯ukan Shoten, 2014.

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medical texts also flowed to China.222 Not surprisingly, some Chinese knowledge of the caterpillar fungus reached Japan through texts.223 The complementarity of commodities and the material and medical culture shared by the Chinese and the Japanese interplayed with SinoJapanese trade. The trade data for most of the Edo era, which have been scrupulously collated by Nagazumi Yoko, quantify the substantial amount and range of bilaterally transacted products including medicinal substances.224 Along with the travelling merchant ships and products, some Chinese physicians had landed in Nagasaki, practising medicine locally and entered into direct communication with Japanese practitioners and others.225 Whether the Chinese physicians had used the caterpillar fungus in Japan remains unclear. But, indeed, this fascinating organism had sailed to Japan no later than the early eighteenth century. Carl P. Thunberg Encounters ‘Totsu Kaso’ Between 1770 and 1779, the Swedish naturalist Carl P. Thunberg (1743–1828), one of Carl Linnaeus’s foremost disciples, travelled to the Netherlands and France, and, later on, embarked on a scientific expedition to South Africa and Asia. On 20 June 1775 he left Batavia for Japan, approaching Dejima island in the harbour of Nagasaki on 13 August of the year. Over fifteen months later, Thunberg left Dejima on 23 November 1776. After a short stay on the ship Stavenisse, anchored off 222 Mayanagi Makoto, ‘Riben Jianghu Shiqi Chuanru De Zhongguo Yishu Jiqi Heke’, Liang Yongxuan (trans.), Zhongguo Keji Shiliao, 2002, 23(3): 232–254. See also Mayanagi Makoto and Tomobe Kazuhiro, ‘Ch¯ugoku Iseki Torai Nendai S¯ omokuroku (Edo Ki)’, Nihon Kenky¯ u, 1992, 7: 151–183; Mayanagi Makoto, ‘Edoki Torai no Ch¯ ugoku Isho to Sono Wakoku’, in Yamada Keiji and Kuriyama Shigehisa (eds.), Rekishi no Naka no Yamai to Igaku, Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1997, pp. 301–340; Mayanagi Makoto, ‘Zhong Ri Han Yue Guyiji Shuju De Bijiao Yanjiu’, Guo Xiumei (trans.), Zhongguo Kejishi Zazhi, 2010, 31(3): 243–256. 223 For example, a handwritten copy of Wu Yiluo’s Bencao Congxin (Renewed Materia Medica, 1757), finalised in Japan in 1814, contains the same record of the caterpillar fungus, see Wu Yiluo, Bencao Congxin, Tokyo: National Diet Library, [1757] 1814, p. 30; Catalogue No.: Toku 7–503. 224 Nagazumi Yoko, T¯ osen Yushutsuny¯ uhin S¯ ury¯ o Ichiran, 1637–1833 Nen, Tokyo: S¯obunsha, 1987. 225 Shi Shiqin, ‘Mingqing Shiqi Zhongguo Furi Yishi Jiqi Dui Riben Hanfang Yixue De Yingxiang’, Zhongguo Keji Shiliao, 1991, 12(1): 84–89; Guo Xiumei et al., ‘Qingdai Yishi Lüri Shi Gouchen’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 1999, 29(2): 115–120.

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Papenberg, he finally left Japan on 3 December.226 His botanical investigation in Japan laid the groundwork for the publication of his book Flora Japonica in 1784.227 While living on Dejima in November 1775, his attention was seized in part by the caterpillar fungus: The [Japanese] interpreters told me amongst other things, of a very singular worm, which in the summer was a crawling insect, but in winter a plant. It was brought hither by the Chinese amongst other medicines, and said to be possessed of cordial virtues. As soon as I was able to procure a drawing of it, and afterwards the drug itself, I plainly saw, that it was nothing else than a Caterpillar, which against its approaching change to a Chrysalis, had crept down into the ground, and there fastened itself to the root of some plant. It was called with much acuteness Totsu Kaso.228

‘Totsu Kaso’ was obviously a phonetic spelling of the Japanese term t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o, which shares the same characters with the Chinese term dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass). By the time Thunberg had possessed some information about Sino-Japanese trade, finding that ‘the principal trade of the Chinese consists of raw-silk, various drugs, which are imported as medicines; such as ninsi-root, turpentine, myrrh, calumbac-wood, besides zink, and a few printed books, which must be read through, and approved by two learned men, before they are suffered

226 Carl P. Thunberg, Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia, Förrättad Åren 1770–1779 (Delen 3), Upsala: Tryckt hos Directeur. Joh. Edman, 1791, pp. 1, 13–14; Carl P. Thunberg, Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia, Förrättad Åren 1770–1779 (Delen 4), Upsala: Tryckt hos Direct. Joh. Ednans Enka, 1793, pp. 125–126. Cf. Carl P. Thunberg, ‘Account of a Voyage to Japan by M. Thunberg’, Timon Screech (trans.), in Carl P. Thunberg, Japan Extolled and Decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and the Shogun’s Realm, 1775–1776, Timon Screech (ed.), London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 219–223. 227 Caroli P. Thunberg, Flora Japonica, Lipsiae: In Bibliopolio I. G. Mülleriano, 1784. 228 Carl P. Thunberg, Travels in Europe, Africa, and Asia, Performed Between the

Years 1770 and 1779 (Vol. 3), Charles Hopton (trans.), London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, [1791] 1796, pp. 69–70. The spelling of the name for the caterpillar fungus in this English translation, i.e. ‘Totsu Kaso’, is the same as that in the original Swedish book. For the original account in Swedish, see Carl P. Thunberg, Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia, Förrättad Åren 1770–1779 (Delen 3), Upsala: Tryckt hos Directeur. Joh. Edman, 1791, pp. 77–78.

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to be sold’.229 With Japan’s import trade in Chinese medicines came the caterpillar fungus which, as a cordial medicine and also a singular object of nature, obviously engaged both Thunberg and his interpreters. Thunberg showed more interest in its appearance than in its medicinal properties. His explanation of its formation reads like a story of rebellion against chrysalis and alliance with a plant root. As will be explored in the following chapter, similar views had already appeared in Europe before he made the observation. Of course, the arrival of the caterpillar fungus in Japan must have predated Thunberg’s journey to Japan. Chinese Traders Bring the Caterpillar Fungus to Japanese Attention In 1811, the Japanese naturalist and physician Kurimoto Tanshu (1756– 1834) completed an illustrated register of insects and other species. This register contains a coloured hand-drawn illustration and a textual briefing of the caterpillar fungus under the name t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o (winter worm summer grass), as well as a related description added by a Japanese interpreter. According to the description, the caterpillar fungus grows in the mountains more than one thousand ri (li in Chinese) west of Shaanxi; its grass part, which resembles a spring onion seedling and is about two to three sun (cun in Chinese) in length, sprouts out of the worm’s head in summer. Kurimoto recorded that sometime between 9 May and 7 June in 1728, the Chinese shipowner Yin Xinyi carried the caterpillar fungus from Ningbo to Nagasaki. Afterwards a defence commander in Nagasaki presented it to the shogunate in Edo (Tokyo). This incident, in the eyes of Kurimoto, preluded the transmission of the caterpillar fungus to Japan.230 But Nagasaki was then no longer strange to Yin Xinyi, because his trading ship had sailed from Ningbo and reached Nagasaki as early as August

229 Carl P. Thunberg, Travels in Europe, Africa, and Asia, Performed Between the Years 1770 and 1779 (Vol. 3), p. 57. Cf. Carl P. Thunberg, Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia, Förrättad Åren 1770–1779 (Delen 3), pp. 63–64. 230 Kurimoto Tanshu, Kurishi Sench¯ ufu (Book 1), Tokyo: National Diet Library, [1811] 1872, p. 80. See also Kurimoto Tanshu, Kurishi Sench¯ ufu (Book 7), Tokyo: National Diet Library, [1811] 1879, p. 36. Both ri/li and sun/cun were units of distance.

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1721, additionally bringing an eminent Chinese Buddhist monk recruited by the Buddhist temple of K¯ ofukuji in Nara.231 Kurimoto was not the only author to mention the transmission of the caterpillar fungus to Japan in the Ky¯oh¯o period (1716–1736). The herbalist Niwa Seihaku (1691–1756), who took a strong interest in natural products, recounted that in 1729 a Chinese ship passenger presented the t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o to the Japanese sovereign and meanwhile introduced about its seasonal transformation. Based either on this man’s information or on his own observation, Niwa described the caterpillar fungus as being six to seven sun (cun in Chinese) in length, as thick as sedge, and its root as resembling a silkworm. Unlike Kurimoto, who made no mention of its medicinal properties, Niwa further referred to Li Shizhen’s Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1578), and suspected the insect sekisan (shican in Chinese; Phryganea japonica) included in this text to be the caterpillar fungus.232 Likewise, the naturalist Aoki Konyo (1698–1769) quoted the Chinese author Yuan Dong’s (1697–1761) account of the caterpillar fungus when speaking of the unpredictable kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u (summer grass winter worm) brought by the traders of the Qing dynasty to Japan in the middle of the Ky¯ oh¯o period.233 Thus the caterpillar fungus, whether as a gift or as a commodity, was engaged with through the efforts of these traders to establish or expand trade in medicine. Among them was Yu Meiji, who had transported ginseng seedlings, dried ginseng and a treatise on ginseng to Japan in 1726 and sailed to Japan before and after this year.234 Owing to these profit-seekers

231 Hayashi H¯ ok¯o, Sakik¯ o Sh¯ osetsu, Tokyo: National Archives of Japan, [1722] Tran¯ scription Date Unknown, pp. 103–105; Oba Osamu, Edo Jidai Ni Okeru Ch¯ ugoku Bunka Juy¯ o No Kenky¯ u, Kyoto: D¯oh¯osha Shuppan, 1984, pp. 476–477. 232 Niwa Seihaku, Niwa Seihaku Bussan Nikki, Tokyo: National Diet Library, c. 1739, p. 41. For the record of shican in Li’s work, see Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, pp. 1508– 1509. For the identification of shican, see Zhao Guoping et al. (eds.), Zhongyao Da Cidian, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2006, p. 817. 233 Aoki Konyo, Zoku Konyo Manroku Ho, in Nihon Zuihitsu Taisei Hensh¯ ubu (ed.), Nihon Zuihitsu Taisei (Vol. 10), Tokyo: Yoshikawa K¯obunkan, [1768] 1928, p. 649. 234 Yunlu et al. (eds.), Shizong Xian Huangdi Zhupi Yuzhi, in Ji Yun (ed.), Wenyuange

Siku Quanshu (Book 424), Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, [1738] 1983, p. 17; Imamura Tomo, Ninjin Shi (Vol. 4), Keijo: Ch¯ osen S¯otokufu Senbaikyoku, 1936, pp. 307–308; Ueno Masuz¯o, Nihon Hakubutsugaku Shi, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1973, p. 328; ¯ Oba Osamu, Edo Jidai Ni Okeru Ch¯ ugoku Bunka Juy¯ o No Kenky¯ u, Kyoto: D¯oh¯osha Shuppan, 1984, pp. 484–485.

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who shuttled between China and Japan, the Japanese early encounter with the caterpillar fungus was, impressively, almost concurrent with early Chinese attention to this product. Japanese Variants of the Caterpillar Fungus as Kas¯o T¯och¯ u The trade in the caterpillar fungus persisted throughout the eighteenth century, as Thunberg’s account demonstrates. Furthermore, the Japanese physician Taki Motoyasu (1755–1810) stated that in the Kansei period (1789–1801), ships from Wu (Suzhou) had carried the caterpillar fungus to Japan. Some Japanese people had consulted him about its medicinal properties, which then caused him to gather a few relevant records from Chinese texts.235 The physician Hirokawa Kai, author of an 1800 collection of notes on Nagasaki, also wrote that the caterpillar fungus was used as a kidney-benefiting medicinal substance and that it was recently transported by the Chinese to Nagasaki. Like Aoki, Hirokawa quoted Yuan Dong’s related account to provide a Chinese understanding of the drug. Moreover, he added an illustration of the caterpillar fungus, noting the black and yellow colours of the grass and worm parts of the caterpillar fungus.236 The physician Yuzuki Tokiwa also made a drawing of the hakurai (imported) caterpillar fungus in 1801.237 Though he did not provide any notes about the process of importation, it must have been imported from China, as in the early nineteenth century the caterpillar fungus continued to be exported by Chinese ships to Japan and sold in drugstores.238 Yuzuki’s personal album comprises drawings of the imported caterpillar fungus and some different but similar species he 239 These drawings ¯ collected in the mountains near his residence in Omi. doubtlessly resulted from his interest in natural history. But he categorised the species from both China and Japan under the name of kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u, which thereby reflects his effort to explore the Chinese caterpillar fungus

235 Taki Motoyasu, Ish¯ o (Book 3), Tokyo: Issh¯ud¯o, 1809, pp. 95–98. 236 Hirokawa Kai, Nagasaki Bunken Roku (Book 3), Kyoto: Hayashi Ihee &c., 1800,

pp. 6–7. 237 Yuzuki Tokiwa, Hakurai Kas¯ ot¯ och¯ u Zu, Tokyo: National Diet Library, 1801, p. 1. 238 Fujii Kansai, Z¯ oho Shuhan Hatsum¯ o, Tokyo: Yamashiroya Sahei, 1823, pp. 347–350. 239 Yuzuki Tokiwa, Hakurai Kas¯ ot¯ och¯ u Zu, Tokyo: National Diet Library, 1801, pp. 2–

13.

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in his own country around the turn of the nineteenth century. And he was not alone in this respect. The German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866) arrived at Dejima in 1823, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and resided in Japan until 1829. In 1826 Siebold joined a tribute expedition to the shogunal court in Edo, but made his own observations and collections of natural history en route. He departed Dejima on 15 February, reached Edo on 10 April, and finally returned to Dejima on 7 July. On 23 February, some of his Japanese students visited him in Shimonoseki. They showed him specimens of some rare Japanese natural products, among which there was a ‘Wunder der Natur’ (wonder of nature), namely ‘Ka sô tô tsiu’. As indicated by the meaning of the Japanese term, that is, ‘im Sommer Pflanze im Winter Insect’ (plant in summer insect in winter), it was thought to be a cross between a plant and an insect. However, Siebold related this wonder of nature to the ‘Keulenschwämme’ (Clavaria) fungi, which grew on dead larvae of insects, usually ‘Cicaden’ (cicadas) and ‘Raupen’ (caterpillars).240 Siebold’s narrative shows, again, the broadened sense of the Japanese term kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u which used the same characters that constituted the Chinese name for the caterpillar fungus but now newly included native Japanese specimens.

Conclusion The caterpillar fungus’s international diplomacy was carried out with its travels to France and Japan in the 1720s, Britain in about 1831, and Russia in 1851. Yet these countries did not cover all its overseas destinations before the turn of the twentieth century. For instance, Alexander C. Jones (1830–1898), Consul of the United States in the port city of Chinkiang (Zhenjiang, Jiangsu) from 17 November 1886 till his death,241 had sent specimens and a drawing of ‘the Chinese insectfungus drug’ (or ‘the officinal preparation of the parasitic fungus’), whose 240 Philipp Franz von Siebold, Nippon: Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan, Leyden: Bei Dem Verfasser, 1832, p. 112. 241 Government Printing Office, Register of the Department of State, Washington:

Government Printing Office, 1897, p. 50; Anonymous, ‘Death of General Jones’, The Japan Weekly Mail, 1898, 29(4): 89; The Daily Press Office, The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Straits Settlements, Malay States, Siam, Netherlands India, Borneo, the Philippines, &c., Hong Kong: The ‘Daily Press’ Office, 1898, pp. 183, 684.

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Chinese name meant ‘in winter an insect, in summer a plant’, to Washington. His letter of explanation, appearing in Insect Life, bulletin of the Division of Entomology, US Department of Agriculture, provides the scientific name of the caterpillar fungus, that is, ‘Cordyceps chinensis ’. Moreover, the letter mentions that ‘it is sold in small packages, generally tied together with red cotton’; ‘in former times it was esteemed even more highly than ginseng, as a medicine’; ‘in China the head of the bulrush is gathered, carefully tied in little bundles, and sold at a high price for medical purposes’; ‘the native physicians use it in cases of diseases of the throat and lungs’.242 This American story vividly illustrates the travelling caterpillar fungus as not merely a peculiar material from nature but also a culturally shaped and intellectually valued product in human society. The caterpillar fungus clearly travelled across cultures with contrasting political, commercial and cultural settings. The expansion of French Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy into China played an important part in its departure for France and Russia; while its arrival in Japan and the UK had little to do with religions but benefited much from transnational trade. Moreover, the caterpillar fungus spread to France, the UK and Russia at the instigation of actors of different identities from these countries, and appeared as an exotic object of new scientific and medical inquiry within a European context. While it voyaged to Japan through the agency of Chinese rather than Japanese traders and travellers, and appeared as an effective Chinese medicine worth sharing with Japanese physicians and patients in practice. The difference between the utility or value of the caterpillar fungus in Japan and the other three countries points to different levels of cultural sharing between China and these countries. Despite a closer and older Sino-Japanese cultural bond, however, the Japanese had observed, described and sought the caterpillar fungus within their own natural-historical milieu. Considered together, its early journeys abroad also illustrate the common ground in what it engaged with, that is, human curiosity about exotic natural objects and the demand for new and effective medicines, which were often intertwined. As the caterpillar fungus turned into part of dynamic transnational networks of natural knowledge, it also provoked new observations that were to be framed as factual or objective, and from new ways of looking associated with this new concern for observation the production of a new knowledge.

242 Alexander C. Jones, ‘The Chinese Insect-Fungus Drug’, Insect Life, 1891, 4(3–4): 216–218.

CHAPTER 4

The Caterpillar Fungus Teases

François Xavier d’Entrecolles, the aforementioned French Jesuit missionary in Beijing, complained in the same letter in 1736 that a Chinese author imagined ‘mystére’ (mystery) through a very natural phenomenon, and ‘la seule nature’ (the sole nature) was ‘voilée’ (veiled) to Chinese eyes, despite some Chinese, without having made great progress in ‘physique’ (physics), did not fail to know nature, and to render reasons for its effects.1 About one year earlier in Beijing, Dominicus Parennin complimented the addressee, Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, on his work which allegedly led the reader to discover ‘les plus beaux secrets de la nature’ (the most beautiful secrets of nature). Parennin also recalled his conversation with some local elite intellectuals regarding water freezing in the winter of 1716. The latter, like ‘nos anciens Philosophes’ (our ancient philosophers), were found to use terms of equivalently ‘qualités occultes’ (occult qualities) to explain ‘cet effet de la nature’ (this effect of nature).2 Decades later,

1 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 24), pp. 371, 374, 414. 2 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 24), pp. 4–5. This letter was written in Beijing on 28 September 1735.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1_4

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Pierre-Martial Cibot (1727–1780), one of the last Jesuits in eighteenthcentury China, griped about the ‘barbarie’ (barbarity) of ‘demi-science’ (semi-science) in ancient books of ‘ténebres’ (darkness) while learning about the fungus ‘Lin-Tchi’ (Linzhi; Ganoderma spp.) as a symbol of immortality, a ‘panacée divin’ (divine panacea), and a shield impenetrable to ‘tous les traits de la mort’ (all the traits of death) in Chinese culture.3 In early modern Europe, naturalistic descriptions and illustrations of plants and animals disengaged from humanity. This naturalistic tendency arose from both the needs of medicine to identify the medicinal plants recorded in revived Greek medical texts and the encounter with numerous new species during European expansion into the New World.4 For Jesuits, according to Mark A. Waddell, some of the seventeenth century departed from Aristotelian philosophy, shifted the focus from preternatural phenomena to naturalistic representations of purportedly ‘marvelous’ animals and pursued greater clarity of nature’s secrets in ‘the murky ontological space between the natural and the divine’.5 Sabine Anagnostou points out that in Jesuit philosophy ‘nature reflected God’s omnipotence and divine providence’, and Jesuit explorations of nature were interwoven with attempts to ‘uncover the laws of a world constructed according to the divine Creator’s plan’.6 Georges Métailié’s comparative research on botanical knowledge in early modern China and Europe helps to understand the above Jesuits’ comments. Métailié argues that in the sixteenth 3 Pierre-Martial Cibot, ‘Mo Kou Sin et Lin-Tchi’, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1773, MSS NAF 11167, fols. 205–208. See also Pierre-Martial Cibot, ‘Notice du Mo-Kou-Sin et du Lin-Tchi’, in Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot et al. (eds.), Mémoires Concernant l’Histoire, les Sciences, les Arts, les Mœurs, les Usages, &c. des Chinois, par les Missionnaires de Pe-Kin (Tome 4), Paris: Chez Nyon l’aîné, Libraire, rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, vis-à-vis le College, 1779, pp. 500–503. 4 Margaret J. Osler, Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, pp. 132–146; Lawrence M. Principe, Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 108–109. 5 Mark A. Waddell, Jesuit Science and the End of Nature’s Secrets, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 5–6, 82, 188. 6 Sabine Anagnostou, ‘The International Transfer of Medicinal Drugs by the Society

of Jesus (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries) and Connections with the Work of Carolus Clusius’, in Florike Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer and Robert P. W. Visser (eds.), Carolus Clusius: Towards a Cultural History of a Renaissance Naturalist, Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007, pp. 293–294, 311. Cf. Ignatius de Loyola, Exercitia Spiritualia, Romae: Apud Antonium Bladum, 1548, pp. 142–143.

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and seventeenth centuries, Europe surpassed China in constant discovery of new plant species, accuracy of botanical illustrations and enquiry into the inner parts of plants with the aid of magnifying glasses; altogether, the natural world was ‘acculturated’ in the Chinese context, but ‘an open space to be discovered’ in Europe.7 Obviously, those Jesuits in Beijing felt dissatisfied with the hybrid of nature and culture in the Chinese intellectual tradition. Alternatively stated, in their minds the Chinese failed to ‘discover’ a nature independent of human culture despite abundant Chinese natural knowledge. This casts light upon their critical appropriation of Chinese expertise as well as the shaping of a hierarchical conception of knowledge alongside the transformation of European natural philosophy. The divide between nature and culture interrelates with the epistemological dualism between the objective and the subjective. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have historicised objectivity by looking into scientific practices of atlas-making in Europe and North America before and after the emergence of scientific objectivity as ‘a new epistemic virtue’ in the mid-nineteenth century.8 Before scientific objectivity arose from the desire to ‘let nature speak for itself’, there existed the eighteenth-century epistemic virtue of ‘being true to nature’ as reflected in the representation of natural objects in the form of the typical, the ideal, the characteristic or the average.9 The evolving epistemic virtues shaped both the representation and observation of nature in the Western context. This more or less accounts for the supervision John Reeves and Alexander A. Tatarinov provided to Chinese artists, as previously mentioned, for the purpose of obtaining expected drawings of local species. More importantly, the

7 Georges Métailié, ‘Concepts of Nature in Traditional Chinese Materia Medica and Botany (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Century)’, in Hans Ulrich Vogel and Günter Dux (eds.), Concepts of Nature: A Chinese-European Cross-Cultural Perspective, Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 345–367. 8 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007, pp. 11–35. See also Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, ‘The Image of Objectivity’, Representations, 1992, (40): 81–128. 9 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, pp. 55–125.

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nature-culture dichotomy engaged modern science in utilitarian or instrumental concerns with the natural world.10 To Francis Bacon (1561– 1626), the goal of the sciences was to promote human welfare by attaining mastery of nature.11 Late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century utilitarianism espoused an empiricist epistemology of scientific inquiry into nature and had evoked objections from William Whewell (1794– 1866),12 coiner of the neologism ‘scientist’.13 Utilitarians themselves gave central consideration to human well-being, granting instrumental value to plants and other non-sentient entities.14 With the rise and development of modern science, local species and natural knowledge 10 Robert K. Merton, ‘Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England’, Osiris, 1938, 4: 360–632, 587–591; Robin Briggs, ‘The Académie Royale des Sciences and the Pursuit of Utility’, Past & Present, 1991, (131): 38–88; Michael A. Osborne, ‘Applied Natural History and Utilitarian Ideals: ‘Jacobin Science’ at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, 1789–1870’, in Bryant T. Ragan and Elizabeth A. Williams (eds.), Re-creating Authority in Revolutionary France, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992, pp. 125–143; Michael A. Osborne, ‘Acclimatizing the World: A History of the Paradigmatic Colonial Science’, Osiris, 2000, 15(1): 135–151. 11 Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 16; Anthony J. Funari, Francis Bacon and the Seventeenth-Century Intellectual Discourse, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 73, 113. 12 William Whewell criticised the utilitarian morality for its adverse effects on scientific research, see Richard Yeo, Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 177–201, 224–255; Laura J. Snyder, Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp. 21–23. 13 The neologism ‘scientist’ emerged as a designation for ‘the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively’ in the early nineteenth century despite its standard usage in the early twentieth century, see Sydney Ross, ‘Scientist: The Story of a Word’, Annals of Science, 1962, 18(2): 65–85; Robert K. Merton, ‘Le Molteplici Origini e il Carattere Epiceno del Termine Inglese Scientist’, in Scientia: L’Immagine e il Mondo, Milano: Scientia, 1989, pp. 279–293; David P. Miller, ‘The Story of ‘Scientist: The Story of a Word’’, Annals of Science, 2017, 74(4): 255–261. 14 Gordon Graham, Eight Theories of Ethics, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 128–161; Lisa Kemmerer, In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals, Leiden: Brill, 2006, p. 129; Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 58. Though granting ethical consideration to non-human sentient creatures, utilitarians did not completely object to using and killing them for human welfare, see Olof Johansson-Stenman, ‘Animal Welfare and Social Decisions: Is It Time to Take Bentham Seriously?’, Ecological Economics, 2018, 145: 95– 96; Johannes Kniess, ‘Bentham on Animal Welfare’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2019, 27(3): 556–572.

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gradually became involved in new practical concerns and the process of objectification. Upon its arrival overseas, the exotic caterpillar fungus inspired curiosity, attracted compliments and also encountered arrogance. This chapter first investigates how differently Europeans perceived and studied the caterpillar fungus in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as emerging efforts to locate it within the European natural order and intellectual tradition. Given significant Japanese influence on modern Chinese natural history and materia medica, this chapter then turns to nineteenthcentury Japan, and to investigate changes in Japanese understandings of the caterpillar fungus and their connections with Chinese and European scholarship. What happened surrounding the caterpillar fungus at the intersection of the local and the global echoed broader trends in the making of new styles of natural knowledge as well as new powerful rhetoric about their authority.

A Wonder No More? After Parennin’s specimens of the caterpillar fungus reached the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, they presented a challenge to French savants’ existing knowledge and experience. The distinguished Enlightenment natural philosopher René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683– 1757), called by Douglas McKie ‘the Pliny of the eighteenth century’,15 pioneered new scientific research on those curiosities. At that time, his fame had already spread to the Imperial Palace in Beijing. Parennin’s letter to the Royal Academy, dated 1 May 1723, discloses that the Kangxi emperor once spoke to Parennin about ‘toiles d’araignées’ (spider webs). Parennin then told the emperor about relevant discoveries and experiments of François Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire (1678–1761) and Réaumur, which he learnt from the Journal de Trévoux. With great curiosity, the emperor requested Parennin to translate the relevant information in the journal. The translation was then read by the emperor and his three sons. According to Parennin, the oldest prince extolled that Europeans could even take advantage of spider webs, and only Europeans could go further into things like this. He further wrote that the emperor added that ‘Ils sont en cela plus habiles que nous’ (they [i.e. Europeans] 15 Douglas McKie, ‘René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757): The Pliny of the Eighteenth Century’, Science Progress, 1957, 45(180): 619–627.

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are more skillful than us in this respect) and ‘Ils veulent ne rien ignorer de la nature’ (they do not want to ignore nature).16 What underlay in part Parennin’s response to the emperor was Réaumur’s study of spider silk, which originally appeared in the Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (History of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris) in 1710.17 Previously, he had studied under the mathematician Pierre Varignon (1654–1722) in Paris. On 14 March 1708, he was elected a student geometer to the Royal Academy, to which he soon later presented an article on geometry on 19 May.18 From 1713 onwards, he often held the position of assistant director or director of the Royal Academy. Despite his early devotion to mathematics, however, Réaumur is better known as a founding father of entomology in France.19 His entomological research led to the publication of the six-volume magnum opus Mémoires pour Servir à l’Histoire des Insectes (Memoirs Serving as a Natural History of Insects, 1734–1742). His emphasis on insect

16 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions

Étrangères (Recueil 17), pp. 391–392. Cf. François Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire, ‘Extrait de la Dissertation de Monsieur Bon Associé Honoraire de la Societé Royale des Sciences, & Premier Président en Survivance de la Cour des Comptes, Aides & Finances de Montpellier, sur l’Utilité des Soies des Araignées’, Journal de Trévoux, 1710, 10: 822–841; Anonymous, ‘Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, Année 1710’, Journal de Trévoux, 1713, 13: 1080–1100, 1083–1086. 17 René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, ‘Examen de la Soie des Araignées’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1710, 1: 386–408. Bon de Saint Hilaire’s research on spider silk was originally published in 1710, see François Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire, Dissertation sur l’Araignée, Paris: Chez Joseph Saugrain, 1710; François Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire, Dissertation sur l’Utilité de la Soie des Araignées, Montpellier: Société Royale des Sciences, 1710. For Réaumur and Bon de Saint Hilaire’s interaction concerning spider silk, see Mary Terrall, Catching Nature in the Act: Réaumur and the Practice of Natural History in the Eighteenth Century, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, pp. 13–19. 18 René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, ‘Manière Générale de Trouver une Infinité de Lignes Courbes Nouvelles, en Faisant Parcourir une Ligne Quelconque Donnée, par une des Extremités d’une Ligne Droite Donnée aussi, et Toûjours Placée sur un Même Point Fixe’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1708, 1: 197–211; Rene Taton, ‘Réaumur Mathématicien’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences, 1958, 11(2): 130–133. 19 For Réaumur’s life and research, see Jean Torlais, ‘Chronologie de la Vie et des Oeuvres de René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences et de Leurs Applications, 1958, 11(1): 1–12; Yves Carton, ‘Réaumur (1683–1757): Le Véritable Fondateur de l’Entomologie en France’, Bulletin de la Société Entomologique de France, 2004, 109(5): 445–453.

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behaviour even won him the fame of being a founder of ethology.20 The encounter of the caterpillar fungus and Réaumur then provided an opportunity to test his entomological expertise. Réaumur presented his research article on the caterpillar fungus to the Royal Academy on 21 August 1726. In the article, he first briefly introduced Parennin’s ‘magnifiques presents’ (magnificent presents) to the Royal Academy, including some samples of ‘drogues’ (drugs) and ‘racines’ (roots), which he considered were able to expand French knowledge of natural history. Then he turned to the caterpillar fungus, a root from China, named ‘Hia tsao tom tchom’, also ‘un étonnant prodige’ (an astonishing prodigy). Parennin sent approximately three hundred specimens of the caterpillar fungus to the Royal Academy. The largest specimens were about three French lignes in diameter, while the longest specimens were three French pouces in length. From Parennin, he learnt about the caterpillar fungus’s production areas and medicinal properties, and excerpted related information in his article. But he rejected the idea about its transformation from a plant in summer to a worm in winter, despite in his opinion that the worm remained a remarkable singularity thought to be transformed from a portion of the root to those who were neither ‘Physiciens’ (physicists) nor ‘Observateurs’ (observers) in France and China. According to the state of ‘physique’ (physics) in his time, Réaumur wrote, one was reluctant to believe ‘une telle merveille’ (such a marvel). Réaumur linked his careful observations with some recent entomological discoveries of the Italian and French ‘naturalistes’ (naturalists) Antonio Vallisneri (1661–1730), Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan (1678– 1771) and Antoine de Jussieu (1686–1758).21 He understood the

20 George Sarton, ‘Review: The Natural History of Ants, by René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Translated and Annotated by William Morton Wheeler’, Isis, 1927, 9(3): 445–447; Frank N. Egerton, ‘A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 21: Réaumur and His History of Insects’, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 2006, 87(3): 212–224. 21 Antonio Vallisneri, Esperienze, ed Osservazioni Intorno all’Origine, Suiluppi, e Costumi

di Varj Insetti, con Altre Spettanti alla Naturale, e Medica Storia, Padoa: Nella Stamperia del Seminario, appresso Gio. Manfrè, 1713, pp. 1–82; Anonymous, ‘Diverses Observations de Physique Generale’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1717, 1: 11–12; Anonymous, ‘Diverses Observations de Physique Générale’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1720, 1: 9–10.

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caterpillar fungus from the perspective of the ‘metamorphose’ (metamorphosis) that would only take place in a portion of a root. The formation of the caterpillar fungus was thereby explained as follows: the worm in the ground chose the root, and then attached its ‘queüe’ (tail) to the end of the root in preparation for metamorphosis; in such a manner, the worm came to seem like an extension of the root. Furthermore, Réaumur attempted to imagine the ‘manoeuvre’ (manoeuvre) of the worm: before attaching itself to a root, the worm cut off the little end of the root, and then dug a cavity in the end of the rest of the root; then it lodged the end of its tail in the cavity, fixing the tail perhaps by means of a glue with which the worm would take care to cover itself. By pointing for the first time to the separate, coeval and non-interchangeable identities of worm and root, he alleged, ‘la merveille se reduit sans doute’ (the marvel is doubtless diminished).22 Réaumur recorded without criticism the geography and medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus while replacing the idea about its interspecies transformation with a new explanation. Thus, the appraisal of Chinese knowledge came with, as he expected, the enrichment of French natural history. The rediscovery of the caterpillar fungus manifests Réaumur’s concern with insect behaviour, which is also reflected in his drawings of two specimens of the caterpillar fungus. To visualise his thesis, Réaumur illustrated separately the end of the root as well as the ‘cavité’ (cavity) in the root. The caption to the illustration of the cavity indicates that the cavity pulled the tip of the worm’s tail. To a modern eye, the mature fruiting body of the caterpillar fungus is indeed usually a hollow structure, but it is the worm’s head rather than tail that ‘attaches’ itself to the ‘root’. Besides, Réaumur noted that to represent the end of the root he had removed the ‘fibres ligneuses’ (woody fibres) from it. In this connection, he might have discovered what is now called fungal mycelium in a compact form. Yet he had never associated the root with fungi. He used simple lines to depict the physical appearance of the specimens, and also added varying degrees of shading to make them look realistic and three-dimensional. However, the drawings lacked scale bars; and the whole specimens and magnified portions were shown together in one plate. Noteworthy here is that the illustrated end of the root was said to be taken from either 22 René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, ‘Remarques sur la Plante Appellée à la Chine Hia Tsao Tom Tchom, ou Plante Ver’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1726, 1: 302–306.

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specimen, and no information was provided as to in which specimen the illustrated cavity was located. In other words, Réaumur sought to idealise or typify the appearance of the end of the root and the cavity, indicating his pursuit of the epistemic virtue which Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison call ‘truth-to-nature’ in his drawings.23 The new theory about the formation of the caterpillar fungus had been accepted by some European naturalists. The British mycologist John Ramsbottom (1885–1974) remarked that Carl P. Thunberg’s view on the caterpillar attaching itself to the end of the root, as mentioned before, actually originated from Réaumur.24 Contemporary scientists and historians also often credit Réaumur with having been the first to study entomogenous fungi or parasitic fungi in animals in the history of European science.25 Réaumur himself defined the caterpillar fungus as ‘plante ver’ (worm plant). This term of his coinage appears twice in the title and main text of his article. In contrast with ‘Hia tsao tom tchom’ (summer grass winter worm), however, it discards the time information that may hint at the physical transformation in accordance with the cycling of seasons. In a broad sense, Réaumur’s effort to demystify the caterpillar fungus fits Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park’s argument concerning the vanishing of wonders or marvels from eighteenth-century European natural philosophy that credited a regular and uniform rather than wondrous nature.26 This new natural philosophy also extended its influence to the French Jesuits in Beijing. In his letter to Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, written on 4 November 1734, François Xavier d’Entrecolles particularly quoted some words he recognised from the 1722 Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (History of the Royal Academy of 23 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, pp. 19, 63–98. 24 John Ramsbottom, ‘Presidential Address: The Expanding Knowledge of Mycology

since Linnaeus’, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 1941, 151(4): 280–367, 319. 25 Ben Dawes, A Hundred Years of Biology, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1952, p. 17; Edward A. Steinhaus, ‘Microbial Control—The Emergence of an Idea: A Brief History of Insect Pathology through the Nineteenth Century’, Hilgardia, 1956, 26(2): 107–160, 147; Paul Schmid-Hempel, Parasites in Social Insects, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 36. 26 Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750, New York: Zone Books, 1998, pp. 329–363. See also Lorraine Daston, Against Nature, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2019, pp. 23–43.

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Sciences). The words convey the view that the ‘Physiciens’ (physicists) must naturally be most incredulous about ‘ces sortes de merveilles’ (these sorts of marvels); they knew better than the others the extent of what remained unknown to us in nature.27 To biologists nowadays, Réaumur’s theory is obviously outdated and rather unacceptable. But in the early eighteenth century, it presented a new anti-marvellous attempt to unlock the secrets of nature, and appeared in the reputable and scholarly journal of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Moreover, as Philip Kitcher suggests, ‘we see just what our theoretical commitments would lead us to expect.’28 Needless to say, Réaumur’s expertise in insect behaviour shaped his vision and regularised his observation and representation of the caterpillar fungus to fit theoretical expectations. Auguste-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy’s Revisit of Réaumur’s ‘Plante Ver’ The most important academic response to Réaumur’s theory in eighteenth-century Europe came from the French scholar Auguste-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy (1732–1789), who was elected adjunct botanist and then associate botanist at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris on 30 August 1758 and 11 July of the following year.29 Before Fougeroux de Bondaroy published his revisit of Réaumur’s theory in 1769, there had already been a few European discoveries which formed the basis of his discourse. The Spanish Franciscan missionary Joseph Torrubia (1698–1761), well known for his research on fossils,30 found some ‘abispas muertas’ (dead wasps) in the field two leagues from Havana (present-day capital city 27 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (ed.), Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Écrites des Missions Étrangères (Recueil 22), Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1736, p. 426. For the original words, see Anonymous, ‘Sur un Secret pour Éteindre le Feu dans les Incendies’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1722, 1: 5–7, 5. 28 Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 167. 29 Anonymous, Nouvelle Table des Articles Contenus dans les Volumes de l’Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris, depuis 1666 jusqu’en 1770 (Tome 1), Paris: Chez Ruault, 1775, p. lxxix. 30 Leandro Sequeiros, ‘Tercer Centenario del Nacimiento de José Torrubia (1698– 1761): Viajero, Naturalista y Paleontólogo’, Boletín de la Comisión de Historia de la Geología en España, 1998, (10): 21–23; José Javier Álvaro, The Ages of the Earth: A

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of Cuba), New Spain on 10 February 1749. Their skeletons and wings remained intact. But from the belly of such a dead wasp an ‘arbolito’ (little plant) germinated, growing up to five palms high. This plant was full of ‘espinas’ (thorns). The natives called the plant ‘GIA’, and attributed the thorns to the wasps’ belles which produced the plant. For this reason, they said the plant was covered with ‘aguijones’ ([wasp] stings). Torrubia claimed that he had observed the dead wasps with a ‘Microscopio’ (microscope), though the illustration of the dead wasps and little plants does not display any microscopic details.31 Later, the British naturalist Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717–1791) informed his friend George Edwards (1694–1773) of Torrubia’s discovery of the ‘vegetating Wasps’. He also translated for the latter Torrubia’s description of the wasps into English. Edwards then provided a related account in his 1764 book of natural history, into which he further copied some of the wasps figured by Torrubia. But Edwards considered ‘this curious Insect’ the same as what he had observed and described in the foregoing chapter of the book, that is, ‘the imperfect insect’ sent from Dominica in 1760, which ‘seems to be the Cicada in its infant state’ and ‘has a kind of fungus growing out of the head’. He attributed the growth of the fungus to ‘the moisture of the earth’. Finally, he concluded that ‘the Spaniards have not yet attained to any perfection in natural history, and I believe the good Father might mistake the bunch of protuberant parts from the fungus for dried leaves.’32 By the first half of the eighteenth century, to be sure, fungi had already been categorised as a group of plants in Europe, but there had not been a generally accepted essentialised view on the nature of fungi. John Ramsbottom considered the Italian botanist Pier Antonio Micheli (1679– 1737) ‘the first to pay special attention to fungi as a whole’.33 Though enumerating hundreds of fungi,34 Micheli’s 1729 monograph on new Journey from Theology to Geology, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, pp. 166–167. 31 Joseph Torrubia, Aparato Para la Historia Natural Española, Madrid: Imprenta de los Herederos de Don Agustín de Gordejuela y Sierra, 1754, pp. 237–238, Lamina XIV. 32 George Edwards, Gleanings of Natural History (Part 3), London: Printed for the Autor, at the Royal College of Physicians, 1764, pp. 262–264, 265–266. 33 John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms & Toadstools, London: Collins, 1953, p. 17. 34 Pier Antonio Micheli, Nova Plantarum Genera Iuxta Tournefortii Methodum

Disposita, Florentiae: Typis Bernardi Paperinii, 1729, pp. 117–222.

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genera of plants ‘offered a prima-facie case that fungi were autonomous organisms but this view though accepted by some was questioned by many for the next hundred years’.35 Indeed, mycology as a discipline with its own societies did not emerge and truly separate from botany until the nineteenth century. The world’s first mycological society, the Société Mycologique de France (Mycological Society of France), was established in Épinal, Vosges as late as 5 October 1884.36 Though Torrubia himself did not relate the dead wasps to fungi, ‘Torrubia’ as a fungal genus named in honour of Joseph Torrubia was first published in 1853 and first defined in 1865.37 Less than a century later, Ramsbottom identified the fungi observed by Torrubia and Edwards as Cordyceps sphecophila (?) and Cordyceps sobolifera, respectively.38 Of course, both Torrubia and Edwards made their observations within European colonial networks, as Cuba and its port city Havana then remained under Spanish colonial rule,39 and Dominica as a French colony came under Britain control in 1763.40 George Edwards’s attribution of the plants on insects to fungi appears to have contributed to subsequent study of such organisms. On 15 November 1763, the British naturalist William Watson (1715–1787)

35 Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 18. 36 Lucien Quélet et al., ‘Projet de Statuts’, Bulletin de la Société Mycologique de France, 1886, (3): 15–22, 15; Maixent Pierre Jules Guétrot, Le Quarantenaire de la Société Mycologique de France (1884–1924), Paris: Société Mycologique de France, 1934, pp. 18, 21; Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology, p. 284. 37 Ludovicus-Renatus Tulasne, ‘Mémoire sur l’Ergot des Glumacées’, Annales des Sciences Naturelles: Botanique, 1853, 20: 5–56, 43; Vincenzo Cesati and Giuseppe De Notaris, ‘Schema di Classificazione Degli Sferiacei Italici Aschigeri più o Meno Appartenenti al Genere Sphaeria nell’Antico Significato Attribuitoglide Persono’, Commentario della Società Crittogamologica Italiana, 1863, 1(4): 177–240, 192; Ludovicus-Renatus Tulasne and Carolus Tulasne, Selecta Fungorum Carpologia (Vol. 3), Parisiis: Imperatoris Jussu, In Imperiali Typographeo Excudebatur, 1865, pp. 4–5. 38 John Ramsbottom, ‘Presidential Address: The Expanding Knowledge of Mycology since Linnaeus’, p. 319. 39 Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America (Vol. 3), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 277–296; Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss (eds.), Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650– 1850, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991, pp. 13–39. 40 Joseph A. Boromé, ‘The French and Dominica, 1699–1763’, Jamaican Historical Review, 1967, 7(1): 9–39; Lennox Honychurch, In the Forests of Freedom: The Fighting Maroons of Dominica, London: Papillote Press, 2017, pp. 32–44.

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wrote up ‘an account of the insect called the Vegetable Fly’, and then sent it to the Royal Society in London. His account starts with a letter he received from the British doctor John Huxham (c. 1692–1768) at the beginning of October. Huxham told Watson that he had seen the ‘vegetable fly’ offered by ‘Mr. Newman’, an officer from the island of Dominica. Huxham also sent Watson an ‘exceedingly curious’ description of it by Newman. Newman claimed to have found the ‘vegetable fly’ in Dominica, which lacked wings but resembled ‘the drone both in size and colour more than any other English insect’. Amazingly, it would bury itself in the earth in May, and then start to vegetate until the end of July when ‘the tree’ (resembling a coral branch) was about three inches high, producing a few ‘little pods’. The pods would drop off, become worms and then developed to flies. Watson considered such an account ‘quite repugnant to the usual order of nature’, and further accounts and observations perhaps might ‘set in a full and true light’. Watson had never seen this production, but heard that the British naturalist John Hill (1714–1775) had examined some specimens of it. Therefore, he wrote to Hill to inquire about his findings. In his reply, Hill related his Caribbean ‘flies’ to ‘a fungus of the Clavaria kind’, or more specifically, ‘Clavaria Sobolifera’.41 The ‘seeds’ of the Clavaria found a ‘proper bed’ on the Cicada which had buried itself under dead leaves but unfortunately perished due to the unfavourable season; then, they germinated and grew on the dead Cicada. After telling about ‘all the fact’, Hill added that it was unknown to the ‘untaught inhabitants’ and the author of a related Spanish imaginary drawing (i.e. by Joseph Torrubia). In the end, Hill exclaimed that ‘so chaste and uniform is Nature!’ Later, some specimens of the ‘vegetable fly’ reached the Royal Society. Watson thereby had a chance to carefully examine the ‘extraordinary production’ by himself, and he finally came to agree with Hill’s opinion. He also additionally mentioned the ‘ingenious’ George Edwards and his description and illustration of ‘this extraordinary production’ to the Royal Society.42 The ‘seeds’ in John Hill’s elucidation were actually 41 ‘Clavaria’ as a genus name was first introduced by Sébastien Vaillant in 1727, and later adopted by Pier Antonio Micheli in 1729, by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, and by other taxonomists in the eighteenth century, see Andrew S. Methven, The Genus Clavariadelphus in North America, Berlin: J. Cramer, 1990, p. 7. 42 William Watson, ‘An Account of the Insect Called the Vegetable Fly’, Philosophical Transactions, 1763, 53: 271–274. Watson wrote the account in November 1763; George

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fungal spores. Over four decades previously, Pier Antonio Micheli made a series of experimental observations on fungal ‘semina’ (seeds) with a microscope in 1718, preliminarily proving that the ‘seeds’ from a fungus could germinate and produce fruiting bodies of the same fungus.43 His 1729 monograph on plant genera also adopted Clavaria,44 a fungal genus first introduced by the French botanist Sébastien Vaillant (1669– 1722) in his posthumous botanical publication in 1723.45 The case of the ‘vegetable fly’, on the whole, bears testimony to the pursuit of factual knowledge and the metaphysics of uniform nature in eighteenth-century European natural history. Fougeroux de Bondaroy presented his critical review of existing scholarship regarding the insects on which plants grew to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris on 11 February 1769. It began with his claim that such ‘faits’ (facts) of natural history were worthy of the attention of physicists. The review article then was expected to help find the correct explanation of such singular facts, and to engage educated travellers in studying the ‘plantes-animales’ (plant-animals). In addition to Réaumur, Watson and Hill, such interspecies also reminded him of the English and Italian naturalists John T. Needham (1713–1781) and Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799). Needham was an important proponent of spontaneous generation. He had performed experiments in support of the ability of plants to generate animals in the microscopic world. This contention aroused the opposition of Spallanzani and some other scholars.46 ‘The resumption of microscopical works on animalcules’, as Marc J. Ratcliff

Edwards’s book was, according to the year printed on its title page, published in 1764. Probably Edwards’s book was actually published in late 1763, so that Watson could refer to it. 43 Pier Antonio Micheli, Nova Plantarum Genera Iuxta Tournefortii Methodum Disposita, Florentiae: Typis Bernardi Paperinii, 1729, pp. 136–139; Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology, pp. 84–88. 44 Pier Antonio Micheli, Nova Plantarum Genera Iuxta Tournefortii Methodum Disposita, pp. 208–209. 45 Sébastien Vaillant, Botanicon Parisiense, Lugduni Batavorum: Petrum Vander Aa, 1723, pp. 26–27. 46 Shirley A. Roe, ‘Needham’s Controversy with Spallanzani: Can Animals Be Produced from Plants?’, in Giuseppe Montalenti and Paolo Rossi (eds.), Lazzaro Spallanzani e la Biologia del Settecento: Teorie, Esperimenti, Istituzioni Scientifiche, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1982, pp. 295–303; Annalisa Ariatti and Paolo Mandrioli, ‘Lazzaro Spallanzani: A Blow Against Spontaneous Generation’, Aerobiologia, 1993, 9(2–3): 101–107.

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argues, contributed much to ‘the renewal of spontaneism’ in the 1740s.47 Both of Needham and Spallanzani also drew on visual microscopic evidence in defence of their different propositions concerning the generation of organisms. However, Fougeroux de Bondaroy did not intend to interfere in the controversy between Needham and Spallanzani, but just limited himself to adding comments on the vegetation of plants on insects, based in part on his own observations of some plant-animals in natural history collections. Fougeroux de Bondaroy found that the plants almost always vegetated on the upper parts of the insects. After quoting from Hill’s foregoing explanation, he argued that the plants growing on insects were doubtless Clavaria fungi. Like some contemporaries,48 he regarded fungi as a group of plants. The term ‘fungus’ appears eleven times in the review article. He himself also examined a new plant which, as a ‘espèce de fungus’ (species of fungus), was attached to a cicada from Cayenne, French Guiana. Moreover, the inclusion of fungi in plants sometimes caused his use of botanical terms such as ‘racine’ (root) and ‘pédicule’ (pedicle) to describe some parts of a fungus. With respect to the caterpillar fungus from China, it is uncertain whether Fougeroux de Bondaroy had examined the specimens sent by Parennin. But for sure he was familiar with Réaumur’s account of the caterpillar fungus and copied, in part, Réaumur’s relevant drawings into his own review article. He noted that the organism on which the plant grew was a ‘ver’ (worm) rather than a ‘chrysalide’ (chrysalis), and stated that the plant was located on the last ring of the worm, near the anus. However, he disagreed with Réaumur on the formation of the caterpillar fungus, as in his opinion it seemed to be the plant that attached itself to the worm, not the worm to the plant.49 This also manifests his refusal of Hill’s idea about the seeding of the fungi.

47 Marc J. Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible: Microscopy in the Enlightenment, Burlington: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 128–131. 48 For example, see Mathieu Fabregou, Description des Plantes qui Naissent ou se Renouvellent aux Environs de Paris (Tome 4), Paris: Chez Gissey, 1740, pp. 168–176; Michel Adanson, Familles des Plantes (Partie 2), Paris: Chez Vincent, 1763, pp. 4–12; Pierre Joseph Buc’hoz, Dictionnaire Universel des Plantes, Arbres et Arbustes de la France (Tome 4), Paris: Chez J. P. Costard, 1771, pp. 173–201. 49 Auguste-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy, ‘Mémoire sur des Insectes sur Lesquels on Trouve des Plantes’, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1769, 1: 467–476.

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Like Réaumur, Fougeroux de Bondaroy did not treat the caterpillar fungus as a wonder. He criticised the Chinese for ignoring the fact that insects would also attach themselves to other parts of a plant to undergo metamorphosis, and argued that the insects were not a transmogrified form of, for example, branches, as the latter produced fruits and seeds rather than insects. While revising Réaumur’s theory about the formation of the caterpillar fungus, he introduced the concept of a scientific fungi, though without giving a clear definition and differentiation of fungi as belonging to a separate domain and category to plants. Moreover, Fougeroux de Bondaroy grouped the caterpillar fungus with other similar-looking species, and discussed them together in a global context. The caterpillar fungus then lost its uniqueness and became merely one of the plants-animals. This wonder of nature in Chinese discourse was also deconstructed rhetorically as well as biologically, no longer possessing the power to transform between a worm and a blade of grass as it would retain in the Chinese natural order for another century. However, similar to Réaumur who saw the caterpillar fungus from China as an astonishing prodigy, Fougeroux de Bondaroy treated it as a ‘singularité’ (singularity). While being rediscovered as a physical combination of two organisms belonging to two distinct categories, which were not intertransformable, the caterpillar fungus was actually turned into a new scientific wonder that would continue to cultivate the scientific self and inspire relevant studies in nineteenth-century Europe. During the last three decades of the eighteenth century, Fougeroux de Bondaroy’s review of the plant-animals circulated with the distribution of the Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (History of the Royal Academy of Sciences), and was cited in different French works, including a 1793 treatise on mushrooms.50 It also attracted attention beyond France.51 A 1773 English critique of the review narrated in a demystifying tone that several specimens of the plant-animals, of which ‘marvellous 50 Jean-Jacques Paulet, Traité des Champignons (Tome 1), Paris: Imprimerie Nationale Exécutive du Louvre, 1793, p. 411. 51 For example, see Anonymous, ‘Commentaries: XI’, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 1773, 1(4): 405–409; Anonymous, ‘Memoire sur des Insectes, sur les quelles on Trouve des Plantes, par M. Fougeroux de Bondaroy’, Medicinische Commentarien von einer Gesellschaft der Aerzte zu Edinburgh, 1775, 1(4): 448–453; James Tytler (ed.), Encyclopaedia Britannica (Vol. 5), Edinburgh: Printed for J. Balfour and Co. W. Gordon, J. Bell, J. Dickson, C. Elliot, W. Creech, J. McCleish, A. Bell, J. Hutton, and C. Macfarquhar, 1780, p. 3908.

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accounts’ had long amused naturalists, had been delineated by Fougeroux de Bondaroy ‘with more care and accuracy’ than ‘the subject deserves’; John Hill, too, had ‘sufficiently’ exposed the ‘exaggerated and ridiculous’ descriptions of the vegetable fly, and ‘satisfactorily’ accounted for the phenomena.52 With the development of European natural sciences and the transmission of the caterpillar fungus to Britain from the early nineteenth century, scientific studies of the caterpillar fungus also began to flourish in the country.

New Taxonomic Identifications In eighteenth-century Europe, fungi were a source of scientific wonder for Pier Antonio Micheli and many other natural historians. But their relationships with plants and animals aroused much confusion.53 Puzzled by the nature of fungi, Carl Linnaeus wrote in 1751 that ‘the order of Fungi is still Chaos, a scandal to art, no botanist knowing what is a Species and what is a Variety.’54 In 1767, he even introduced the genus Chaos under the class Vermes, defining it as ‘having a free body, uniform, reviving and with no external joints or sense-organs’. The species Chaos ustilago and Chaos fungorum were established in this genus to represent the organisms arising from smut fungi and other fungi respectively.55 Obviously, the liminal nature of fungi confounded Linnaeus’s ordering and naming practice. But perceptions of fungi were by no means invariable. Christiaan H. Persoon (1761–1836), the initial founder of systematic mycology, substantially expanded Linnaeus’s classification and

52 Anonymous, ‘Foreign Literature, Article IX’, The Monthly Review, 1773, 48: 549. 53 Nicholas P. Money, Mushroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 6. 54 Caroli Linnaei, Philosophia Botanica, Stockholmiae: Godofr. Kiesewetter, 1751, p. 241. 55 Caroli a Linné, Systema Naturae (Tomus 1, Pars 2), Holmiae: Laurentii Salvii, [1735] 1767, pp. 1326–1327. Linnaeus’s original descriptions of the order of Fungi in 1751 and the genus Chaos in 1767 are as follows: ‘Fungorum ordo in opprobrium artis etiamnum Chaos est, nescientibus Botanicis in his, quid Species, quid Varietas sit’; ‘Corpus liberum, uniforme, redivivum: Artubus sensusque organis externis nullis.’ Here the English translations of them are quoted from John Ramsbottom. See John Ramsbottom, ‘Presidential Address: The Expanding Knowledge of Mycology since Linnaeus’, pp. 293, 296.

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nomenclature of fungi.56 Eight years before the publication of his famous methodical synopsis of the fungi in 1801,57 Persoon had already proposed to treat fungi as the plants that merely presented themselves as naked parts of fructification.58 In this sense, fungi, though still remained in the category of plants, differentiated themselves from other plants in terms of morphological structures at the macroscopic level. The morphology of fruiting bodies has been essential in the classification of fungi. Though Robert Hooke (1635–1705) had reported his observations of microscopic structures of fungi as early as 1665,59 only very late did microscopy begin to be generally applied to distinguish different fungal groups. Even in the early nineteenth century, the Swedish mycologist Elias M. Fries (1794–1878) was reluctant to use a microscope despite his use of the colour of visible sporidia in classifying, for example, Agaricus fungi,60 while the German mycologist Heinrich Anton de Bary (1831–1888) attached importance to the role of microscopic features in characterising fungal development, sexuality and taxonomy.61 As physical resemblances and differences between species, whether on the microscopic or visible scale, continued to underpin nineteenth-century taxonomic efforts, Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) theory of natural selection raised concerns about evolutionary affinities

56 Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, ‘Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (1761–1836)’, Nature, 1962, 193(4810): 22–23; Paul M. Kirk et al., Ainsworth & Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi, pp. 509–510. 57 Christiaan H. Persoon, Synopsis Methodica Fungorum, Gottingae: Henricum Dieterich, 1801. 58 Christiaan H. Persoon, ‘Was Sind Eigentlich die Schwämme’, Magazin für das Neueste aus der Physik und Naturgeschichte, 1793, 8(4): 76–85, 80. 59 Robert Hooke, Micrographia, London: Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry, 1665, pp. 121–

125. 60 Elias M. Fries, Systema Mycologicum (Volumen 1), Lundae: Officina Berlingiana, 1821, pp. 9–11; Ronald H. Petersen and Henning Knudsen, ‘The Mycological Legacy of Elias Magnus Fries’, IMA Fungus, 2015, 6(1): 99–114. 61 Heinrich Anton de Bary, Morphologie und Physiologie der Pilze, Flechten und Myxomyceten, Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1866; Gerhart Drews, ‘The Developmental Biology of Fungi—A New Concept Introduced by Anton de Bary’, Advances in Applied Microbiology, 2001, 48: 213–227; Nicholas P. Money, Mushrooms: A Natural and Cultural History, London: Reaktion Books, 2017, pp. 31–32.

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of organisms hypothesised to have descended from a single progenitor.62 Darwin himself, however, did not attempt to explain and establish affinities among fungal species or between fungi and other forms of life. How the caterpillar fungus would be identified in nineteenth-century Europe illustrated not only simply the efforts to assign binomial scientific names to species, but also the evolving ideas about positioning species within hierarchical taxonomic systems and nuancing their relationships with each other. By the early nineteenth century, the Chinese name for the caterpillar fungus and the French term ‘plante ver’ had already appeared in dictionaries and encyclopaedias published in Britain. A revised edition of the French lexicographer Lewis Chambaud’s (?–1776) English-French bilingual dictionary, printed in London in 1815, includes the English term ‘HIA-TSAO-TOM-TCHOM’ and the corresponding French term ‘plante ver’. The former term is paraphrased as ‘a Chinese plant, the root of which, owing to a caterpillar nicely joined to it, was thought to change into a worm’.63 The two terms and the definition point to an origin in Réaumur’s article. But Réaumur’s new explanation of the caterpillar fungus is not invoked. Jeff Loveland indicates that ‘from 1800 onward, it is difficult to find a year in which an encyclopedia was not being published’.64 Concomitant with the boom in the publication of encyclopaedias as a prevalent medium for knowledge proliferation was the emergence of The Cyclopaedia compiled by the Welsh encyclopaedist Abraham Rees (1743–1825). The 1819 edition of this encyclopaedia includes the terms ‘HIASTAOTOMTEHOM’ and ‘Plante-Ver’, respectively. The former is ‘a Chinese name’, denoting ‘a plant, the root of which is said to change, at a certain time, into a worm’. The emphasis in the paraphrase is on Réaumur’s coinage of ‘plante ver’ and his discovery 62 Dov Ospovat, The Development of Darwin’s Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838–1859, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 87–114; Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 209– 250; Mary P. Winsor, ‘Taxonomy Was the Foundation of Darwin’s Evolution’, Taxon, 2009, 58(1): 43–49. 63 Lewis Chambaud, A New Dictionary, English and French, and French and English (Vol. 2, Part 2), Jean-Thomas Hérissant des Carrières (ed.), London: Printed for Cadell and Davies, etc., 1815, p. 34. 64 Jeff Loveland, The European Encyclopedia: From 1650 to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, p. 11.

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of the ‘whole truth’ of the transformation.65 The paraphrase of the term ‘Plante-Ver’, relatively much longer, provides a synopsis of the relevant article by Réaumur who ‘has well observed, that in the present improved state of natural knowledge, we can give no credit to such marvellous accounts [by the Chinese]’.66 Rees’s encyclopaedia accentuated absorption of the latest scientific discoveries.67 But in the case of the caterpillar fungus, Rees was apparently unaware of Fougeroux de Bondaroy’s critique of Réaumur’s discovery. Dictionaries and encyclopaedias perhaps played no less important a role in incorporating and disseminating global natural knowledge. Due to factors such as technical developments, the cheapness and quality of printed matter as the foremost intellectual vehicle in nineteenth-century Europe had reached unprecedented levels, making science more accessible to growing literate populations.68 Scientific specialists, such as the English entomologist John O. Westwood, also referred to encyclopaedias and the like in order to acquire information about exotics. When Westwood exhibited some specimens of the caterpillar fungus at the meeting of the Entomological Society of London on 1 March 1841, he made mention of its Chinese name in Rees’s The Cyclopaedia. Names received attention because they mattered for establishing corresponding relationships between European and exotic taxonomic positions of the same organisms, and were necessary in their procurement. Despite being an entomological expert, Westwood identified the fungal parts of the specimens as ‘Clavaria Entomorhiza’, though without giving any details about

65 Abraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia (Vol. 17), London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, &

Brown, 1819, p. 774. ‘STAO’ and ‘TEHOM ’ in the entry are obviously misspellings. 66 Abraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia (Vol. 27), London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1819, p. 607. In the paraphrase of the term ‘Plante-Ver’, the Chinese name of the caterpillar fungus is misspelt again as ‘hiatsaotonetchom’. The ‘tone’ should be ‘tom’. 67 Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 66–69. 68 Aileen Fyfe, Steam-Powered Knowledge: William Chambers and the Business of

Publishing, 1820–1860, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 1–12; Angela Schwarz, ‘Intersecting Anglo-German Networks in Popular Science and Their Functions in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Heather Ellis and Ulrike Kirchberger (eds.), Anglo-German Scholarly Networks in the Long Nineteenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 65–66.

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the identification.69 He left aside the specific identification of the larvae perhaps because of the difficulty in identifying an unknown insect based merely on the morphological characteristics of its immature larva.70 Westwood’s pursuit of ‘the truth’ of the caterpillar fungus, in accord with Fougeroux de Bondaroy’s want of facts and Rees’s compliment about the whole truth, prompted him to seek a true explanation of its formation. In 1835, he had already noticed the natural history of ‘parasitical plants found on insects’ as described by naturalists from Joseph Torrubia to John Hill. Westwood himself basically held the opinion that the ‘seeds’ of the fungus alighted on the larva, near its head; being there fixed, they grew and obtained nourishment from the larva, and finally caused its death. More than theoretical speculation, he dissected the larva, finding that ‘the root of the fungus entirely occupies the whole interior portion [of the larva] from the head to the opposite end’.71 Westwood’s identification and his opinion suggest Hill’s influence, as Hill envisioned the ‘seeds’ of the Clavaria fungi and proposed a similar but not identical view in 1763. In the meantime, probably benefiting from his dissection of the larva, he realised that it was the larva’s head rather than tail that was connected with the fungus, which thereby modified the theory of the caterpillar fungus’s formation. Not much later, the English pharmacognosist Jonathan Pereira, who seemed to be unaware of Westwood’s identification, made an attempt to determine the species of both the fungus and the larva parts that constituted the caterpillar fungus. His 1843 article about the caterpillar fungus contains relevant information from Reeves but also refers to Du Halde, Thunberg and Rees. By that time, Pereira had already established that it was ‘a caterpillar, out of whose neck grows a vegetable (a fungus or mushroom)’; the fungus, ‘a slender club-shaped body’, projected from the back of the caterpillar’s neck. He identified the

69 William W. Saunders, ‘March 1st.-W. W. Saunders, Esq., F.L.S., President, in the Chair’, Journal of Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London, 1841, 1: 22–26, 22–23. 70 Penny J. Gullan and Peter S. Cranston, The Insects: An Outline of Entomology, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014, pp. 196–197, 491. 71 See, for example, James Rennie and John O. Westwood, The Natural History of Insects (Vol. 2), London: John Murray, 1835, pp. 296–301. The words ‘parasitical plants found on insects’ appear in the title of the eighteenth chapter which mentions the caterpillar fungus in China.

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fungus as a species of the genus Sphaeria, which he thought was ‘closely allied to the Sphaeria entomorrhiza’. The caterpillar was then preliminarily identified as a ‘lepidopterous’ insect, one belonging to the order of Lepidoptera. To ascertain its species, Pereira turned to the English entomologist Edward Doubleday (1810–1849). Doubleday was an expert in Lepidoptera, appointed assistant in the zoological department of the British Museum in 1841. After carefully examining ‘a very perfect larva’ given to Pereira by Reeves, Doubleday formed the opinion that it was a species of the genus Agrotis.72 This genus is normally considered to be established in 1816,73 while the genus Sphaeria, though introduced in 1768, was first properly described in 1791.74 Both Pereira and Doubleday’s identifications were based on their predecessors’ taxonomic research. To identify the caterpillar fungus, Pereira himself referred at least to Miles J. Berkeley’s Fungi (1836), William J. Hooker’s (1785–1865) Icones Plantarum (1837) and Ernest Dieffenbach’s Travels in New Zealand (1843).75 Berkeley’s Fungi seems to have contributed more to his identification, as he only quoted Berkeley’s descriptions of the genus Sphaeria as well as the species Sphaeria entomorrhiza. Behind the genus Sphaeria, characterised in part by features of microscopic structures, was the hierarchy of Berkeley’s classification scheme as epitomised in the subordination of the genus to the tribe Pyrenomycetes, suborder Gasteromycetes, order Fungi and class Cryptogamia. Pereira was not a specialist in the systematics of fungi or insects. Though curious about the caterpillar fungus as a natural production, his

72 Jonathan Pereira, ‘Notice of a Chinese Article of the Materia Medica, Called ‘Summer-Plant-Winter-Worm’’, Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 1843, 2(9): 591–594. 73 Ferdinand Ochsenheimer, Die Schmetterlinge von Europa (Band 4), Leipzig: Fleischer, 1816, p. 66; Germán San Blas, ‘Agrotis Ochsenheimer (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae): A Systematic Analysis of South American Species’, Zootaxa, 2014, 3771(1): 1–64. 74 Alberti von Haller, Historia Stirpium Indigenarum Helvetiae Inchoata (Tomus 3), Bernae: Societatis Typographicae, 1768, p. 120; Henrico Julio Tode, Fungi Mecklenburgenses Selecti (Fasciculus 2), Luneburgi: Joh. Fried. Guil. Lemke, 1791, p. 7. 75 Miles J. Berkeley, The English Flora (Vol. 5, Part 2), London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, 1836, pp. 232–233; William J. Hooker, Icones Plantarum (Vol. 1), London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1837, Tab. XI; Ernest Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand (Vol. 2), London: John Murray, 1843, pp. 124, 284.

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main concern, as clearly indicated in his article title, was with its medicinal properties. His colleagues were also enthusiastic about exotic medicinal substances and their effects, as exemplified by the Irish physician William B. O’Shaughnessy (1808–1889). At the meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain on 8 February 1843, O’Shaughnessy, then on furlough from Bengal, presented two Bengali specimens of the Cannabis indica (or ‘Indian hemp’) and the bark of the Strychnos nux-vomica, together with his accounts of their therapeutic effects.76 Earlier, the two medicinal substances had already been recorded in a pharmacopoeia for Bengal and Upper India, which was compiled by him and published in 1842.77 In terms of materia medica, the importance Pereira attached to taxonomic identification formed in part the basis of the procurement of medicinal substances from around the world. Combining taxonomic identification with image making, then, would improve the accuracy of discernment. This helps to understand why Pereira additionally made two drawings of the caterpillar fungus in its individual and collectively tied forms. The tied form, according to Reeves, represented the packaged caterpillar fungus sold on the market. Hence, the drawings can also be considered to have mirrored both commercial utility and scientific knowledge production that moved together hand-in-hand within transnational networks. Miles J. Berkeley’s Identification of Sphaeria Sinensis and Its Aftermath The participation of mycologists in identifying the fungal species of the caterpillar fungus began with Miles J. Berkeley. His 1836 monograph on fungi, part of a series of British flora, provided the first comprehensive list of English fungi as a separate category of the plant world.78 The terms ‘mycology’ and ‘mycologist(s)’, appearing here and there

76 Anonymous, ‘Dr. O’Shaughnessy, Cannabis Indica, Strychnos Nux vomica’, Pharma-

ceutical Journal and Transactions, 1843, 2(9): 594–595. 77 William B. O’Shaughnessy, The Bengal Dispensatory and Companion to the Pharmacopoeia, London: William H. Allen and Co., 1842, pp. 262, 579–580. 78 David N. Pegler, ‘Advances in Tropical Mycology Initiated by British Mycologists’, in Brian C. Sutton (ed.), A Century of Mycology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 53–79, 53.

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in the monograph, are still in wide use today.79 According to Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, mycology as a discipline has its origin in the early eighteenth century; in addition to microscopy, the application of pure culture techniques in the latter half of the nineteenth century also fostered the development of mycology, especially medical mycology.80 Regarding taxonomic mycology, identifications of European and exotic fungi had never ceased. They involved not only the assignment and rectification of scientific names for fungal species, but also the establishment of the proximity of relationships among fungi within hierarchical categories. Particularly, in Berkeley’s times European colonial expansion brought substantial increases in collections of specimens from different countries. As time went on, by 1970 the herbarium of Kew Gardens, for example, had reached a total of around 4 188 000 specimens among which some 275 000 were types.81 Since the late nineteenth century, Kew Gardens had also become a world centre for taxonomic research on fungi. In 2010, it had already held the world’s largest fungarium, possessing approximately 1.25 million fungal specimens, including 45,000 types.82 Part of this fungarium, as mentioned before, originated from Berkeley’s collection. Berkeley described the caterpillar fungus, ‘a celebrated drug in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia’, in his 1843 account of seven entomogenous fungi. He first briefly introduced several eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury discoveries of fungi that developed on insects, giving Réaumur credit as the first European to notice such productions. He identified the caterpillar fungus as Sphaeria Sinensis. The use of ‘Sinensis’ suggests his

79 Miles J. Berkeley, The English Flora (Vol. 5, Part 2), pp. 7–8, 159, 219, 281, 298,

326. 80 Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology, p. 4. See also Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Medical and Veterinary Mycology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 40–41; Ana Victoria Espinel-Ingroff, Medical Mycology in the United States: A Historical Analysis (1894–1996), Dordrecht: Springer, 2003, pp. 1–9. 81 John P. M. Brenan and R. G. Carter, ‘The Counting of the Kew Herbarium’, Kew Bulletin, 1972, 26(3): 423–426; Lucile H. Brockway, ‘Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens’, American Ethnologist, 1979, 6: 449–465. 82 Brian Spooner, ‘Largest Fungarium in the World’, Kew Scientist, 2010, (37): 1; Brian Spooner and Paul Cannon, ‘World’s Largest Collection of Fungi Held at Kew Gardens’, Mycologist News, 2010, (1): 8–9; David L. Hawksworth, ‘Funga and Fungarium’, IMA Fungus, 2010, 1(1): 9.

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recognition of the fungus as a species from China, which accords with his record of the fungus’s habitat, namely China. Berkeley also offered a detailed observation on its morphological features, stating that ‘the specimens figured by Réaumur were imperfect, and therefore their true nature was not recognised’. Additionally, he made his own drawings of two specimens: ‘radiating appearance of a fractured stem’ and a few microscopic structures (‘filaments’ and ‘globules’). However, there existed a deficiency in the specimens examined by Berkeley, as was reflected in his failure to find in the specimens ‘fully developed’ perithecia (fruiting bodies). In fact, he failed to detect ‘perfect asci and sporidia’ in the specimens of all the seven fungal species. Therefore, he wrote, his characterisation of the species would be ‘necessarily imperfect’.83 From the second half of the nineteenth century, as will be discussed below, the deficiency became the seed of controversy about whether or not the specimens of the caterpillar fungus examined by Berkeley could be used as types. Berkeley’s identification of the caterpillar fungus was afterwards widely accepted by natural historians. John Lindley’s work The Vegetable Kingdom (1846) and its later editions, for example, introduced the fungus and its scientific name ‘Sphaeria sinensis, Berk.’ in the medical context.84 ‘Berk.’, an abbreviation of Berkeley, was added after the specific epithet in order to indicate Berkeley as the authority for the binomial name. On 4 November 1856, Berkeley read a mycological article before the Linnean Society of London. This time he turned attention to his collection of nearly five thousand species of fungi from the United States, alleging to report on the entomogenous fungi as ‘the most curious and interesting’ of the collection. The caterpillar fungus, emphasised by Berkeley again as a drug used in China, was transferred together with some other fungi to the genus Cordyceps, without any explanation.85 The scientific name for the caterpillar fungus was thus changed from Sphaeria Sinensis to Cordyceps sinensis. The genus Cordyceps was first described in

83 Miles J. Berkeley, ‘On Some Entomogenous Sphaeriae’, pp. 205–211. 84 John Lindley, The Vegetable Kingdom, London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846, p. 39;

John Lindley, The Vegetable Kingdom, London: Bradbury and Evans, [1846] 1847, p. 39; John Lindley, The Vegetable Kingdom, London: Bradbury and Evans, [1846] 1853, p. 39. 85 Miles J. Berkeley, ‘On Some Entomogenous Sphaeriae’, Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London: Botany, 1857, 1: 157–159.

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1833,86 and could be traced back to the genus Cordylia introduced in 1818.87 Berkeley himself also adopted the new scientific name elsewhere in his publications, such as in an 1857 botanical work on cryptogams, which are a group of organisms reproducing by spores.88 Regardless of Berkeley’s efforts, this new name did not receive extensive notice from mycological taxonomists before the late nineteenth century, as exemplified by them neglecting to use it in the Nomenclator Fungorum (1862) and Index Fungorum (1863).89 In the late 1870s and early 1880s, the involvement of the Italian mycologist Pier Andrea Saccardo (1845–1920) somewhat obscured the provenance of the new binomial for the caterpillar fungus. In his 1878 article about the taxonomy of the family Hypocreaceae, Saccardo assigned the caterpillar fungus to the genus Cordyceps , and recorded its scientific name as ‘C. sinensis Berk.’.90 What he referred to was Berkeley’s 1843 article, in which the fungus is actually named Sphaeria Sinensis. Hence, Saccardo’s article might mislead readers to believe that Berkeley named the fungus Cordyceps sinensis as early as 1843. So had Saccardo ever read Berkeley’s later account? If so, why did he not cite it? If not, why did he change the genus name yet still indicate ‘Berk.’ rather than ‘Sacc.’ or ‘(Berk.) Sacc.’ in the scientific name? More likely, Saccardo was unaware of Berkeley’s adjustment to the scientific name of the fungus. In the second volume of his monograph claiming to have included all fungi hitherto known, published in 1883, however, Saccardo further modified the scientific name to ‘Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc.’, citing his own 1878 article and Berkeley’s 1843

86 Heinrich F. Link, Handbuch zur Erkennung der Nutzbarsten und am Häufigsten Vorkommenden Gewächse (Theil 3), Berlin: Spenerschen Buchhandlung, 1833, p. 346. 87 Elias M. Fries, Observationes Mycologicae (Pars 2), Hafniae: Sumtibus Gerhardi Bonnieri, 1818, p. 316. 88 Miles J. Berkeley, Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany, London: H. Bailliere, 1857,

p. 283. 89 Wenzel M. Streinz, Nomenclator Fungorum, Vindobonae: Carolus Gorischek, 1862, p. 563; Hermann Hoffmann, Index Fungorum, Lipsiae: Sumptibus A. Förstneri, 1863, p. 128. 90 Pier A. Saccardo, ‘Enumeratio Pyrenomycetum Hypocreaceorum Hucusque Congitorum Systemate Carpologico Dispositorum’, Michelia, 1878, 1: 277–325, 320.

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article.91 By using ‘(Berk.) Sacc.’, Saccardo declared his modification of the previous binomial given by Berkeley and his own authorship of the new binomial. The possibility that Saccardo ignored Berkeley’s update so as to take the credit himself for the new identification cannot be entirely ruled out. But in any case, due to the influence of Saccardo’s work, ‘Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc.’ gradually became the most widely used scientific name for the caterpillar fungus before the beginning of the twenty-first century.92 Even the Scottish writer and painter Constance F. GordonCumming (1837–1924), in her travel notes published in 1886, related Cordyceps sinensis to the ‘summer grass of the winter worm’, a strange but also prized and favoured tonic delicacy she saw at a Chinese dinner party in Fuzhou in 1879.93 But the process of reception did not go smoothly. Based in part on the herbarium of Kew Gardens, the English mycologist Mordecai C. Cooke (1825–1914) revisited Saccardo’s sylloge of fungi, and soon published some notes on the family Hypocreaceae in 1884. He provided a new description of the caterpillar fungus, and meanwhile named the species ‘Cordyceps sinensis, Berk.’.94 This indicates his rejection of Saccardo as the authority for the binomial Cordyceps sinensis. However, the English mycologist George E. Massee (1850–1917) adopted the scientific name in Saccardo’s sylloge of fungi into his revision of the genus Cordyceps in 1895.95 Regardless of the authority issue, the prevalence of the binomial Cordyceps sinensis in and beyond scientific communities in the late nineteenth through twentieth centuries was tantamount to the acknowledgement of the taxonomic ‘truth’ about the caterpillar fungus discovered and verified by a series of European mycologists.

91 Pier A. Saccardo, Sylloge Fungorum Omnium Hucusque Cognitorum (Vol. 2), Patavii: Sumptibus Auctoris, 1883, p. 577. 92 In 2007 a group of mycologists suggested assigning the caterpillar fungus into the genus ‘Ophiocordyceps ’ and renaming it ‘Ophiocordyceps sinensis (Berk.) G.H. Sung, J.M. Sung, Hywel-Jones & Spatafora’, see Gi-Ho Sung et al., ‘Phylogenetic Classification of Cordyceps and the Clavicipitaceous Fungi’, Studies in Mycology, 2007, 57: 5–59, 46. 93 Constance F. Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China (Vol. 1), Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1886, p. 224. 94 Mordecai C. Cooke, ‘Notes on Hypocreaceae’, Grevillea, 1884, 12(63): 77–83, 78. 95 George Massee, ‘A Revision of the Genus Cordyceps’, Annals of Botany, 1895,

9(33): 1–44, 24–25.

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Another issue relating to Berkeley’s identification concerns typification. Joeri Witteveen points out that the meaning of type in nineteenth-century European natural history shifted from classificatory models to nomenclatural stability, and this course was accompanied by the phenomenon of ‘suppressing synonymy with a homonym’.96 The popularisation of the binomial Cordyceps sinensis was accompanied by occasional use of synonyms or irregular spellings of Cordyceps or sinensis. Examples include the ‘Cordiceps sinensis ’ in Berkeley’s introduction to British mycology in 186097 ; the ‘Cordiceps chinensis ’ in Adolphe Gubler’s (1821–1879) report on Chinese materia medica98 ; the ‘Cordyceps chinensis ’ and ‘Corydyceps chinensis ’ in Alexander C. Jones’s article about the caterpillar fungus in 189199 ; and the ‘Sphaeria chinensis ’ in the formerly mentioned 1856 catalogue by Alexander A. Tatarinov. Torrubia sinensis as another binomial for the caterpillar fungus, proposed in 1865,100 was also occasionally used by mycologists such as Mordecai C. Cooke.101 But as David L. Hawksworth points out, the validation of the genus Torrubia in 1865 involved a species (Torrubia militaris or Cordyceps militaris ) that had already been used to typify the genus Cordyceps in 1833. In this case, Torrubia was actually superfluous, as ‘Cordyceps could have been used, and Torrubia is thus unacceptable (illegitimate).’102 From the

96 Joeri Witteveen, ‘Suppressing Synonymy with a Homonym: The Emergence of the Nomenclatural Type Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History’, Journal of the History of Biology, 2016, 49(1): 135–189. Cf. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, pp. 109–111; Staffan Müller-Wille, ‘Names and Numbers: ‘Data’ in Classical Natural History, 1758–1859’, Osiris, 2017, 32(1): 109–128. 97 Miles J. Berkeley, Outlines of British Fungology, London: Lovell Reeve, 1860, p. 66. 98 Adolphe Gubler, ‘Report of M. Gubler Upon the Materia Medica of the Chinese’,

The China Review, 1874, 3(2): 119–124, 121. 99 Alexander C. Jones, ‘The Chinese Insect-Fungus Drug’, Insect Life, 1891, 4(3–4): 216–218, 216. 100 Ludovicus-Renatus Tulasne and Carolus Tulasne, Selecta Fungorum Carpologia (Tomus 3), Parisiis: Imperatoris Jussu, In Imperiali Typographeo Excudebatur, 1865, pp. 13–14. 101 Mordecai C. Cooke, ‘Insect Fungi’, Science-Gossip, 1866, 2(18): 127–130, 130; Mordecai C. Cooke, Fungi: Their Nature, Influence, and Uses, London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875, p. 103. 102 David L. Hawksworth, ‘The Naming of Fungi’, in David J. McLaughlin et al. (eds.), The Mycota: Systematics and Evolution (Vol. 7, Part B), New York: Springer-Verlag, 2001, pp. 171–192, 180.

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late nineteenth century onwards, Cordyceps sinensis gradually became the stabilised binomial for the caterpillar fungus and thereby contributed to the reduction of nomenclatural chaos to order. The specimens examined and identified by Berkeley in 1843 served as type specimens of the caterpillar fungus, and were transferred to Kew Gardens in 1879. However, since Berkeley stated in 1843 that the specimens had immature perithecia and imperfect sporidia, could they still be recognised as type specimens of the caterpillar fungus? In view of this, Mordecai C. Cooke stressed in 1892 that he had successfully observed ‘quite mature sporidia, breaking up as usual into truncate joints’ during his 1884 examination of the specimens.103 Massee, who examined the same specimens in order to revise the genus Cordyceps, reported in 1895 that the head of one of the specimens depicted by Berkeley was ‘shown to be compressed and inclined to branch at the apex’, and ‘the flattening appears…to be due to shrinkage, being immature and soft when collected’.104 Controversy over the type specimens of the caterpillar fungus extended into the twenty-first century due to varied observational results on perithecia and sporidia.105 In particular, it underlined the importance of microscopic structures as a key feature that determined the validity of type specimens as anchors for the species name Sphaeria sinensis or Cordyceps sinensis. Identification of the Caterpillar Though the fungal part of the caterpillar fungus was identified separately, the caterpillar that constituted half of the combination obviously contributed to the characterisation and identification of the fungus. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the caterpillar was also identified anew. The English zoologist George R. Gray (1808–1872) of the British Museum published his examination and drawing of the caterpillar

103 Mordecai C. Cooke, Vegetable Wasps and Plant Worms, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1892, pp. 204–205. See also Mordecai C. Cooke, ‘Notes on Hypocreaceae’, Grevillea, 1884, 12(63): 77–83, 78. 104 George Massee, ‘A Revision of the Genus Cordyceps’, p. 24. 105 Zang Mu and Noriko Kinjo, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Moshi Biaoben De Yanjiu’, Acta

Botanica Yunnanica, 1996, 18(2): 205–208; Liu Zuoyi et al., ‘Dongchong Xiacao Xianwei Jiegou Zaiguancha He Zinang Baozi Fayu Yanjiu’, Guizhou Kexue, 2003, 21(1–2): 51–57, 68.

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fungus as ‘the far-famed Chinese ‘Summer-plant Winter-insect’’ in 1858. Gray disagreed with Edward Doubleday’s identification, but tentatively ascribed the caterpillar to the genus Gortyna of the family Noctuidae. This genus was first proposed in 1816.106 Concerning its development and interplay with the fungus, he wrote, The caterpillar, which is of a light yellowish-brown colour, probably bores into and feeds on the roots of aquatic plants that grow abundantly in the marshy ground on the sides of the numerous rivers and canals of China; ... The insect can only be discovered by the appearance of the plant, which, soon after it is attacked, begins to droop and look sickly. After the parasite comes in contact with the caterpillar, the latter buries itself in the earth: it first turns with its head upwards; and then, being apparently checked by the presence of the parasite internally, it remains in that position, and the outer plant naturally grows upwards and breaks its way out, probably through the suture of the labium. As it increases in size, it splits the head into two parts, as is shown in the figure. Like the others that grow in the same manner, the stem is thick throughout, with the apex somewhat flattened and rather broad, so much so as to be palmated in some specimens.107

Like previous scholars, Gray interpreted the caterpillar fungus without having observed its whole life cycle. His description of its formation relied on specimens, previous descriptions and reasoning. For example, he stated that the caterpillar buried itself in the ground and turned with its head upwards because he knew beforehand the shape of the caterpillar fungus and the conjunction of the parasitic plant root and the caterpillar’s head. However, though Gray consulted Carl P. Thunberg’s relevant account, he took it for evidence of the production of the caterpillar fungus in Japan. Such a judgement misled some later mycologists about its geographical distribution.108 Gray and Doubleday’s identification processes are unknown to us in their detail. Their identifications, though different from

106 Ferdinand Ochsenheimer, Die Schmetterlinge von Europa (Band 4), Leipzig:

Fleischer, 1816, p. 82. 107 George R. Gray, Notices of Insects That Are Known to Form the Bases of Fungoid Parasites, Hampstead: Privately Printed, 1858, p. 12. 108 See, for example, George Massee, ‘A Revision of the Genus Cordyceps’, p. 24; Yoshio Kobayashi, ‘The Genus Cordyceps and Its Allies’, Science Reports of the Tokyo Bunrika Daigaku: Section B, 1941, 5(84): 53–260, 75.

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each other at the generic level, both considered the caterpillar a species of moth. Not long afterwards the English Methodist medical missionary Frederick P. Smith (1833–1888) arrived in Hankow (Hankou) on 17 May 1864, and more than one month later opened the Hankow Medical Mission Hospital on 1 July.109 After over six years of medical service in that city, he began to leave for England.110 Based on his previous investigation of the entomology of China, Smith published in 1871 an article on ‘Chinese blistering flies’, in which he considered the caterpillar fungus ‘a capital sample of a Chinese pet medicine’, and identified the caterpillar as a moth of Hepialus ,111 a genus first described in 1775.112 In his book on the materia medica and natural history of China, prefaced 1870 and published the following year, Smith also held this opinion, though he expressed a little uncertainty about the identification, saying that ‘the insect is probably a species of Hepialus ’.113 It is worthwhile adding here that prior to 1871, moths of the genus Hepialus had already been associated with some other fungal species of the genus Sphaeria or Cordyceps.114 In 1843, for example, Jonathan Pereira reported Doubleday’s identification of the insect infected by the fungus Sphaeria robertsii

109 Frederick P. Smith, ‘China: Extract of a Letter from F. Porter Smith, M.D., Dated Hankow, June 28th, 1864’, The Wesleyan Missionary Notices, 1864, 11: 176–177; Frederick P. Smith, The Five Annual Reports of the Hankow Medical Mission Hospital, in Connection with the Wesleyan Missionary Society, Shanghai: Printed at the ‘North-China Herald’ Office, 1869, p. 2. 110 William A. Tatchell, Medical Missions in China in Connexion with the Wesleyan Methodist Church, London: Robert Culley, 1909, pp. 103–105. 111 Frederick P. Smith, ‘Chinese Blistering Flies’, The Medical Times and Gazette, 1871,

1: 689–690. See also Frederick P. Smith, ‘Chinese Blistering Flies’, The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 1871, 2(1): 4. 112 Johann C. Fabricius, Systema Entomologiae, Flensburgi et Lipsiae: In Officina Libraria Kortii, 1775, p. 589. 113 Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, p. 73. 114 Miles J. Berkeley, ‘Decades of Fungi: Decade XX’, The London Journal of Botany,

1848, 7: 572–580, 577–578; John H. Balfour, A Manual of Botany, London: John Joseph Griffin and Co., 1851, p. 554; Randle W. Falconer et al., ‘The Querist’, The Naturalist, 1857, 7: 115–116; Theodor Bail, Mykologische Studien Besonders über die Entwicklung der Sphaeria Typhina Pers., Jena: Friedrich Frommann, 1861, p. 21; Mary Somerville, On Molecular and Microscopic Science (Vol. 1), London: John Murray, 1869, p. 293.

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from New Zealand, i.e. Hepialus virescens.115 Perhaps Smith drew inspiration from such previous taxonomic efforts. Later on, other European scholars gradually spread the idea about the caterpillar’s connection with Hepialus moths, with or without mention of Smith’s name.116 Nowadays, it is known that the fungus Cordyceps sinensis does not parasitise merely one species of caterpillar, and the host caterpillars, some of which still remain in the genus Hepialus , fall within the family Hepialidae.117 By the 1870s, the taxonomic positions of the caterpillar fungus in the European natural order tended to become stable. Understandings of its overall natural-historical properties also tended to converge. Though specimens and information about the caterpillar fungus continued to spread to Europe, their novelty to European natural history more or less decreased. The English naturalist Henry N. Moseley (1844–1891), who voyaged around the world on the ship Challenger during the period 1872–1876, was once ‘astonished’ to find curious specimens of Cordyceps sinensis as ‘a condiment in the sauce of some stewed pigeons’ at a Chinese dinner arranged by a Hong Kong merchant. According to Moseley, the caterpillar fungus represented one of the many Chinese delicacies prized for their ‘gastronomic qualities’ and ‘invigorating medicinal effects’.118 He even sent a letter, accompanied with a commodified bundle of the caterpillar fungus imported from Shanghai, from Hong Kong to the Royal Horticultural Society. Miles J. Berkeley read the letter at the meeting of the scientific committee of the Society on 3 March 1875, telling that the caterpillar fungus was ‘used as food by the Chinese’.119 Later in the month, Berkeley read a communication from Moseley, dated Hong Kong, 31 December 1874, before the Royal Horticultural Society. But he 115 Jonathan Pereira, ‘Notice of a Chinese Article of the Materia Medica, Called ‘Summer-Plant-Winter-Worm’’, p. 594. 116 For example, see Anonymous, ‘Vesicants Chinois’, Journal de Pharmacie et de Chimie, 1872, 15: 62–63; Edward Balfour, The Cyclopaedia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (Vol. 1), London: Bernard Quaritch, 1885, p. 812. 117 Xiao-Liang Wang and Yi-Jian Yao, ‘Host Insect Species of Ophiocordyceps Sinensis: A Review’, ZooKeys, 2011, 127: 43–59. 118 Henry N. Moseley, Notes by a Naturalist on the “Challenger”, Being an Account of Various Observations Made During the Voyage of H.M.S. “Challenger” around the World, in the Years 1872–1876, London: Macmillan and Co., 1879, p. 422. 119 Anonymous, ‘Reports of Societies: Scientific Committee’, The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1875, 3: 314. See also Anonymous, ‘Societies and Academies, London: Royal Horticultural Society’, Nature, 1875, 11(281): 399.

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considered the communication, which reported on the caterpillar fungus including ‘three very questionable looking bodies’ on his dinner plate in Hong Kong, as ‘containing nothing absolutely new’, despite it ‘may be interesting to many of our readers’.120 Underlying Berkeley’s attitude was the accumulation and production of old and new knowledge about the biological nature of the caterpillar fungus itself in Europe. Of course, Europeans had not gathered all exotic knowledge about the caterpillar fungus regarding, for example, its medicinal properties in Chinese medicine. But the information from Moseley seemed to have not extended beyond Berkeley’s expertise. The history of European scientific research on parasitic fungi in animals, in short, starts with Réaumur’s examination of the caterpillar fungus. While this wonder of nature from China was deconstructed by European naturalists, they also transformed it into a scientific wonder in Europe that provided new foundations for research on fungus-animal interactions and the ordering of nature. Moseley’s understanding of the caterpillar fungus received little subsequent scientific attention because decades before John Reeves had already brought specimens of it to Britain, which then induced different natural-historical studies and even became nomenclatural types. As both parts of the caterpillar fungus were being differently placed in the European natural order based on the Linnaean classification system, microscopy empowered taxonomists to gaze deep into invisible structures that were becoming increasingly important in characterising at least the fungal species and its type specimens. The frequently cited Chinese names for the caterpillar fungus then allowed Europeans to establish a correspondence between its positions in the European and Chinese natural orders. Such identifications and correspondences, which enriched the practice of list making in species classification,121 engaged in European programmes of registering global species and would facilitate European procurement or control of exotica. This explains why geographical information of production of such hybrid species as the caterpillar fungus was often of concern to identifiers.

120 Anonymous, ‘The Annual Meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society’, The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1875, 3: 340–342, 342. See also Anonymous, ‘Answers to Correspondents: Vegetable Caterpillar’, The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1879, 11: 89. 121 Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier, ‘Lists as Research Technologies’, Isis, 2012, 103(4): 743–752.

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New Medical Representations Raw domestic and exotic medicinal substances remained in common use in nineteenth-century Europe, though scientific advances especially the ongoing engagement of chemistry and animal experimentation brought new developments in materia medica and therapeutics.122 The British doctor Charles T. Downing, who had inspected ‘the whole of the Materia Medica’ in an apothecary’s shop during his temporary stay in Guangzhou in the latter 1830s, noted different perceptions of materia medica between Europeans and the Chinese. He accounted that many drugs brought from China to Europe were considered by the European medical faculty to possess ‘very excellent qualities’ while being almost disregarded by the Chinese; meanwhile, some drugs believed by European doctors to be ineffective were highly prized in China. Despite a certain common ground between the use of ‘any dirt or rubbish’ in European and Chinese medicine, however, Downing affirmed the recent progress of European (rather than Chinese) materia medica, stating that ‘a few years ago our own Materia Medica contained articles of the most ridiculous character, but which are now completely neglected by our more enlightened physicians.’123 Some ten years later, the American missionary and sinologist Samuel W. Williams (1812–1884) criticised the Chinese for being unscientific in ‘all departments of learning’, and ignorant of ‘the use of acids and reagents’ in medicine which highlighted ‘more knowledge of chemistry’ than the Chinese possessed.124 The famous work Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1578), in his mind, 122 Melvin P. Earles, Studies in the Development of Experimental Pharmacology in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (PhD Dissertation), London: University College, London, 1961, pp. 110–320; Glenn Sonnedecker (ed.), Kremers and Urdang’s History of Pharmacy, Madison: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1986, pp. 353–364; William F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 119–123; Paula De Vos, ‘European Materia Medica in Historical Texts: Longevity of a Tradition and Implications for Future Use’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2010, 132(1): 28–47; Alan W. Jones, ‘Early Drug Discovery and the Rise of Pharmaceutical Chemistry’, Drug Testing and Analysis, 2011, 3(6): 337–344; Bob Zebroski, A Brief History of Pharmacy: Humanity’s Search for Wellness, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 104–111. 123 Charles T. Downing, The Fan-Qui in China, in 1836–7 (Vol. 2), London: Henry Colburn, 1838, pp. 144–145, 149–150. 124 Samuel W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom (Vol. 2), New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1848, pp. 186, 192.

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contained ‘a deal of incorrect and useless matter’.125 In the late nineteenth century, however, Williams added his endorsement of the potential value of Chinese medical recipes to ‘the foreign student’.126 Of nineteenth-century European works on materia medica, Jonathan Pereira’s monograph The Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, initially published under the title ‘The Elements of Materia Medica’ in 1839–1840, was noted for its extensive integration of the most important modern pharmacological discoveries in natural history, chemistry, physiology and therapeutics, as well as its arrangement of the subjects in the order of their natural-historical relations. The entry on ‘Sphaeria Sinensis, Berk.’, for example, appears in the third American edition of 1854, subject to the suborder Pyrenomycetes, which is a group of fungi with perithecia. The information in the entry mainly originates from Pereira’s 1843 article on the caterpillar fungus, but it also incorporates Berkeley’s specific identification.127 Classifying the caterpillar fungus and many other substances as to the taxonomy of species rather than their medicinal properties undermined the practicality of the monograph in medication as well as teaching and learning about the similarities and differences between the substances as drugs. But it helped to obtain authentic medicinal substances from nature or trade markets. Since the mid-nineteenth century, there have often been European medical authors seeking to integrate information about the caterpillar fungus into their works on regional or global materia medica. For example, the Welsh pharmacist Theophilus Redwood (1806–1892) introduced the caterpillar fungus’s scientific and Chinese names, its ‘strengthening and renovating properties’, and the way of preparing and eating it with duck in his 1857 book A Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia. This book, a new edition of his revision of the English pharmacologist Samuel F. Gray’s (1766–1828) supplement to the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, also arranged medicinal substances as to taxa. Unexpectedly,

125 Samuel W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom (Vol. 1), New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1848, p. 288. 126 Samuel W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom (Vol. 2), London: W. H. Allen & Co., [1848] 1883, p. 128. 127 Jonathan Pereira, The Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics (Vol. 2), Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, [1842] 1854, pp. 90–91.

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Redwood only recorded Tibet as its production area.128 In France, Jean L. Soubeiran and Philibert Dabry de Thiersant published their treatise on Chinese materia medica in Paris in 1874. They recorded the caterpillar fungus’s effects on ‘jaunisse’ (jaundice) and ‘phthisie’ (phthisis), as well as the ability of the duck cooked with the fungus to endow people with ‘prouesses génésiques les plus grandes’ (the greatest reproductive prowess).129 In a French monograph on Sino-Annamese materia medica, published in Paris in 1907, the authors Emile Perrot and Paul Hurrier gathered some medical knowledge about the caterpillar fungus from existing publications, and added that it was called ‘Trung-thao’ in Aannamite and tasted as delicious as European ‘truffes’ (truffles).130 In Germany, the pharmacist Georg Dragendorff also included the caterpillar fungus, or ‘Seidenraupenpilz’ (silkworm fungus), in his 1898 ambitious work on more than 12,700 medicinal plants of different nations and times. But he just simply recorded its scientific and Chinese names and China as its production area.131 These European authors all anchored the caterpillar fungus and other medicinal species into the binomial system of classification. A more detailed and new reference for those expecting to learn about the medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus was the formerly mentioned English medical missionary Frederick P. Smith’s Contributions towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China. This work was published in Shanghai and London in 1871, with the assistance of the Irishman Robert Hart (1835–1911), Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs during the period 1863–1911. Smith, primarily intent on expanding Benjamin Hobson’s (1816–1873) English-Chinese medical vocabulary,132 compiled the work on the basis of his examination of Chinese and Euro-American textual information on materia medica and 128 Theophilus Redwood, A Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia, London: Longman and Co., 1857, pp. 565–566. 129 Jean L. Soubeiran and Philibert Dabry de Thiersant, La Matière Médicale chez les Chinois, Paris: G. Masson, 1874, pp. 88–89. 130 Emile Perrot and Paul Hurrier, Matière Médicale et Pharmacopée Sino-Annamites, Paris: Vigot Frères, 1907, pp. 70–71. 131 Georg Dragendorff, Die Heilpflanzen der Verschiedenen Völker und Zeiten, Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1898, p. 32. 132 Benjamin Hobson, A Medical Vocabulary in English and Chinese, Shanghai: Shanghai Mission Press, 1858.

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natural history as well as his collection of ‘the best native drugs’ in his leisure time in Hankou, Hubei province. The integration of EuroAmerican and Chinese knowledge about medicinal substances accounted for the word ‘contributions’ in the title of his work, which was originally sketched to be ‘Contributions towards an Anglo-Chinese Materia Medica, for the use of Medical Missionaries and Native Students’. Smith intended the work for ‘travellers, military camps or gunboats in the interior, and Mission Hospitals, as well as Coolie-depôts of Chinese resident in foreign countries’, and hoped that it would ‘have some practical value, in suggesting the best available remedies, or substitutes for foreign drugs dictated by necessity or economy’.133 In his hospital in Hankou, some Chinese medicinal substances had been employed in the way he suggested.134 Such a global context of the search for effective drugs also applied to the aforementioned Irish physician William B. O’Shaughnessy who, while in Bengal, made attempts to seek and record substitutes for European drugs.135 Smith valued Chinese drugs but asserted the superiority of ‘the chemical science of the West’ over Chinese materia medica.136 The articles in Smith’s work were also described in English and arranged alphabetically according to the first letters of their Latin or English names. The work was actually aimed at English rather than Chinese audiences. Probably to make it easier for Britons or Westerners to obtain the Cordyceps sinensis (or ‘Hia-ts‘au-tung-ch‘ung ’) and further use it as a medicinal substitute, Smith paid special attention to related commercial and geographical information. He not only described the commodity form (bundles) of the caterpillar fungus, but also pointed out that ‘the present supply comes from Kia-ting fu [i.e. Jiading] in Sech‘uen [i.e. Sichuan]’, despite ‘it is 133 Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, pp. v–vii. 134 Frederick P. Smith, The Five Annual Reports of the Hankow Medical Mission Hospital, in Connection with the Wesleyan Missionary Society, p. 28; Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, pp. 10, 42, 122, 149. 135 William B. O’Shaughnessy, The Bengal Dispensatory and Companion to the Pharmacopoeia, London: William H. Allen and Co., 1842, pp. x, 209, 219, 224, 240, 383, 490–491. 136 Frederick P. Smith, The Sixth Annual Report of the Hankow Medical Mission Hospital, in Connection with the Wesleyan Missionary Society, Shanghai: Printed at the ‘North-China Herald’ Office, 1870, p. 15.

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said to be common in southern Thibet’. In his eyes, it was no longer so rare as in Du Halde’s times. This could be attributed to further exploitation of the natural resource of the caterpillar fungus by his time. As for medicinal properties, Smith recorded that it was used in ‘jaundice, phthisis and in cases of injury of any serious nature’.137 Using the caterpillar fungus to treat jaundice and phthisis had not been reported in previous Chinese and Euro-American literature, so it is reasonable to speculate that Smith knew of this through his medical practice or his contacts with the Chinese. In 1911, a revision of Smith’s work, undertaken by the American Methodist medical missionary George A. Stuart, came out. Stuart did not significantly adapt Smith’s account of the caterpillar fungus, but mainly appended some words on the duck-caterpillar fungus recipe.138 Maritime Customs’s Publication of Information on Chinese Medicines Both Smith and Stuart had consulted Chinese Maritime Customs publications.139 Aside from Robert Hart’s assistance, Smith’s Contributions also benefited from the specimens of drugs forwarded by Herbert E. Hobson of the Hankou Customs.140 Smith himself expected that by referring to his Contributions ‘examiners of drugs in countries visited or colonised by the Chinese, will find some little help in deciding upon the nature of drugs passing through Customs’ stations.’141 For Chinese Maritime Customs, the actual need to administer imports and exports inevitably raised concerns about Chinese medicinal substances as an important category of goods in circulation. On 7 February 1884, Frank A. Morgan (1844–1907) of the Yichang Customs wrote to Robert Hart, reporting 137 Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, p. 73. 138 George A. Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica, Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1911, pp. 126–127. 139 See, for example, Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, pp. v, 116, 170, 201, 207; George A. Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica, pp. 4–5, 7, 9. 140 Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, p. v; Herbert E. Hobson, ‘Hankow Trade Report, for the Year 1869’, in Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Reports on Trade at the Treaty Ports in China, for the Year 1869, Shanghai: Printed at the Customs Press, 1870, pp. 17–35. 141 Frederick P. Smith, Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China, p. vii.

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his compilation of a list of Chinese medicines last year in order to eliminate future trouble about what could be classed as a medicine. Eight months later, on 6 October 1884, Robert Hart issued a circular to instruct the Commissioners of Customs to note the names, quantities, value and production places of the medicines passed inwards or outwards from 1 November 1884 to 31 October 1885, and send copies of their lists to the Statistical Secretary in November 1885. This led to the publication of the aforementioned List of Chinese Medicines in Shanghai in 1889.142 One year before, the Customs had printed another long and meticulous list of Chinese medicines exported from Hankou and the other ports on the Yangtze River. The first text in the reference list was Smith’s Contributions. Smith’s book, however, placed emphasis on gathering medical and natural-historical knowledge, while Customs regulation demanded ‘a condensed and convenient form’ of information about medicines, which made Smith’s book ‘not very handy as a work of reference to the Customs Officer’.143 This handy list of Chinese medicines was later revised and printed twice in 1909 and 1917. These lists, all recording the caterpillar fungus,144 mainly served commercial and administrative rather than medical purposes. The medical officers in the services of the Chinese Maritime Customs, however, were more concerned with uses of the caterpillar fungus and other Chinese medicines. In 1884, an epitome of their medical reports was published in London, in which there was a long enumeration of Chinese medicines whose scientific nomenclature had been partly verified by Joseph D. Hooker (1817–1911) and Daniel Oliver (1830–1916) of Kew Gardens; it was said that ‘although in China the art of medicine is in decadence, … the art of pharmacy appears to be in a better state’.145 Both the 142 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of Chinese Medicines, pp. v–vii. 143 R. Braun, List of Medicines Exported from Hankow and the Other Yangtze Ports,

Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1888, pp. v–vi. 144 For example, see R. Braun, List of Medicines Exported from Hankow and the Other Yangtze Ports, p. 11; Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of Chinese Medicines, p. 64; R. Braun, List of Medicines Exported from Hankow and the Other Yangtze Ports, James A. Tipp (ed.), Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, [1888] 1909, p. 11; R. Braun, List of Medicines Exported from Hankow and the Other Yangtze Ports, W. J. Lye (ed.), Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, [1888] 1917, p. 11. 145 Charles A. Gordon, An Epitome of the Reports of the Medical Officers to the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, from 1871 to 1882, London: Baillière, Tindall, and

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medical officers and Commissioners of Customs paid attention to scientific names of Chinese medicines. According to Emil Bretschneider, the second part of the List of Chinese Medicines (1889) had been sent to the Irish botanist Augustine Henry (1857–1930) for revision. Henry, who secured the positions as surgeon and fourth assistant to the Customs in July 1881, omitted the wrong identifications and unified the Chinese names of medicines.146 During his career in China, Henry conducted botanical research and collected a multitude of plant specimens and seeds. In a letter to Joseph D. Hooker, director of Kew Gardens, written in Yichang on 20 March 1885, Henry reported that ‘a good number of medicines’ were grown there where the plants remained insufficiently known to botanists.147 In 1902, he further published an article about Chinese drugs and medicinal plants as part of those deserving future scientific exploration in China.148 Noteworthily, these lists of Chinese medicines, printed in Shanghai but sold both inside and outside mainland China, actually acted as practical guides for introducing or obtaining Chinese medicinal or natural objects. The 1889 list, for example, could be purchased through agencies in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Yokohama, Singapore and London.149 The English naturalist Ernest H. Wilson, who made plant-hunting expeditions in Western China during the period 1899–1911, mentioned this list while describing Chinese materia medica in his memoirs on the China voyages. According to Wilson, the caterpillar fungus or Cordyceps sinensis was a ‘valued product of the western uplands’, also an esteemed medicine used for ‘a variety of purposes’: ‘boiled with pork it is employed as an antidote for opium-poisoning and as a cure for opium-eating; also with Cox, 1884, pp. 226, 248. The caterpillar fungus was recorded in this epitome on page 261. 146 Order of the Inspector General of Customs, Service List, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General, 1883, pp. 13, 17; Emil Bretschneider, ‘Botanicon Sinicum: Notes on Chinese Botany from Native and Western Sources’, p. 12. 147 Letter from Augustine Henry to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, from Ichang (Yichang), 20 March 1885, Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors’ Correspondence 151/578. 148 Augustine Henry, ‘Chinese Drugs and Medicinal Plants’, The Pharmaceutical Journal, 1902, 68: 315–319, 322–324. See also Augustine Henry, ‘Chinese Drugs and Medicinal Plants’, Scientific American, 1902, 54(1391): 22294–22296. 149 The sales information can be found on the front cover of this list, see Order of the Inspector General of Customs, List of Chinese Medicines, p. i.

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pork and chicken it is taken as a tonic and mild stimulant by convalescent persons, and rapidly restores them to health and strength.’150 In addition to the lists, the Chinese Maritime Customs also printed some English and French catalogues to promote Chinese products at international exhibitions from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of such catalogues contain information on the caterpillar fungus and other medicines.151 Emil Bretschneider once remarked on one such catalogue, acclaiming it as ‘a very valuable volume, especially with respect to Chinese drugs and vegetable products’.152 With the worldwide circulation of such Maritime Customs publications, Western audiences were thus able to gain an insight into contemporary medicines used in Chinese society. Moreover, Chinese migrants overseas also advanced the transnational circulation and consumption of the Chinese medicines. By the late 1910s, the caterpillar fungus had already appeared in ‘a Chinese pharmacy’ in Denver, United States.153 Homeopathic Use of the Caterpillar Fungus The rise in attention given to the caterpillar fungus in nineteenth-century Europe resulted in new explorations of its medical effects on the human body. In this respect, the most impressive example was offered by the aforementioned Irishman E. B. Ivatts of Dublin. Inspired by an article on Torrubia sinensis (i.e. Cordyceps sinensis ) in about 1877, Ivatts hypothesised that since ergot (a parasitic fungus) of rye and mistletoe (a parasitic plant) had a specific action on the female generative system, most parasitic plants might also have ‘a special affinity for the male or female generative system’.154 He came up with this conjecture partly because in Europe the effects of ergot on parturition and mistletoe on female fertility 150 Ernest H. Wilson, A Naturalist in Western China (Vol. 2), London: Methuen & Co., 1913, pp. 38–39. 151 Di Lu, ‘The Imperial Maritime Customs and Sino-British Exchange of Materia Medica, 1850s–1900s’, Historical Research, 2022, 95(269): 370–398. 152 Emil Bretschneider, Notes on Some Botanical Questions Connected with the Export Trade of China, Shanghai: North-China Herald, 1881, p. 2. 153 Curtis G. Lloyd and Nathaniel Gist Gee, ‘Cordyceps sinensis, from N. Gist Gee, China’, Mycological Notes, 1918, (54): 766–768. 154 E. B. Ivatts, ‘Torrubia Sinensis’, The New York Medical Times, 1886, 14(5): 137– 138, 137.

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had already been reported; ergot’s fungal nature and parasitism had also been described in the eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries.155 In order to determine whether the parasitic caterpillar fungus ‘had any such action’, Ivatts entered into correspondence with Henry Frewin, who then sent Ivatts specimens of the caterpillar fungus at his request. After receiving the specimens, Ivatts tested them on himself. In a paper on his physical reactions, read before the Dublin Philosophical Club in 1886, Ivatts first quoted two records of the caterpillar fungus by Frederick P. Smith and the English botanist James Britten respectively,156 and then reported: I made up the first centesimal trituration and took the drug twice a day over several days, and found the effects as follows: During the first four days the action upon the generative system produced a most decided aphrodisiac effect, but after the four days the reverse action set in and the generative system became alarmingly depressed, the organ being reduced to the size of a baby’s. About the fifth day it produced a dull headache, followed by violent sneezing, and the next day a running from the nose (coryza) came on, which lasted for several days; the mucous membrane inside the nostrils continued dry and inflamed; vesicles came out upon the upper lip, which broke and healed in six days; odd red spots appeared here and there on the body; the teeth and gums were sore for several days; the bowels were constipated, with occasional discharge of single hard pieces, knotted, black, and with a greenish metallic hue, the same hue as observed in the powder of the Torrubia Sinensis under the microscope. The action of the drug on the nasal passages was similar to that of Iodide of Potassium.157

155 Geoffrey C. Ainsworth, Introduction to the History of Mycology, pp. 186–188; Juanita Evans, ‘Mistletoe: Good for More than Free Kisses’, HerbalGram, 2005, (68): 50–59; Michael R. Lee, ‘The History of Ergot of Rye (Claviceps purpurea) I: From Antiquity to 1900’, The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2009, 39(2): 179–184. 156 In the paper Ivatts did not mention the author of the article he read in 1877. But in 1909 he disclosed that the author was actually James Britten (1846–1924), see E. B. Ivatts, ‘Sphaeria of Tasmania’, The British Homoeopathic Review, 1909, 3(2): 98–101, 99. While quoting from Britten, Ivatts did not mention the title of his publication. Ivatts’s quote can be found in a 1876 article by Britten, see James Britten, ‘Chapters on Fungi: Chapter 25 Sphaeria’, The Bazaar, Exchange and Mart, and Journal of the Household, 1876, 15: 228–229. 157 E. B. Ivatts, ‘Torrubia Sinensis’, The New York Medical Times, 1886, 14(5): 137–

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Finally, Ivatts added that he also occasionally prescribed the caterpillar fungus to those who suffered from ‘ordinary running colds’. From their feedback, he thought that it seemed to be able to bring relief and reduce attacks. Besides, he stated that it was probably also useful in ‘liver complaints, constipation and impotence’. In 1909, he recounted this selfexperiment again in The British Homoeopathic Review. Aside from the above information, he disclosed additionally that from a friend in Shantou (i.e. Henry Frewin) he got ‘a small bundle’ of the caterpillar fungus, some of which he had still retained. The self-experiment was conducted in January 1877, and he ingested ‘No. 2 × trituration does 1 to 3 grains morning and evening’; for ‘any student wishing to test the drug’, he would send ‘a two drachm phial of No. 1 × through Editor’.158 Apart from the title of the journal publishing his recollection of the medical case, the ‘centesimal trituration’ in his narrative also indicates the influence of homoeopathy. Homoeopathy was developed by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) in the 1790s.159 It made its entry into United States and India in the first half of the nineteenth century, and China in the late nineteenth century.160 In the 1830s, it spread to Britain,161 with The British Journal of Homoeopathy first published in 1843,162 and the British Homoeopathic Society founded on 10 April 1844.163 In the late nineteenth century when Ivatts was 158 E. B. Ivatts, ‘Sphaeria of Tasmania’, The British Homoeopathic Review, 1909, 3(2): 98–101. 159 Irvine Loudon, ‘A Brief History of Homeopathy’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2006, 99(12): 607–610. 160 Stephen Lock et al. (eds.), The Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 421; John S. Haller, The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820–1935, New York: Pharmaceutical Products Press, 2005, pp. 39–41; Ajoy K. Ghosh, ‘A Short History of the Development of Homeopathy in India’, Homeopathy, 2010, 99(2): 130–136; Di Lu, ‘‘Homoeopathy Flourishes in the Far East’: A Forgotten History of Homeopathy in Late Nineteenth-Century China’, Notes and Records, 2019, 73(3): 329–351. 161 Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 230. 162 Anonymous, ‘Introduction’, The British Journal of Homoeopathy, 1843, 1(1): iii–vii. 163 Anonymous, ‘Prefatory Notice to the First Volume of the ‘Annals’’, Annals and

Transactions of the British Homoeopathic Society, and of the London Homoeopathic Hospital, 1862, 1(1): 1–2; Frederic H. F. Quin, ‘Address of the President, Dr. Quin’, Annals and Transactions of the British Homoeopathic Society, and of the London Homoeopathic Hospital, 1862, 1(1): 14–46, 15.

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active, homeopathic practitioners often employed the centesimal scale in producing remedies by trituration with milk sugar or dilution with water or alcohol.164 Interestingly, Ivatts was not the first European to consider the caterpillar fungus in a homeopathic context. In March 1875, when Miles J. Berkeley read Moseley’s communication of 31 December 1874, as formerly mentioned, he referred to one of Moseley’s notes, stating that ‘it [i.e. the caterpillar fungus] was considered a very powerful medicine; and we, therefore, recommend the subject to the homoeopathists.’165 But the earliest homeopathic case involving the use of the caterpillar fungus hitherto known was provided by Ivatts. His self-experimentation can thus be treated as distinct from similar experiments some Chinese made upon themselves to test prevailing beliefs about the efficacies of the caterpillar fungus because he carried out his experiment within the European theoretical framework of homoeopathy, despite acquaintance with relevant Chinese knowledge through, for example, Frederick P. Smith’s work on materia medica. His way of employing the caterpillar fungus also apparently differs from the usual Chinese method which, as described in his quotation from James Britten, involved the use of duck cooked with the caterpillar fungus. Ivatts’s self-experimentation may raise concerns about its credibility and significance to medical treatment. Since the nineteenth century, homoeopathy has survived but fallen out of favour with mainstream or orthodox medicine and has been criticised as unscientific and unethical.166 In his self-experimentation, there was an absence of controlled conditions and statistical records.167 His observations and suggestions

164 British Homoeopathic Society, British Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia, London: Printed for the British Homoeopathic Society, 1870, pp. 20–30; William Boericke, A Compend of the Principles of Homoeopathy as Taught by Hahnemann, and Verified by a Century of Clinical Application, San Francisco: Boericke & Runyon, 1896, pp. 104–107. 165 Anonymous, ‘The Annual Meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society’, The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1875, 3: 340–342, 342. 166 Edzard Ernst, ‘The Heresy of Homoeopathy: A Brief History of 200 Years of Criticism’, British Homoeopathic Journal, 1998, 87(1): 28–32; Stow Persons, ‘The Decline of Homeopathy—The University of Iowa, 1876–1919’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1991, 65(1), pp. 74–87; Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine? A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 89–106; Kevin Smith, ‘Homeopathy Is Unscientific and Unethical’, Bioethics, 2012, 26(9): 508–512. 167 Statistical methods were first applied in medical studies in the nineteenth century, but they did not become popular in clinical medicine before the mid-twentieth century,

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thereby cannot be any more valid than those derived from pre-nineteenth century European and Chinese medical practice if these positivist and anachronistic criteria for establishing value are to be rationally applied. His running nose, for example, cannot be firmly ascribed to the ingestion of the caterpillar fungus but might be caused by a cold. However, Ivatts’s exploration of the medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus was consistent with the spirit of empiricism even though the results did not entirely fit his hypothesis. Through Ivatts’s reasoning, selfexperimentation, observations and propaganda, the caterpillar fungus, a Chinese wonder of nature claimed to be deconstructed by natural historians, transformed into a new medical wonder. His promotion of it among his patients and readers also built a network for its dissemination in Britain. The microscopic and chemical composition of the medicinal substance Iodide of Potassium, as his report informs, represented new ways of exploration in nineteenth-century European medical sciences but were absent or at least rare in contemporary Chinese medicine. The appearance of the caterpillar fungus in nineteenth-century European works on regional or global materia medica formed part of European efforts to seek effective exotic medicinal substances and substitutes, and to assemble related natural knowledge from around the world. The integration of European taxonomy and natural history into these works specified the positions of such substances in a new natural order, and meanwhile facilitated the European procuring of exotica and the functioning of informal empire. The Chinese Maritime Customs under British influence, a key component of British informal empire in China, also engaged in the investigation and promotion of the caterpillar fungus among other Chinese medicinal substances. By the exchange of materia medica within transnational networks, some such exotics encountered European medical practitioners and thereby had the possibility to be explored within their own scientific and medical frameworks. Ivatts’s self-experiment with the caterpillar fungus in a homeopathic context was an example in this regard, which anyhow added new medical understandings to those developed by the Chinese and gathered by Ivatts. The Chinese medical knowledge of the caterpillar fungus transmitted to Europe did not receive significant criticism, however, which presented a contrast to the tension between Chinese and European understandings of its nature and formation. see Martin Bland, An Introduction to Medical Statistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 1.

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Changes in Japanese Perceptions The transformation in Japanese perceptions of the caterpillar fungus in the nineteenth century deserves particular investigation in consideration of the profound influence of Meiji Japan upon the development of modern science and the reform of medicine in China, especially from the end of the nineteenth century.168 In fact, new understandings of the caterpillar fungus emerging in early twentieth-century Chinese society were initially elicited by Japanese scientific scholarship. And Japan’s acquisition of the scientific norms of European civilisation benefited much from rangaku (Dutch learning), which spread among Japanese intellectuals in the context of the country’s commercial exchange with the Dutch, the only Western nation allowed to trade with Japan from 1639 when the Portuguese were expelled from Japan to 1854 when the United States-Japan Treaty of Kanagawa opened two Japanese ports for a limited amount of trade.169 Through the mediation of Dutch merchants and savants, a variety of Dutch and European texts flowed to Japan, some of which had been further translated into Japanese. The Japanese medical text Kaitai Shinsho (New Book of Anatomy, 1774), for example, was translated from the Ontleedkundige Tafelen (Anatomical Tables, 1734), a Dutch translation of the 1732 Latin edition of the German book Anatomische Tabellen (Anatomical Tables, first published in 1722).170 Though not the earliest Japanese translation of a Dutch medical text,171

168 Benjamin A. Elman, ‘Toward a History of Modern Science in Republican China’, in Jing Tsu and Benjamin A. Elman (eds.), Science and Technology in Modern China, 1880s– 1940s, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 15–38; Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014, pp. 69–88. 169 Grant K. Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 1600–1853, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2000, pp. 13–24; Christopher Joby, ‘Recording the History of Dutch in Japan’, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, 2016, 40(3): 219–238; Alexis Dudden, ‘Matthew Perry in Japan, 1852–1854’, in Stephan Haggard and David C. Kang (eds.), East Asia in the World: Twelve Events That Shaped the Modern International Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 188–205. 170 Alex Sakula, ‘Kaitai Shinsho: The Historic Japanese Translation of a Dutch Anatomical Text’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1985, 78(7): 582–587; Michael Sachs, ‘Die „Anatomischen Tabellen“ (1722) des Johann Adam Kulmus (1689–1745): Ein Lehrbuch für die (wund-)ärztliche Ausbildung im deutschen Sprachraum und in Japan’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 2002, 86(1): 69–85. 171 An earlier example of this kind is Motoki Ry¯ oi, Oranda Zenshu Naigai Bung¯ ozu, Edo: Nishimura Genroku, 1772. This Japanese translation was finished in about 1682, and

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its publication is often regarded as a milestone in the history of Dutch learning in Japan.172 This, in turn, underlines the important position of European medicine in Dutch learning.173 Besides anatomy, European knowledge of other subjects such as materia medica and botany also penetrated into Japanese intellectual life through, for example, Noro Genj¯o’s Oranda Honz¯ o Wage (Japanese Interpretation of Dutch Materia Medica, 1742–1750) and Hirokawa Kai’s Ranry¯ o Yakukai (Exposition of Dutch Therapeutic Substances, 1806). European knowledge of nature and the body inserted an additional dimension beyond the long-term Sino-Japanese intellectual interaction. It did not proceed smoothly due to political and ideological issues,174 but stirred up new medical and natural-historical currents in Japanese society.175 The Japanese translators of the seminal Kaitai Shinsho (New Book of Anatomy), familiar with classical Chinese anatomy, were motivated by a greater anatomical precision embodied in the original

published in 1772, see Teizo Ogawa, ‘The Beginnings of Anatomy in Japan’, Okajimas Folia Anatomica Japonica, 1975, 52(2–3): 59–71; Willem J. Boot, ‘The Transfer of Learning: The Import of Chinese and Dutch Books in Togukawa Japan’, Itinerario, 2013, 37(3): 188–206. 172 William Theodore de Bary et al. (eds.), Sources of Japanese Tradition (Vol. 2),

New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 367–369; Noboru Yamashita, ‘A Short Introduction to the History of Dutch Studies in Japan’, Journal of Center for Language Studies, Nagasaki University, 2015, (3): 57–77; Rebekah Clements, A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 146–149. 173 Gordon E. Mestler, ‘Introduction to Western Influences in Pre-Meiji Japanese Medicine’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1957, 50(12): 1005–1013; William D. Jonston, ‘18 Seiki Nihon no Igaku ni Okeru Kagaku Kakumei: Ranp¯o no Hatten no Tame no Shis¯oteki na Zentei’, Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi, 1981, 27(1): 6–20; Jayant S. Joshi and Rajesh Kumar, ‘The Dutch Physicians at Dejima or Deshima and the Rise of Western Medicine in Japan’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 2002, 63: 1062–1072. 174 Marius B. Jansen, ‘Rangaku and Westernization’, Modern Asian Studies, 1984, 18(4): 541–553; Grant K. Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 1600–1853, pp. 190–222. 175 Daniel Trambaiolo, ‘Ancient Texts and New Medical Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Japan’, in Benjamin A. Elman (ed.), Antiquarianism, Language, and Medical Philology: From Early Modern to Modern Sino-Japanese Medical Discourses, pp. 81–104; Federico Marcon, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015, pp. 127–139; Terrence Jackson, Network of Knowledge: Western Science and the Tokugawa Information Revolution, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016.

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Dutch text after their observation of a human dissection.176 Meanwhile, however, the translation was written in Chinese, and the rendering of Dutch learning also often involved the Japanese, Chinese and Dutch languages.177 On 8 July 1853, a fleet of warships led by the American commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794–1858) reached Edo bay in Japan, with the professed intention of establishing a trade relationship between United States and Japan. After being declined, Perry left Japan only to return the following year. This time the Tokugawa shogunate, under military pressure, was forced to enter into the foregoing Treaty of Kanagawa on 31 March 1854.178 As Japan opened its doors further to the outside world, the Dutch remained no longer the sole medium for JapaneseWestern intercourse. It was not so much the consequential decline of Dutch learning as the expanded dissemination of Western know-how in Japan. A series of international and domestic incidents, including Qing China’s defeat in its two Opium Wars with European powers, and the conclusion of the Treaty of Kanagawa, provoked Japanese reflections on national destiny and modernisation, and prompted the Japanese government’s embrace of Western science and technology.179 Scientific communities and institutionalised scientific research arose in Meiji

176 Sugita Genpaku, Rangaku Kotohajime, Tokyo: Tenshinro, [1815] 1869, pp. 36–49. 177 Martin J. Heijdra, ‘Polyglot Translators: Chinese, Dutch, and Japanese in the Intro-

duction of Western Learning in Tokugawa Japan’, in Paul W. Kroll and Jonathan A. Silk (eds.), “At the Shores of the Sky”: Asian Studies for Albert Hoffstädt, Leiden: Brill, 2020, pp. 62–75. 178 Matthew C. Perry, The Japan Expedition, 1852–1854: The Personal Journal of

Commodore Matthew C. Perry, Roger Pineau (ed.), Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968, pp. 89–92, 189–200, 220–221; Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 274–279; Jeffrey A. Keith, ‘Civilization, Race, and the Japan Expedition’s Cultural Diplomacy, 1853–1854’, Diplomatic History, 2011, 35(2): 179–202. 179 Robert Hans van Gulik, ‘Kakkaron: A Japanese Echo of the Opium War’, Monu-

menta Serica, 1940, 4(2): 478–545; Masayoshi Sugimoto and David L. Swain, Science and Culture in Traditional Japan, Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1989, pp. 291–346; Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ‘Opium, Expulsion, Sovereignty: China’s Lessons for Bakumatsu Japan’, Monumenta Nipponica, 1992, 47(1): 1–25; Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, pp. 279–293.

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Japan.180 According to Hiromi Mizuno, Imperial Japan (1868–1945) aspired ‘to be recognized by the West as a modern, civilized nation, as the Western powers were, and to celebrate the nation’s particularity to build a national identity’, and modern science was linked with imperial mythology, ‘the absolute core of its national identity’.181 Morris Low points out that Meiji science was associated with ‘the pursuit of national interests and profit’, and ‘mobilized under an ideology aimed at building a nation-state’.182 Shortly after its establishment, moreover, the Meiji government set out to promote its recognised German medicine.183 Contrary to the booming of German medicine or modern science, native Kampo medicine gradually suffered official oppression and fell into a dilemma of legitimacy.184 Meanwhile, the natural substances used both in Chinese and Kampo medicine became objects of biological, chemical and pharmacological research supported by, for example, the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (1880–),185 though in the Meiji era the caterpillar fungus had as yet received little attention from the field of pharmacology. 180 Mitsutomo Yuasa, ‘The Growth of Scientific Communities in Japan’, Japanese Studies in the History of Science, 1970, (9): 137–158; James R. Bartholomew, The Formation of Science in Japan: Building a Research Tradition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 49–67. 181 Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009, p. 2. 182 Morris Low, Science and the Building of a New Japan, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 7–8. 183 Yoshio Izumi and Kazuo Isozumi, ‘Modern Japanese Medical History and the European Influence’, The Keio Journal of Medicine, 2001, 50(2): 91–99; Hoi-eun Kim, Doctors of Empire: Medical and Cultural Encounters Between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014, pp. 19–25. 184 Margaret Lock, ‘The Organization and Practice of East Asian Medicine in Japan: Continuity and Change’, Social Science & Medicine, Part B: Medical Anthropology, 1980, 14(4): 245–253; Shigeo Sugiyama, ‘Traditional Kampo Medicine: Unauthenticated in the Meiji Era’, Historia Scientiarum, 2004, 13(3): 209–223. 185 Yakazu D¯ omei, ‘Meiji Jidai ni Okeru Kanyaku no Yakurigakuteki Kenky¯u Gy¯oseki to Sono Shiteki K¯ osatsu: Shutoshite Inoko Yoshitoshi no Kanyaku Kenky¯ u o Megutte’, Nihon T¯ oy¯ o Igaku Zasshi, 1962, 13(3): 111–119; Yasuo Otsuka, ‘Chinese Traditional Medicine in Japan’, in Charles Leslie (ed.), Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, pp. 322–340; Federico Marcon, ‘Honz¯ ogaku after Seibutsugaku: Traditional Pharmacology as Antiquarianism After the Institutionalization of Modern Biology in Early Meiji Japan’, in Benjamin A. Elman (ed.), Antiquarianism, Language, and Medical Philology: From Early Modern to Modern Sino-Japanese Medical Discourses, pp. 148–162.

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In Search of the Caterpillar Fungus and Discovery of Similar Organisms The flourishing of European natural history in Edo and Meiji Japan boosted new passions for observing, describing, and collecting native or exotic natural objects.186 The Linnaean classification system, beginning to take root in Japan in the early nineteenth century, also prompted the equivalence between some East Asian and European scientific (Latin) names for indigenous species.187 Some local naturalists and physicians were no longer satisfied with learning about the caterpillar fungus from previous Chinese and Japanese records. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, they sought to discover this natural curiosity in their own country, though it did not inhabit Japan and hence had never been truly found there. But this trend led to new natural history discoveries and reflections in the encounter between East Asian and European academic traditions. In his 1801 collection of drawings, the physician Yuzuki Tokiwa grouped the caterpillar fungus from China together with some similar insect-fungi growing in Japan under the name of kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u; he illustrated their different morphological characteristics and particularly recorded the former as imported.188 Federico Marcon points out that by the late Edo period, ‘accurate and detailed illustrations of plants and animals developed as a new cognitive apparatus to identify species and solve the old problem of matching Chinese names with actual plants

186 Nishimura Saburo, Bunmei no Naka no Hakubutsugaku: Sei¯ o to Nihon (Vol. 1), Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten, 1999, pp. 129–135; It¯ o Mamiko, ‘19 Seiki Nihon no Chi no Ch¯ory¯u: Edo K¯oki - Meiji Shoki no Hakkajiten, Hakubutsugaku, Hakurankai’, 19 Seikigaku Kenky¯ u, 2012, (6): 59–78; Jung Lee, ‘Provincialising Global Botany’, in Helen A. Curry et al. (eds.), Worlds of Natural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 433–446. 187 It¯ o Keisuke, ‘T¯oy¯o Shokubutsugaku no Ichi Daikaikaku Wonasazaruka Karazu’, Shokubutsugaku Zasshi, 1888, 2(19): 173–177; Siro Kitamura, ‘The Japanese Studies on the Chinese Plants’, Acta Phytotaxonomica et Geobotanica, 1989, 40(1–4): 119–122; Ayako Wada, ‘Flora Japonica: Linnaean Connections between Britain and Japan During the Romantic Period’, in Alex Watson and Laurence Williams (eds.), British Romanticism in Asia: The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India and East Asia, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 67–91; Thomas R. H. Havens, Land of Plants in Motion: Japanese Botany and the World, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020, pp. 54–56. 188 Yuzuki Tokiwa, Hakurai Kas¯ ot¯ och¯ u Zu, Tokyo: National Diet Library, 1801, pp. 2–

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and animals.’189 Yuzuki’s drawing and his use of the Japanese term kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u, which contains the same two pairs of characters in the Chinese term xiacao dongchong (summer grass winter worm), also contributed to the solving of the ‘old problem’ of matching Chinese names with actual organisms. But for the Japanese, kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u was broadened to include certain insect-fungi discovered in Japan. Yuzuki’s record received attention from the herbalist Ohara T¯od¯o (1746–1825), who learned about the geographical origin and medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus from some Japanese and Chinese accounts. He agreed with Yuzuki that similar organisms also grew in Japan, as some Japanese publications had reported discoveries of such organisms around ditches and courtyards in 1805, 1808 and 1824. In his posthumous manuscript, which contains illustrations of thirteen specimens of such native organisms, Ohara suspected some of the insect-fungi found in Japan to be semihana (chanhua in Chinese, which literally means the flower on cicada), and he knew that this was a medicinal substance that had long been used in China.190 Another herbalist, named Mizutani Toyofumi (1779–1833), once depicted eleven specimens of such insect-fungi, or precisely flowers on cicada, in his drawings of insects and animals.191 The specimens mainly differ from each other in the morphological characteristics of their fruiting bodies. From the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, discoveries of insect-fungi were o t¯ och¯ u, occasionally being made in Japan.192 Meanwhile, the term kas¯ or its inverted form t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o of Chinese origin, was also often used in a broadened sense to denote insect-fungi in relevant Japanese publications.193 To differentiate it from its Chinese homonym, some Japanese authors accentuated the geographical origins of the organisms in question

189 Federico Marcon, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, p. 228. 190 Ohara T¯ od¯o, T¯ od¯ o Ihitsu (Vol. 3), Wakayama: Sakamotoya Kiichir¯o, 1833, pp. 29–

36. 191 Mizutani Toyofumi, Mushimujina Shashin, Tokyo: National Diet Library, c. 1833,

pp. 88–90. Mizutani’s drawings of the insect-fungi lack captions. 192 Esaki Teiz¯ o, ‘Fukuokaken Yamegun San Kas¯o T¯och¯u Nitsuite’, Kyushu Teikuni Daigaku N¯ ogakubu Gakugei Zasshi, 1929, 3(3): 221–231. 193 For example, see Ono Ranzan et al., J¯ ush¯ u Honz¯ o K¯ omoku Keim¯ o (Book 28), Kyoto: Hishiya Kichib¯e, 1844, pp. 17–20; Oda Seisuke, ‘T¯ och¯u Kas¯o’, Konch¯ u Sekai, 1898, 2(12): 465.

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when they used the terms. For example, Fujii Kansai described both the Chinese caterpillar fungus sold in Japanese drugstores and similar organisms native to Japan. The entry t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o in his 1823 text on materia medica explicitly identifies two kinds of such organisms: one is hakurai (imported), while the other is wasan (produced in Japan).194 However, hakurai is an ambiguous expression, because it did not specify from where the caterpillar fungus was imported. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some Japanese naturalists began to use the more specific term kansan or shinasan (produced in China) to refer to the caterpillar fungus from China, or Cordyceps sinensis or Sphaeria sinensis.195 Clearly, the attempts to seek a ‘Japanese’ caterpillar fungus coincided with reflections on new relationships between names and entities. The discoveries of similar organisms in Japan also presented new findings on the geographical distribution of insect-fungi. The transformation of the Chinese term xiacao dongchong, or dongchong xiacao, to the Japanese term kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u, or t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o, together with the broadened meaning of its identifications to include other types of insectfungi specimens in the Japanese context, point to semantic boundaries of the same word, and indicate a Japanisation of the category for the Chinese caterpillar fungus. This accords with Benjamin A. Elman’s analysis of the adaptation of Chinese medicine and appropriation of Chinese thoughts and learning before the late nineteenth century in Japan.196 Like Fougeroux de Bondaroy’s grouping the caterpillar fungus with other similar species, the altered categorisation to some extent normalised the presence of the caterpillar fungus in an exotic land.

194 Fujii Kansai, Z¯ oho Shuhan Hatsum¯ o, Tokyo: Yamashiroya Sahei, 1823, pp. 347–348. 195 Kurita Manjir¯ o, ‘Zoku Shina Hakubutsu Ik¯ o (Sh¯ozen)’, T¯ oky¯ o Chigaku Ky¯ okai

H¯ okoku, 1889, 11(9): 29–32; Shirai Mitsutar¯ o, Shokubutsu Y¯ oik¯ o, Tokyo: Kinoetora S¯ osho Kank¯osho, 1914, pp. 156–158. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Japanese scholar Okuzawa Yasumasa uses the word k¯ ogi (broad sense) as an addition to the term t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o, serving the purpose of disambiguation, see Okuzawa Yasumasa, ‘T¯ och¯u Kas¯o (K¯ogi) Torai no Rekishi to Yakubutsu to Shite no Juy¯o’, pp. 178–179. 196 Benjamin A. Elman, ‘Sinophiles and Sinophobes in Tokugawa Japan: Politics, Classicism, and Medicine During the Eighteenth Century’, East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 2008, 2(1): 93–121.

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New Perceptions About the Caterpillar Fungus The introduction of scientific information on insect-fungi testifies to European influence and to a pluralistic understanding of such organisms in nineteenth-century Japan. Even in the late nineteenth century, some Japanese still supported the transformation theory of the caterpillar fungus, and some applied the theory to native insect-fungi.197 Nevertheless, since the early nineteenth century, some Chinese knowledge about the caterpillar fungus had become a target for criticism. The naturalist Masushima Ranen (1769–1839) mentioned this organism in his 1811 book on fungi. Though misdating the initial arrival of the caterpillar fungus in Japan to the Kansei period (1789–1801), probably due to his misunderstanding of Taki Motoyasu’s account, Masushima provided a description of its appearance. He further related the ‘grass’ to kin (fungi), and emphasised that the formation of the ‘winter worm summer grass’, merely a member of the flowers on cicada, was absolutely not caused by the extremely absurd transformation, but by the growth of fungi on dead insects underground. Still, he valued Chinese medical knowledge about the caterpillar fungus, and suggested not abandoning it together with the fallacious transformation theory. This concern for medical utility explains why he particularly quoted a related Qing Chinese medical record.198 Some late nineteenth-century Japanese botanical and entomological articles also sometimes set out to inform readers about the true nature of the caterpillar fungus and similar organisms. For example, stimulated by an inquiry about the caterpillar fungus and its transformation, Miyoshi Manabu (1861–1939), then studying botany at the Imperial University of Tokyo, published a review article in Shokubutsugaku Zasshi (The Botanical Magazine) in 1888.199 He aimed to help readers abandon their belief in fallacious ideas. After quoting Ohara’s account, he turned to a few Chinese and English publications, including Mordecai C. Cooke’s mycooch¯ u kas¯ o as a quasi-taxonomic logical monograph.200 Miyoshi treated t¯ 197 For example, see Umeno Takiz¯ o and Mitani Y¯ ushin, Chikugo Chishi Ryaku, Kurume: Kinbund¯o, 1879, p. 45. 198 Masushima Ranzono, Kinshi, (Book 5), Tokyo: National Archives of Japan, 1811, pp. 90–95. 199 Miyoshi Manabu, ‘T¯ och¯u Kas¯o no Ben’, Shokubutsugaku Zasshi, 1888, 2(13): 36–

40. 200 This monograph is Fungi: Their Nature, Influence, and Uses, which, however, had been published in different editions before 1888. For the original account in its first

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group of organisms, and enumerated nine species of fungi belonging to the genus Torrubia (family Sphaeriaceae, division Ascomyceti[e]s). According to the article, twenty-five species of the hosts on which these fungi grew, such as the moth Hepialus virescens, had been discovered, and both the hosts and fungi were distributed around the world. With this assertion, the caterpillar fungus not only lost its ability to transform, but also lost its value as being a rare fungus. A few years later, in 1894, Yasuda Atsushi, then studying botany at the Imperial University of Tokyo, reported his identifications of two species of parasitic fungi. One was ‘Isaria arachnophila, Ditm.’, found growing on a trapdoor spider; the other was ‘Torrubia militaris, Fr.’, found growing on some species belonging to the order Lepidoptera. Yasuda discovered them in Japan, and generally called them t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o. Like Miyoshi, he criticised the transformation theory as a fallacy, though the emphasis of his articles was on macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of the specimens, which were given to support his identifications. He employed mycological terms to describe their morphological structures, such as shijitsutai (stroma), h¯ oshi (spore), kinshi (mycelium) and hachiretsushi (ascospore).201 Besides, he also used the characters such as ka (family), zoku (genus) and tane (species) to describe their taxonomic ranks. The concept of species and taxonomic hierarchy, and the application of microscopic observation in identifying species, doubtless originated in modern European biology. In his articles, the specimens of the two species had formed as follows: fungal spores infected underground hosts, developed into mycelium inside the hosts and eventually killed them; after having occupied the interior of the dead hosts, the mycelium then grew out of the bodies and formed visible fruiting bodies. Yasuda’s identifications and theoretical explanations of the formation of the fungi embody the tensions between East Asian and European perceptions of nature. In particular, the microscope, which spoke for the epistemic virtue of what Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison call ‘mechanical objectivity’, enabled Japanese biologists to ‘see’ edition, see Mordecai C. Cooke, Fungi: Their Nature, Influence, and Uses, Miles J. Berkeley (ed.), London: Henry S. King, 1875, pp. 246–247. 201 Yasuda Atsushi, ‘Chitsut¯ o Ni Kisei Suru T¯och¯u Kas¯o Nitsuite’, Shokubutsugaku

Zasshi, 1894, 8(90): 337–340; Yasuda Atsushi, ‘‘Kisa Nagi Take’ (T¯och¯u Kas¯o no Isshu) Torrubia militaris, Fr.’, Shokubutsugaku Zasshi, 1894, 8(92): 410–411. Yasuda graduated from the university in 1895, see Anonymous, Imperial University of T¯ oky¯ o: The Calendar, Tokyo: Published by the University, 1898, p. 333. The English terms ‘stroma’ and ‘ascospore’ are not my own translations but are directly cited from Yasuda’s articles.

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inaccessible and invisible regions of nature.202 The power of new scientific instruments (e.g. the microscope and telescope), perceived by modern Europeans as ‘evidence of the superiority of their age over antiquity’, and aiding ‘fresh and truthful observations’, was also adopted into the powerful rhetoric of modern science in Japan.203 Like Miyoshi and Yasuda, Oda Seisuke, who had been trained at an agricultural school, also criticised the old transformation theory in his short and exoteric article about the diversity of native insect-fungi. The article, directly entitled ‘T¯och¯u Kas¯o’, and published in the magazine Konch¯ u Sekai (The Insect world) in 1898, introduces the biological nature, taxonomic positions and habitat of insect-fungi, and gives a scientific explanation of their formation.204 In contrast, an 1889 article by the naturalist Kurita Manjir¯o primarily focuses on the caterpillar fungus growing in China. But Kurita also associated it with similar Japanese insect-fungi, and still called the latter kas¯ o t¯ och¯ u.205 Kurita first wrote of its fungal nature, its identity as a famous Chinese medicinal substance and its scientific name, by referring to John Lindley’s The Vegetable Kingdom (1853). Then, he quoted related records from three materia medica texts in the English, Chinese and Japanese languages, respectively.206 The popular transformation theory did not receive his direct criticism. And Kurita seemed to avoid acting as a judge of true or fallacious knowledge, rather endeavouring to tolerate and bring together knowledge from different cultures. However, the terms ‘Sphaeria Sinensis, Berk.’ and ‘kinzoku’ (fungi) introduced at the beginning of the article already indicated the priority of European scholarship on the natural properties of the 202 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, pp. 115–190. 203 Albert Van Helden, ‘The Birth of the Modern Scientific Instrument, 1550–1700’,

in of as p.

John G. Burke (ed.), The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton, Berkeley: University California Press, 1983, pp. 49–84, 65; Jennifer Tucker, Nature Exposed: Photography Eyewitness in Victorian Science, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 187.

204 Oda Seisuke, ‘T¯ och¯u Kas¯o’, Konch¯ u Sekai, 1898, 2(12): 465. For Oda’s educational background, see Anonymous, ‘Daiichikai Zenkuni Gaich¯ u Kujo Sh¯ugy¯osei Seimei’, Konch¯ u Sekai, 1899, 3(10): 397–398. 205 Kurita Manjir¯ o, ‘Zoku Shina Hakubutsu Ik¯ o (Sh¯ozen)’, T¯ oky¯ o Chigaku Ky¯ okai H¯ okoku, 1889, 11(9): 29–32. 206 The three texts are Frederick Porter Smith’s Contributions Towards the Materia Medica & Natural History of China (1871), Zhao Xuemin’s Bencao Gangmu Shiyi (c. 1803), and Fujii Kansai’s Z¯ oho Shuhan Hatsum¯ o (1823).

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caterpillar fungus in his mind. As time went on, Japanese scholars became increasingly engaged in scientific studies concerning insect-fungi.207 The efforts to seek, observe, identify and describe the caterpillar fungus and similar organisms in nineteenth-century Japan were made in the context of interactions between Chinese and Japanese natural cultures and their encounter with European natural history. Tensions between East Asian and European understandings of the nature and formation of such organisms emerged. The perceived superiority of European sciences to East Asian indigenous natural knowledge systems, partly established by the Meiji government, prompted new patterns of perceiving and studying natural objects in Japan as can be discerned in new methods for studying insect-fungi generally. The application of microscopy, hierarchical Linnaean taxonomy, binomial nomenclature, and chemical and pharmacological theories and approaches in nineteenth-century scientific communities in Japan embodied significant changes in attitudes towards exploring East Asian medicinal substances or species. However, Chinese empirical medical knowledge about the caterpillar fungus, valued by some European authors, received relatively positive attention in Japan. Such knowledge did not simply contradict or prove itself compatible with European natural history sciences, but rather would provide an important reference for medicine or scientific research on medicinal substances.

Conclusion With its arrival in France and Britain, the caterpillar fungus remained attractive to a range of naturalists as a category-crossing phenomenon. Various scholars embarked on deconstructing this ‘wonder of nature’ or perplexing insect-fungal hybrid within the parameters of emerging European academic and scientific networks. It became the first of the entomogenous fungi that came under scientific scrutiny in Europe from the early eighteenth century, and the idea about its interspecies transformation was criticised as a primitive belief in outdated fascination with marvels or wonders. While provoking new insights into fungus-animal interactions and the ordering of nature, it actually also transformed into a scientific singularity that consisted of two combined but non-intertransformable 207 For example, Hara Kanesuke, ‘Gifuken San Ch¯ useikin Oyobi Sono Kiseikin Nitsuite’, Shokubutsugaku Zasshi, 1914, 28(332): 339–351; Imai Sanshi, ‘Nihon San Tsuchidangokin to Kinsei T¯och¯u Kas¯o’, Shokubutsu Bunrui Chiri, 1943, 13: 75–83.

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species. Revelations about its fungal nature and parasitic mechanism led to new specific identifications and taxonomic categories in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, its nomenclatural status tended to stabilise, facilitating Europeans to link up its positions in the Chinese and European natural orders. This constituted part of the European project of objectifying and enumerating species across the globe, which coordinated with the European materia medica enterprise based in part on the study and procurement of potentially useful medicinal exotics and related knowledge. Chinese medical, geographical and naming information about the caterpillar fungus thereby circulated unevenly through Europe without creating any conspicuous intellectual tensions. But the late nineteenthcentury homeopathic self-experiment with the caterpillar fungus suggests new medical understandings within their own theoretical frameworks. There is no doubt that the special features of the caterpillar fungus excited much scientific and medical attention, and that its representations in the new world bore testimony to epistemic entanglements within vibrant networks of knowledge production. The dissemination of scientific knowledge and the caterpillar fungus in Japan also gave rise to significant changes in Japanese perceptions of this and related natural curiosity of insect-fungi specimens. During the course of the nineteenth century, the caterpillar fungus was demystified as one of the insect-fungi being found in Japan and elsewhere in the world. It was also rediscovered as belonging to the old category of the ‘flowers on cicada’ (chanhua) in Chinese medicine. The Chinese term for the caterpillar fungus also entered the Japanese language, with its meaning being broadened to encompass other similar insect-fungi specimens, indicating the flexibility of the semantic boundaries of a shared vocabulary. As this new scholarship prevailed in Japanese society, it also began to spread to China and shape modern Chinese views of nature and materia medica around the turn of the twentieth century.

CHAPTER 5

New Caterpillar Fungus Emerges and Negotiates

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, material exchanges and cross-cultural interactions between China and Europe, United States, Japan and other countries were further secured by a series of Sino-foreign treaties that engaged China in the international legal system and the reconfiguring of global power relations. Western images of China, and vice versa, both underwent significant changes.1 Modern science often served rhetorically to rationalise civilisational stereotypes of a powerful and enlightened West and an enfeebled and lagging millennia-old China. The French missionary Evariste Régis Huc (1813–1860), also a traveller in China, once claimed that it was very difficult for the Chinese to make any progress; their decadence had begun in many respects a great number of years ago; and the natural sciences had absolutely nothing to do with their educational system. Nevertheless, he thought that the rich knowledge the Chinese possessed, precious but remaining scattered, might be preserved from perishing through a closer contact with Europe, and might one day achieve development under the influence of modern 1 David M. Jones, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, pp. 67–98; John S. Gregory, The West and China since 1500, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 116–128; Jessie G. Lutz, ‘China’s View of the West, a Comparison of the Historical Geographies of Wei Yuan and Xu Jiyu’, Social Sciences and Missions, 2012, 25(1–2): 35–52.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1_5

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science.2 In 1897, about three years after his arrival in Beijing, the French doctor Jean-Jacques Matignon (1866–1928) described China as ‘the paradise of routine’, and the Chinese as ‘superficial observers’, who were ‘no further advanced than the most primitive people’. To him, Chinese medicine was ‘a speculative science’, even ‘less advanced, less intelligent, and less scientific than that of Hippocrates’.3 Such voices prevailed throughout the nineteenth century, reinforcing a hierarchy of knowledge aligned with new epistemically distinctive practices. The encounter of modern science with Chinese materia medica and natural history gave rise to controversy in the intellectual community over the validity of one kind of knowledge or another about the same specimens and medicinal substances. The controversy continues into the twenty-first century, and political interventions on the side of a modern science have never fundamentally unified the central academic and epistemological issues from the top down. As expected, the intersection of the caterpillar fungus with scientific advocates, traditional physicians, and other groups left considerable traces of different ruptures and continuities in the transformation of natural knowledge in modern Chinese society. This chapter first looks at the dissemination and production of scientific truth about the caterpillar fungus in modern China. This process involved the interposition of modern science and its discursive power in local intellectual traditions. Then the chapter proceeds to examine new understandings of indigenous medicinal substances and their scholarly significance in the context of a Chinese medicine experiencing an existential crisis, focusing particularly on the physician Chen Cunren’s medical ideology and characterisation of the caterpillar fungus. Scientific practice and its rhetoric undermined the legitimacy of Chinese medicine, yet they tended to favour the retention of much empirical knowledge as a valuable source for exploring new effective medicines or medicinal substitutes. As the caterpillar fungus carried on its social life with old and new identities, it also took part in the making of a new Chinese materia medica in pursuit of its scientification.

2 Evariste Régis Huc, L’Empire Chinois (Tome 1), Paris: L’Imprimerie Impériale, 1854, pp. 300–301. 3 Jean-Jacques Matignon, ‘The Anatomy and Surgery of the Chinese’, Medical Record, 1898, 53(13): 466–467, 466.

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Locating a Scientific Caterpillar Fungus In 1858, the London Mission Press in Shanghai published the Zhiwu Xue (Elements of Botany), the first Chinese book on modern European botany, based in part on works by the English botanist John Lindley and others.4 In the first chapter of this book, the caterpillar fungus, which was described as transforming from a blade of grass in spring and summer to a worm after autumn, was taken as an example of the integration of animals and plants in a discussion of their relative continuities.5 Here, its identity still hovered between animal and plant, and had nothing to do with fungi. The exemplification of its transformation is also nowhere to be found in John Lindley’s works. However, some relatively new information about the caterpillar fungus had reached Chinese society by the late nineteenth century, but it did not circulate extensively among the Chinese due to its expected readership and linguistic barriers. In 1877, the German missionary Ernest J. Eitel (1838–1908) published his Chinese dictionary in the Cantonese dialect in London and Hong Kong. Eitel included the term xiacao dongchong, and provided its Cantonese pronunciation ‘há ts ‘ò tung ch ‘ung’ as well as the scientific name ‘Cordyceps Sinensis’.6 As this dictionary mainly employed the English language and was compiled for the use of foreign students of the Cantonese dialect and the general written language of China, his mention of the scientific name was overlooked by contemporary Chinese authors. Until then, the new languages of European science had not yet wielded any influence upon Chinese delineation of the caterpillar fungus unlike they had done in Japan. Cognitive Change From about the turn of the twentieth century, challenges to previous narratives of the caterpillar fungus began to appear in the Chinese world. Humiliated by defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), Chinese 4 Alexander Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese, Shanghae: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867, p. 239; Wang Zhenru (ed.), Zhongguo Zhiwuxue Shi, Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1994, pp. 122–123. This Chinese botanical book contains much information not derived from John Lindley’s publications, see, for example, Richard Owen, On Parthenogenesis, London: John Van Voorst, 1849, p. i; Alexander Williamson et al., Zhiwu Xue, Shanghai: London Mission Press, 1858, p. 7. 5 Alexander Williamson et al., Zhiwu Xue, Shanghai: London Mission Press, 1858, p. 4. 6 Ernest J. Eitel, A Chinese Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect, London and Hong

Kong: Trübner and Co., and Lane, Crawford & Co., 1877, p. 871.

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central and provincial governments ‘sought Japanese expertise on topics relating to modernization’, such as finance, science, education and engineering, and ‘for most Chinese, Japanese imperialism was not yet seen as a problem’.7 In the 1900s, education in China underwent profound transformation. By 1905, as Benjamin A. Elman indicates, ‘the new Qing Ministry of Education was staunchly in favour of science education and textbooks based on the Japanese scientific system’, and the Nongxue Bao (Journal of Agriculture), published in Shanghai from 1897 to 1906, was among the many periodicals and books that mediated ‘Japanese-style science and technology’ for the Chinese.8 In August 1900, the Japanese sinologist Fujita Toyohachi (1869–1929) published a Chinese translation of Oda Seisuke’s 1898 article on t¯ och¯ u kas¯ o in that agricultural journal.9 It conveyed new natural knowledge about Japanese insect-fungi, and criticised the old idea of interspecies transformation, yet wrote nothing of the caterpillar fungus consumed in Chinese society. The term dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass) in the translation, and also the article title, did not specifically refer to Sphaeria sinensis but to species of the genus Sphaeria in a broad sense.10 At first glance, such a title would lead Chinese readers to relate the article to the caterpillar fungus, but upon reading the content would find a broad analysis of insect-fungi specimens found in Japan. Fujita was employed in Shanghai by a Chinese founder of the agricultural journal to translate Japanese sources for the journal, which, established against the background of a social movement directed at modernising Chinese agriculture, placed emphasis on both classical Chinese agricultural knowledge and new Euro-American and Japanese agriculture and applied sciences.11 Fujita’s translation seems to have 7 June T. Dreyer, Middle Kingdom and Empire of the Rising Sun: Sino-Japanese Relations, Past and Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 53. 8 Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 412–414. 9 Oda Seisuke, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Fujita Toyohachi (trans.), Nongxue Bao, 1900 (114): 6–7. 10 The original Japanese article mentions that the species of the winter worm summer grass belong to ‘su be i ri a’, which is the Japanese transliteration of the genus name Sphaeria. However, the species Sphaeria sinensis or Cordyceps sinensis is not distributed in Japan, and does not grow on cicada. 11 Zhang Kai, ‘Wunonghui, Nongxue Bao, Nongxue Congshu Ji Luo Zhenyu Qiren’, Zhongguo Nongshi, 1985 (1): 82–88; Douglas R. Reynolds, China, 1898–1912: The

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digressed from the journal’s object, though in two following translations he focused on parasitic insects and toads, both highly relevant to crop protection.12 We cannot retrospectively divine what Fujita intended, but his new explanations disenchanted the caterpillar fungus of its magical transformation by spreading some scientific facts about insect-fungi. His translation starts with a man called Nakazawa who once saw two specimens in Japan: one showed two jing (stems) growing out of the head of a matiao (cicada), while the other showed one jing (stem) growing out of an unknown insect’s back. Then, it critically explains that winter worm summer grass is actually a group of different species belonging to a family of yanjun (Basidiomycetes)13 ; and the stems actually develop from the zhongzi (seeds) of the junlei (fungi) which infiltrate into or attach to the bodies of insects under the ground in autumn and absorb nutrition from the dead insects for their growth. Obviously, ‘seeds’ here refer to the identification of what were to be identified later as fungal spores. Three years later, in 1903, the same journal published a relatively long translation entitled Dongchong Xiacao Shuo (On winter worm summer grass), which was originally written by the Japanese botanist It¯o Tokutar¯o.14 The translation first gave a discussion of more than ten specimens of the caterpillar fungus brought from Tibet to Japan by the Buddhist monk Kawaguchi Ekai, who then presented them to It¯o.15 It¯o described the appearance of these specimens, explained the life cycle as an irreversible process of fungal infection and then succinctly reviewed the Xinzheng Revolution and Japan, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 115– 116; Li Yongfang, ‘Tengtian Fengba: Qingmo Xifang Nongxue Yinjin De Xianxingzhe’, Shehui Kexue, 2012, (8): 142–149. 12 Anonymous, ‘Jishengchong Baohuqi’, Fujita Toyohachi (trans.), Nongxue Bao, 1900, (114): 7; Anonymous, ‘Ji Chanchu’, Fujita Toyohachi (trans.), Nongxue Bao, 1900, (114): 7–8. 13 The character ‘yan’ in the term yanjun has almost the same structure as the character ‘dan’ in the term danzi jun (Basidiomycetes), see Miyoshi Manabu, Inka Shokubutsu Taii, Tokyo: Keigy¯osha, 1889, p. 50. Presumably, here the yanjun refers to Basidiomycetes, despite that the caterpillar fungus and other similar species belong to Ascomycetes rather than Basidiomycetes. 14 It¯ o Tokutar¯ o, ‘Dongchong Xiaocao Shuo’, pp. 4–8. 15 Kawaguchi travelled to Tibet twice and stayed there from 1900 to 1902, and from

1914 to 1915. For his two journeys, see Kawaguchi Ekai, Nishikura Ryok¯ o Ki, Tokyo: Hirobumi Kan, 1904; Kawaguchi Ekai, Dainikai Chibetto Ryok¯ o Ki, Tokyo: Kawaguchi Ekai no Kai, 1966. The specimens of the caterpillar fungus must have been obtained during his first stay in Tibet.

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history of European studies of this species. But he further stressed that sixty-two such fungal species had been discovered around the world. Like Oda or Fujita, he treated the winter worm summer grass as a group of insect-fungi rather than as a single species, and claimed the existence of similar species native to Japan. Besides the caterpillar fungus, Kawaguchi also presented It¯ o with some plants collected in Sikkim Himalaya.16 It¯o seemed to have a greater interest in the caterpillar fungus, since he wrote an article exclusively on it, and additionally provided an illustration of one of Kawaguchi’s relevant specimens. His intention, as indicated in the article, was to expose the errors of the popular old theory of its formation, so that, now the scientific theory of its life cycle had become clear, people should not continue to believe the erroneous theory. Some Chinese intellectuals holding the idea about the lack of science in China also advertised new facts about the caterpillar fungus. In 1905, an author named Chen Zhiqun published his translation of the Japanese botanist Miyoshi Manabu’s discourse on the creation of botanic gardens in the kexue (science) column of a journal dedicated to female education and women’s rights. The main body of the translation outlined nineteenth-century European classification of flowering, flowerless and seedless plants, in which the winter worm summer grass was listed among some species representative of the Ascomycetes fungi. In the prolegomenon to the translation, Chen complained that science was the subject most absent in China. He strongly criticised the backwardness of indigenous Chinese plant knowledge, and further stressed that China had only ornamental gardens and lacked botanic gardens for the scientific study of plants, like those in the West. Therefore, he suggested Chinese ladies who were unable to go to school create botanic gardens at their homes and buy books on botany so as to study plants with their friends.17 Three years later, Liu Dashen explicitly attributed the formation of the

16 It¯ o Tokutar¯ o, ‘Notes on Some Himalayan Plants Collected by the Rev. Keikai Kawaguchi in 1902’, The Botanical Magazine, 1903, 17(200): 157–159. 17 Miyoshi Manabu, ‘Zhiwuyuan Goushefa’, Chen Zhiqun (trans.), Nüzi Shijie, 1905, 2(3): 21–26; Miyoshi Manabu, ‘Zhiwuyuan Goushefa’, Chen Zhiqun (trans.), Nüzi Shijie, 1905, 2(6): 31–46. Cf. Miyoshi Manabu, Shokubutsugaku Jikken Shoho, Tokyo: Keigy¯osha, 1899, pp. 134–141. For the objective of the journal, see Jin Songcen, ‘Nüzi Shijie Fakanci’, Nüzi Shijie, 1904, 1(1): 1–3.

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‘famous animal’ caterpillar fungus and similar organisms to fungal infection in insects, and wrote that a common species of the fungi was ‘Isaria Aracknophila’.18 In 1913, a set of short articles sent from the College of Agriculture, Imperial University of Tokyo, by Ya Bo appeared in the science column of the Datong Zhoubao (Great Harmony Weekly, Shanghai). The first of them dealt with the zhenxiang (truth) about the caterpillar fungus.19 Ya Bo refuted the idea of its transformation in Chinese materia medica texts, stating that the fungal infection of underground larvae was the cause for the formation of the caterpillar fungus, as well as the jinchanhua (golden flowers on cicada), now accepted as another type of insect-fungus. To reinforce the authenticity of this scientific explanation, he recommended the microscope and encouraged readers interested in natural history to carry out microscopic observations. This statement, which accords with his idea about the futility of ordinary vision, obviously delivered the evidentiary power of microscopy. Through such textual media, relevant new scientific information circulated across the geographical and linguistic boundaries among Japanese, Western and Chinese cultures at the beginning of the twentieth century, sowing seeds of cognitive change. The demystification of the caterpillar fungus went against conventional Chinese thinking, but in the meantime, it also sparked new interest in different Chinese communities, including those members of the scientific community. Communicating the Science of the Caterpillar Fungus The Republican period witnessed the increasing impact of scientific discourse on Chinese intellectuals. The noted scholar Hu Shi, who had studied at Cornell University and Columbia University from 1910 to 1917, wrote in 1923: ‘In the recent three decades, a term has obtained almost a supreme position in China; one dares not look down upon or sneer at it whether he or she understands it or not, and whether he or she is fogyish or revolutionary. That term is ‘science’.’ Further,

18 Liu Dashen, Shengwu Jie Dongwu Pian, Beijing: Jinghua Yinshuju, 1908, p. 50. 19 Ya Bo, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Zhi Zhenxiang’, Datong Zhoubao, 1913, (2): 1.

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he pointed out that this ‘science’ enjoyed nearly unanimous admiration throughout the country.20 Under the influence of the style of this ‘science’, as stressed by Hu Shi, the knowledge surrounding the caterpillar fungus was undergoing reconstruction. The entry dongchong xiacao (winter worm summer grass) in the first edition of the Ciyuan (Origins of [Chinese] Terms, 1915), tantamount to the first modern Chinese comprehensive encyclopaedia, dealt only with fungi, insects and parasitism, totally ignoring premodern Chinese accounts.21 This was consistent with one of the main principles for its compilation, which was scientism in the conceptualisation of natural objects and phenomena.22 The illustration in the entry shows the fungus growing out of a mature insect rather than a larva. This indicates that the winter worm summer grass in the entry does not refer to the Chinese caterpillar fungus (Cordyceps sinensis ) but some other insect-fungi, which also reflects the influence of Japanese scholarship.23 Two years later, the same textual description of the winter worm summer grass appeared in the plant section of a book on Qing anecdotes.24 Elsewhere, on 4 April 1924, an author commented in the Shenbao (Shanghai News) that in the past Chinese people saw the caterpillar fungus as a magical organism capable of transformation, but it was just a parasitic fungusanimal mixture.25 As suggested by this comment, scientific knowledge did not merely provide new facts, but also empowered the author along with many other modern-oriented scholars to break with the past. The intellectual environment for new facts was, however, not uniformly favourable. In the 1910s and 1920s, several articles on the caterpillar fungus in, for example, the Tongsu Jiaoyu Bao (Journal of Popular Education, Shanghai), Xinmin Bao (Journal of New Citizens, Shanghai), Dagong Bao (Impartial Daily, Tianjin) and Da Shijie (Great World,

20 Hu Shi, ‘Kexue Yu Renshengguan Xu’, in Yadong Tushuguan (ed.), Kexue Yu Renshengguan, Shanghai: Yadong Tushuguan, 1923, pp. 1–42, 2. 21 Lu Erkui (ed.), Ciyuan, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1915, p. 302. 22 Wang Jiarong, ‘Ciyuan, Cihai De Kaichuangxing’, Cishu Yanjiu, 2001, (4): 94,

130–140. 23 The entry also says that the infected insects include the lougu (mole cricket), which Cordyceps sinensis actually does not infect. 24 Xu Ke, Qingbai Leichao, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [1916] 1984, p. 5947. 25 Li, ‘Ji Buchongcao’, Shenbao, 4 April 1924, Section 8.

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Shanghai) lacked any scientific knowledge.26 In 1924, the painter Zhu Fengzhu’s article on buke siyi (the incredible) in a Shanghai magazine even actively promoted the transformation theory of the caterpillar fungus on the basis of his observation of this wonder from Sichuan. Zhu asserted that the caterpillar fungus transcended the categories of animals and plants, and when compared with bats, another organism that crossed the boundaries of birds and beasts, the caterpillar fungus no longer seemed so implausible. To induce readers to accept his opinion, he confidently suggested readers buy samples from drugstores and examine them with their own eyes.27 Even thirteen years later, a thumbnail sketch in a Shanghai newspaper also advised readers to have a look at the caterpillar fungus at drugstores and feel its amazing nature as neither a plant nor an animal.28 People’s perceptions of it differed due to the different epistemological assumptions that they had grown up with. Zhu’s view could claim to be verifiable through observation, because what would be seen largely depended on, according to Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, ‘what it [the subjective self] hoped to see’.29 Furthermore, the scientific theory of its life cycle had not yet been directly confirmed by a continuous one year or longer field observation in cold alpine environments or laboratories, which also contributed to the survival of the transformation theory in Chinese society. Nevertheless, there were still many Chinese of different persuasions popularising narratives about a more scientific understanding of the caterpillar fungus. In 1914, the first issue of a Chinese journal of natural history in Shanghai published a brief scientific description of this organism, supplemented with some relevant geographical, morphological, environmental, medical and temporal information derived from the late eighteenth-century author Li Xinheng.30 The blend of information 26 Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Tongsu Jiaoyu Bao, 1913, (1): 1; Chai Zifang, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Xinmin Bao, 1915, 2(11): 33–34; Qingchengzi, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Dagong Bao, 20 June 1925, Section 6; Yuedan, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Da Shijie, 31 July 1926, Section 2. 27 Zhu Fengzhu, ‘Buke Siyi Zhi Chonglei’, Hong Zazhi, 1924, 2(34): 1–6. 28 Quan, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Shanghai Bao, 12 March 1937, Section 8. 29 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007, p. 34. 30 Wu Bingxin, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Bowuxue Zazhi, 1914, (1): 8. This article was

reprinted elsewhere, see Hanshan, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Dagong Bao, 3 September 1923, Section 10.

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here reveals the negotiation between modern science and local natural knowledge which were not absolutely incompatible with each other. In Kunming, Yunnan province, a local educational monthly published a brief scientific exposition on the taxonomy, morphology and formation of the caterpillar fungus in 1919. The author, a native of Yunnan, glorified the thriving of science and claimed to have aspirations to study the natural history of Yunnan products. To further his understanding of the caterpillar fungus, he particularly bought several specimens from a fellow medicine merchant.31 Sometimes the triumph of science over mystery could also be amusing. The entertaining newspaper Xin Shijie (New World, Shanghai) once published a short note of this kind about the caterpillar fungus in 1922.32 In the same year, the writer and scholar Zheng Zhenduo founded the weekly journal Ertong Shijie (Children’s World) in Shanghai. From the first issue of the third volume, as he announced, the journal began to publish popular science writing in addition to literary articles.33 Six years later, an illustrated popular science article on the caterpillar fungus appeared in its xiao kexue (little science) column.34 Before entering the topic, the author started with the statement that popular accounts of the worm-grass transformation and some other phenomena, such as the transformation from decayed grass to fireflies, or from spoiled meat to maggots, were disastrously wrong. To convince the reader of the fact that one species could by no means change to another, he suggested they cover a piece of meat with a net and then observe if maggots grew on it when it spoiled. The author did not confine himself to the caterpillar fungus, but also talked broadly about insectfungi which he still called winter worm summer grass. However, the insect hosts he enumerated merely encompass the lougu (mole cricket), huangchong (locust) and chan (cicada), and the caterpillar fungus does not grow on these insects. Besides, the caterpillar fungus in the illustration also seems more or less unsatisfactory. It does not well match that which is commonly seen in reality, but involves imaginative recreation and artistic licence: the depicted stroma, especially its base which joins the worm’s 31 Zhang Lu, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Zhi Yanjiu’, Kunming Jiaoyu Yuekan, 1919, 3(5): 116–117. See also Zhang Lu, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Zhi Yanjiu’, Bowu Xuehui Zazhi, 1919, (3): 22–24. 32 Gaiyu, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Xin Shijie, 1 February 1922, Section 2. 33 Zheng Zhenduo, ‘Disanjuan De Benzhi’, Ertong Shijie, 1922, 2(13): 46–47. 34 Renshou, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Ertong Shijie, 1928, 22(14): 33–36.

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head, is somewhat too thin and even; the ratio of the stroma’s length to the worm’s (about 2:1) is perhaps somewhat unusual, possibly to facilitate typesetting, moreover, the stroma and worm cross almost at a tidy right angle. Although the concept of winter worm summer grass in this article denotes a broad category of species, the illustration can hardly be treated as an idealised image of neither the caterpillar fungus nor insect-fungi as a whole. But it simultaneously appeared in a popular book on misinterpretations in everyday biology, in which the author argued that the caterpillar fungus, having long been misunderstood as being transformed from an insect, was caused by fungal parasitism of the insect Hepiyolus [Hepialus ] virescens.35 Persistent consumer demand for the caterpillar fungus propelled it to be exported from production areas, and thereby facilitated its encounter with scientific eyes. By the mid-1930s, the caterpillar fungus as a tonic had become a staple product of the area tantamount to present-day eastern Tibet and western Sichuan, finding much favour with wealthy people in Guangdong, Fujian, Nanjing and Shanghai, despite its high price. The Customs statistics for Kangding in western Sichuan showed that the amounts of the caterpillar fungus exported from Kangding in 1930, 1931 and 1932 were as high as 24 941, 13 467 and 13 267 jin.36 In his collection of notes printed in 1931, Pan Jing, a native of Guangdong, who had previously studied in France with official financial support, described three famous Sichuan foodstuffs, among which was the caterpillar fungus. Regarding it as a delicious tonic, he did not offer any criticism, but briefly added some scientific knowledge according to recent relevant biological research: it was identified as an Ascomycetes fungus; it parasitised larvae, and then sprouted from the latter; its nature was the same as that of yeast (fungus) which was used to brew beer and grape wine; and it was scientifically named Cordyceps .37 The scientific information Pan consulted was likely of French origin, as he wrote down the French term ‘Ascomycètes’.

35 Liu Piji, Renjian Wujie De Shengwu, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1928, pp. 7–9. 36 Anonymous, ‘Xikang Chukou Chongcao Tongji’, Kangzang Qianfeng, 1935, 2(8):

72. One jin was then equal to 500 grams, see Qiu Guangming (ed.), Zhongguo Lidai Duliangheng Kao, p. 520. 37 Pan Jing, Qiaoshan Zazhu, Publisher Unknown, 1931, p. 131. For Pan Jing’s life and overseas experiences, see Di Lu, ‘Buttocks, Science, and Emotions: The Pains of Modernity and the Mental Struggles of an Insignificant French-Trained Chinese Intellectual, 1900s– 1930s’, Archiv Orientální, 2020, 88(1): 95–132.

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While in Tianjin, Lu Wenyu, a painter and staff member with a strong interest in natural history at the public educational institution Guangzhi Guan (Institution for Broadening Wisdom) published a note on the caterpillar fungus in the weekly issued by the same institution in 1932.38 Lu first spoke of a man who presented this curious organism obtained from Sichuan to the institution, but he did not accept the latter’s account of its oddities and rarity. To inform the reader of some changshi (common sense), he wrote this note, referring to Matsumura Jinz¯ o’s Shokubutsu Meii (Collection of Botanical Terms), Nishimura Suimu’s Semi no Kenky¯ u (A Study of Cicada) and Adolf Engler’s system of plant classification.39 Aside from the taxonomic position and scientific name (i.e. ‘Cordyceps sinensis Sacc.’) of the caterpillar fungus, Lu additionally introduced several other fungal species of the same genus and family, and indicated that the Japanese also called certain similar species winter worm summer grass. At the end, he mentioned its medical and culinary uses in China, and further recalled his brother’s experience of eating steamed caterpillar fungus at table in Sichuan, and particularly alluded to the caterpillar fungus-duck food recently marketed by the food company Guanshengyuan. Obviously, Lu Wenyu acknowledged the authority of scientific knowledge. Like Pan Jing, his predilection for science did not, however, lead him to criticise the role of the caterpillar fungus in food and medicine but on the contrary record such use. In the 1930s and 1940s, quite a number of periodical articles exemplifying scientific authority involved in perceiving the caterpillar fungus appeared in, but were not limited to, the Huabei Ribao (Nothern China Daily, Beijing), Xiao Pengyou (Little Friends, Shanghai), Zhishi Huabao (Knowledge Pictorial, Shanghai), Guoxun (National News, Shanghai), Huazi Wanbao (Chinese Evening News, Hong Kong), Jingbao (The Crystal, Shanghai), Shehui Ribao (The Social Daily News, Shanghai), Shibao (Facts Daily, Beijing), Juequn Zhoubao (Waken the Public Weekly, Shanghai), Nong Zhi You (Friend of Agriculture, Shanghai) and Kexue

38 Lu Wenyu, ‘Xinnong Jianwen Suibi’, Guangzhi Xingqibao, 1932, (154): 4–6. Guangzhi Guan was established in Tianjin in January 1925, see Liu Xiang, ‘Tianjin Guangzhiguan De Chuangjian’, Bowuyuan, 2018, (3): 19–26. 39 Lu did not give specific editions of these texts. Matsumura’s Shokubutsu Meii was first published in 1884; a revision of this book was published in 1895. Nishimura’s Semi no Kenky¯ u was published in 1909.

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Shidai (The Science Times, Shanghai).40 Elsewhere, the Zhonghua Baike Cidian (Chinese Encyclopaedic Dictionary), published in Shanghai in 1930, corresponded the caterpillar fungus to ‘Cordyceps sinensis ’.41 Seven years later, a popular entomological book mentioned its medicinal use in China and associated it with cicada and other insects.42 In 1949, its formation even ranked among the interesting biological topics in everyday life.43 These scientific rediscoveries of the caterpillar fungus must have fitted with editorial or auctorial considerations of new attractions for readers. Under Japanese as well as Western influence, the Chinese term for the caterpillar fungus also often broadly denoted insect-fungi. The spread of relevant exoteric scientific knowledge was accompanied with intellectual tensions surrounding its biological nature and formation. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of science did not extend to, for example, its edibility, culinary preparation and medicinal properties. The scientific attention to the caterpillar fungus also evinced the influence of local food, medical or material culture on science communication.

Inviting Scientific Inquiry Scientific research on the caterpillar fungus in China emerged in the Republican period. This period featured the growth of scientific professionalisation and institutionalisation, as well as the rise of scientific nationalism against the background of creating a vigorous and modern

40 Xujun, ‘Ying He Dongchongcao’, Huabei Ribao, 5 September 1931, Section 11; Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Jiujing Shi Shenme Dongxi’, Xiao Pengyou, 1933, (569): 39; Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Zhishi Huabao, 1937, (4): 26–27; Zhu Peiran, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Yu Maoyan’, Guoxun, 1937, (156): 100; Baihong, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Huazi Wanbao, 22 March 1937, Section 3; Beiquan, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Jingbao, 14 June 1937, Section 3; Hu Shuhui, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Shehui Ribao, 30 September 1941, Section 2; Pei, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Shibao, 28 May 1943, Section 3; Zhiren, ‘Dongchong Xiacao: Dongwu Hu, Zhiwu Hu’, Juequn Zhoubao, 1946, (3): 9; Zhujun, ‘Yanxia Hua Chongcao’, Nong Zhi You, 1947, (10): 11–12; Huang Zongzhen, ‘Shenghuo Quanli: Dongchong Xiacao, Xialiang Dongnuan De Jingshui, Meiyu’, Kexue Shidai, 1948, 3(4): 37. 41 Shu Xincheng (ed.), Zhonghua Baike Cidian, Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1930, p. 175. 42 Tao Bingzhen, Kunchong Manhua, Shanghai: Kaiming Shudian, 1937, pp. 63–64. 43 Feng Zhipeng, Quwei De Shengwu Wenti, Jia Zuzhang (ed.), Shanghai: Kaiming

Shudian, 1949, p. 77.

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Chinese nation through science.44 Plenty of foreign and Chinese scientists contributed to the unprecedented development of biology and other branches of the scientific enterprise in China.45 Their research outputs availed to promote scientific literacy despite their different target audiences. Mycological Studies Local biological efforts to record native fungal species commenced in the late 1910s, usually in connection with research on agricultural pathogens.46 Later on, Chinese biologists began to pay extra attention to investigating fungal diversity in different regions.47 Such regional surveys of fungal diversity led to the development of taxonomic mycology in the 1930s. Deng Shuqun (1902–1970), born in Fuzhou, pioneered this field. He enrolled in the College of Agriculture, Cornell University in 1923, and pursued doctoral studies in plant pathology there from 1926; two years later, he returned to China without completing his doctoral dissertation.48 In 1932, Deng, then a research fellow of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture, but working at the

44 Zuoyue Wang, ‘Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China’, Osiris, 2002, 17(1): 291–322. 45 For the development of biology in Republican China, see, for example, Laurence Schneider, Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, pp. 1–113; Luo Guihuan, Zhongguo Jindai Shengwuxue De Fazhan, Beijing: Zhongguo Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2014; Lijing Jiang, ‘Retouching the Past with Living Things: Indigenous Species, Tradition, and Biological Research in Republican China, 1918–1937’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 2016, 46(2): 154–206; Li-Chuan Tai, ‘Shanghai’s Zikawei Museum (1868–1952): Jesuit Contributions to the Study of Natural History in China’, Asia Major, 2017, 30(1): 109–141. 46 For example, see Zhang Zuchun, ‘Beijing Fujin Fasheng Zuisheng Zhi Zhiwu Binghai Diaochabiao’, Nongshangbu Zhongyang Nongshi Shiyanchang Chengji Baogao, 1917, (3): 1–6. 47 For example, see Hu Xiansu, ‘Zhejiang Junlei Caiji Zaji’, Kexue, 1921, 6(11): 1137– 1143; Hu Xiansu, ‘Jiangxi Junlei Caiji Zaji’, Kexue, 1923, 8(3): 311–314; Dai Fanglan, ‘Jiangsu Zhenjun Minglu’, Nongxue Zazhi, 1927, 3(6): 1–13. 48 Deng Shuqun, Zizhuan, Beijing: Manuscript in the Archives of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, c. 1956, pp. 3–4; Di Lu, ‘Recording Fungal Diversity in Republican China: Deng Shuqun’s Research in the 1930s’, Archives of Natural History, 2019, 46(1): 139–-152.

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Science Society of China in Nanjing, reported his identifications of some fungi in south-eastern areas of China, among which were specimens of ‘Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc.’ obtained from a drugstore in Sichuan in 1928. Interestingly, he did not describe its morphological characteristics, but rather remarked that ‘this fungus is known in China as ‘winter-insectsummer-plant’ in connection with materia medica’, and ‘the chief source of supply for this fungus in drug stores all over the country is apparently Szechuan [i.e. Sichuan]’.49 Behind these words lay the influence of local culture of materia medica on his scientific mind. Nonetheless, Deng assigned the caterpillar fungus to the family Hypocreaceae. The scientific name given by Deng consisted of the genus name ‘Cordyceps’, specific epithet ‘sinensis’, basionym author ‘Berk.’ and authority of the new combination, i.e. ‘Sacc.’. Here, the so-called scientific name is a synonym for the Latin binomial of a species, and demonstrates the association of Latin with scientificity. ‘Berk.’ and ‘Sacc.’ refer to Miles J. Berkeley and Pier A. Saccardo who named the caterpillar fungus. Thus, the new biological science showed its historical ties with European scientists, and thereby framed its rhetorical power within the European tradition. Yet the English journal that published his report, Contributions from the Biological Laboratory of the Science Society of China: Botanical Series (Nanjing), would help communicate his finding of the caterpillar fungus to his international colleagues. Deng Shuqun’s research was institutionalised in the Private Lingnan University (Guangzhou), Private Jinling University (Nanjing), National Central University (Nanjing) and Central Research Institute of Agriculture (Nanjing) before the end of 1931.50 In 1934, Deng published another article in the English biological journal Sinensia (Nanjing), in which he reported his identifications and descriptions of the caterpillar fungus purchased from a drugstore and the other forty-one fungal species.51 This time he produced an illustration of its fruiting bodies, and

49 Shu Chun Teng, ‘Additional Fungi from Southwestern China’, Contributions from

the Biological Laboratory of the Science Society of China: Botanical Series, 1932, 8(1): 1–4, 1; Cheng Guangsheng, Deng Shuqun Zhuan, Beijing: Private Print, 2008, pp. 25–-26. 50 Deng Shuqun, Zizhuan, Beijing: Manuscript in the Archives of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, c. 1956, pp. 4–7. 51 Shu Chun Teng, ‘Notes on Hypocreales from China’, Sinensia, 1934, 4(10): 269– 298, 292, 297.

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added an account of the macroscopic and microscopic structural characteristics of its stromata, perithecia and spores. The illustration does not display any microscopic structures, but the black-and-white dots and lines well represent the three-dimensional appearance of the fruiting bodies. To give viewers an impression of the actual sizes of the specimens, Deng added a scale bar to the illustration. This article was later invoked in his 1939 English monograph.52 The monograph recorded more than one thousand four hundred fungal species and varieties in total, being the first of the mycological monographs that aimed to cover all known native fungi examined and identified by Chinese scientists themselves. In this monograph, Deng gave a new morphological characterisation of the caterpillar fungus from Sichuan, but made no mention of drugstores or materia medica. Despite the ongoing Sino-Japanese War, the monograph circulated outside of China, and became a reliable reference for his international colleagues.53 The war also prompted him to send over two thousand specimens of Chinese fungi to United States for safe-keeping and scientific purposes; some of them, including one specimen of the caterpillar fungus collected by Deng in Jiulong county, Sichuan on 1 July 1939, travelled to Cornell University, his alma mater.54 Based in part on Deng’s work in the 1930s, Pei Jian (1902–1969), a research fellow of the Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, published a Chinese article introducing scientific knowledge of the caterpillar fungus and snow fungus (Tremella fuciformis ) in the popular science magazine Kexue Shijie (Scientific World, Shanghai) in 1947.55 In his own words, the caterpillar fungus and snow fungus were all but mentioned in tandem

52 Shu Chun Teng, A Contribution to Our Knowledge of the Higher Fungi of China, [Chongqing?]: National Institute of Zoology & Botany, Academia Sinica, 1939, p. 41. 53 For example, see John P. Chilton et al., Fungi Reported on Species of Medicago, Melilotus, and Trifolium, Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1943, pp. 65, 142. 54 John A. Stevenson, Letter to Herbert H. Whetzel, 21 June 1941, File of H.H. Whetzel Correspondence, Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium; Kathie T. Hodge, ‘Cornell’s Fungi of China Collection Has Had an Interesting Journey’, Alumni Newsletter, 2005, 48: 3. The information about Deng’s specimen of the caterpillar fungus at Cornell University is taken from the label of the specimen stored at the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium; CUP-CH-001650 is the official catalogue number of the specimen in this herbarium, assigned by the staff (not Deng). 55 Pei Jian, ‘Yin’er He Xiacao Dongchong’, Kexue Shijie, 1947, 16(3): 102–104. Pei Jian obtained his PhD in Botany from Stanford University in 1931.

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when the Chinese spoke of tonics suitable for everyone. For the caterpillar fungus, Pei cited the Qing author Zhao Xuemin’s record of its medicinal properties, and referred to Deng Shuqun’s relevant publications, together with his personal knowledge. He also provided an illustration of new specimens, which, in contrast with Deng’s, additionally showed anatomical and microscopic structures such as the transverse section and asci. Oddly, the scale bar in the illustration is accurate; while in his textual account, the measurements for different parts of the caterpillar fungus are all ten times larger than in reality, for example, the length of the stroma is said to be four to eleven decimetres, when it should actually be four to eleven centimetres. From the perspective of scientific image-making, however, both Pei and Deng’s illustrations added to the accuracy in morphological representation of the caterpillar fungus in China. It is noteworthy that Pei and Deng shared some common ground in terms of scientific attention to local materia medica and food. This underpins the wider observation that the globalisation of modern science has usually been infused with considerations based on local culture and knowledge hierarchies.56 Further evidence can be found in two of the earliest scientific reports of fungi by Chinese authors: Wang Huanwen’s study of the biology and medicinal chemistry of the fungus fuling (Pachyma cocos, now renamed Wolfiporia cocos ) in 1909 and Wu Bingxin’s treatise on the biology and experimental cultivation of snow fungus in 1914.57 Both started by introducing, but not denying, the use of the two kinds of fungi in Chinese materia medica and food culture, which motivated Wang and Wu to connect them with new ways of knowing as well as the terms and language in the service of the pervasive rhetoric of power about modern science. Here is revealed again the negotiation between the local and the global in the understanding of Chinese medicinal species in the scientific community in China.

56 Fa-ti Fan, ‘Redrawing the Map: Science in Twentieth-Century China’, Isis, 2007, 98(3): 524–538; Marwa S. Elshakry, ‘Knowledge in Motion: The Cultural Politics of Modern Science Translations in Arabic’, Isis, 2008, 99(4): 701–730; Dhruv Raina, ‘The Naturalization of Modern Science in South Asia: A Historical Overview of the Processes of Domestication and Globalization’, in Jürgen Renn (ed.), The Globalization of Knowledge in History, Berlin: Max Planck Institute, 2012, pp. 305–322. 57 Wang Huanwen, ‘Bukury¯ o No Seibun Nitsuite’, Yakugaku Zasshi, 1909, (327): 461– 472; Wu Bingxin, ‘Ziyangping Baimu’er Zhi Yanjiu’, Bowuxue Zazhi, 1914, (1): 48–51.

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Chemical and Pharmacological Studies The aforementioned report of the fungus fuling (Wolfiporia cocos ), published by Wang Huanwen in Japan, is often considered the first pharmacological article by a Chinese author.58 After several years of study in pharmacology in Tokyo, Wang went back to China in 1909.59 The return of Chinese overseas students of pharmacology, biomedicine and related subjects such as chemistry from Japan and the West boosted scientific research surrounding medicinal substances in their motherland. Much of such research developed on the basis of re-examining local medicinal substances.60 The caterpillar fungus also inspired related chemical or pharmaceutical research, which emerged somewhat later than that of fuling (Wolfiporia cocos ), beimu (Fritillaria spp.) and some other medicinal fungi and plants that, too, had also long been used in China.61 In 1947, Tang Tenghan (1900–1988) and his collaborators reported their preliminary analysis of chemical constituents in the caterpillar fungus in the Zhongguo Yaoxuehui Huizhi (Journal of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, Chengdu). Tang completed his doctoral research on the pharmacognosy of ephedrine drugs at the Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversität zu Berlin in 1929.62 Ten years later, he went to Chengdu and worked at the West China Union University, staying there until 1946 58 Chen Xinqian, Zhonghua Yaoshi Jinian, Beijing: Zhongguo Yiyao Keji Chubanshe, 1994, p. 224; Hao Jinda, ‘Dishijie Quanguo Yaoxue Shi Bencao Xueshu Yantaohui Lunwen Zongshu’, Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Xinxi Zazhi, 2000, 7(11): 80–81; Wu Xiaoming (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Jiaoyu Shi, Beijing: Zhongguo Yiyao Keji Chubanshe, 2016, p. 260. 59 Cao Hui, ‘Zhongguo Yaoxuehui Chuangshiren Ji Shouren Huizhang: Wang Huanwen Xiansheng Shengping Jianlue’, Zhongguo Yaoxue Zazhi, 2002, 37(5): 394–395. 60 Chen Xinqian and Zhang Tianlu, Zhongguo Jindai Yaoxue Shi, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1992, pp. 120–137; Deng Tietao and Cheng Zhifan (eds.), Zhongguo Yixue Tongshi: Jindai Juan, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1999, pp. 453–455; Zhao Jimeng, ‘Jindai Zhongyao Yaoli Yanjiu Yu Chuantong Zhongyiyao Xue’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2012, 42(2): 79–83. For the Chinese students studying pharmacology in Japan in the 1900s, see Yiyao Xuehui, ‘Liuxue Riben Yiyao Xuexiao Tongren Xingming Diaochalu’, Yiyao Xuebao, 1907, (6): 1–4; Niu Yahua, ‘Qingmo Liuri Yixuesheng Jiqi Dui Zhongguo Jindai Yixue Shiye De Gongxian’, Zhongguo Keji Shiliao, 2003, 24(3):228–243. 61 Liu Shoushan (ed.), Zhongyao Yanjiu Wenxian Zhaiyao (1820–1961), Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1963, pp. 98–104, 173–-174, 460–463, 557–564. 62 Tang Tenghan, Beiträge zur Pharmakognosie der Ephedrin-Drogen (Doctoral Dissertation), Berlin: Paul Funk, 1929.

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when he transferred to another university in Shanghai.63 According to the report, Tang and his collaborators determined the content of water, fat, crude protein, crude fibre, carbohydrate and ash in the fungus and, moreover, investigated physical and chemical properties of the acicular crystals extracted from the fat, the range of amino acids from hydrolysed protein, and the content of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids.64 They did not further test the physiological functions of the constituents, but the constituent analysis might assist further exploration of bioactive chemicals for medicinal use. On 9 May of the same year, news about Zheng Zaojie’s (1919–1973) ongoing research on a light-yellow antibiotic crystal extracted from the caterpillar fungus appeared concisely and concurrently in some different newspapers in cities such as Chongqing, Shanghai, Ningbo and Hong Kong.65 Zheng was then a pharmacologist at the Military Academy of Veterinary Medicine in Anshun, Guizhou province.66 But he had not published a formal scientific report on this substance before the Communist victory in 1949.67 However, in 1948, Yang Shoushen (1900–1984), principal of the same Academy, published a preliminary study of ‘Cordycepin’ in the Guofang Kexue Jianbao (Bulletin of Defence Science, Nanjing). He hypothesised that Cordyceps sinensis must have generated some substance that inhibited the growth of rival microorganisms in the larvae responsible for its development. This hypothesis motivated him to carry out some experiments and finally he chemically extracted a fat-soluble light-yellow crystal from specimens of the caterpillar fungus produced in Lijiang, Yunnan province. The crystal, then named Cordycepin, melted at 96 °C. Further, 63 Su Xi, ‘Yaowu Huaxuejia Tang Tenghan’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2020, 50(1): 43–53. 64 Tang Tenghan et al., ‘Dongchong Xiacao (Chongcao) Zhi Chubu Yanjiu’, Zhongguo

Yaoxuehui Huizhi, 1947, 3(1): 1–4. 65 Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Yishi Bao (Chongqing), 9 May 1947, Section 2; Anonymous, ‘Kangjun Xin Yaoji: Dongchong Xiacao Junsu’, Yishi Bao (Shanghai), 9 May 1947, Section 2; Anonymous, ‘Zheng Zaojie Tiyan Dongchong Xiacao Junsu’, Shishi Gongbao, 9 May 1947, Section 2; Anonymous, ‘Dong Chongcao: Xinxiao Faxian’, Huaqiao Ribao, 9 May 1947, Section 2. 66 This information is provided in related news. For a brief account of Zheng’s life, see Niu Xiting (ed.), Changchun Shi Zhi: Junshi Zhi, Changchun: Jilin Renmin Chubanshe, 1999, p. 741. 67 Information about this antibiotic material can be found in Zheng’s publications of the 1950s, see, for example, Zheng Zaojie, Shouyi Guoyao Ji Chufang, Nanjing: Xumu Shouyi Tushu Chubanshe, 1957, p. 142.

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he performed in vitro experiments to determine its antibiotic properties. The results showed that Cordycepin demonstrated different degrees of resistance to Streptococcus sp., Burkholderia mallei, Bacillus anthracis, Pasteurella multocida and Staphylococcus sp. Then he went on to inject two rabbits and a dog with varied doses of a solution of Cordycepin in water. The injections did not produce abnormal reactions and thus preliminarily proved the nontoxicity of Cordycepin. According to his conclusion, this study was concerned with the treatment of glanders in horses. It provided some intriguing information on this possibility despite certain deficiencies; in particular, the chemical formula for Cordycepin remained undetermined, and in vivo antibiotic animal experiments had not been conducted.68 Given the multifold importance of the horse to human life, Yang’s research actually assumed both veterinary and social significance. In addition to these local Chinese activities, there were also contributions of many foreign scholars to the development of pharmacology and related disciplines in China. One of them was the English pharmacologist Bernard E. Read (1887–1949), who went to China and became a lecturer in chemistry and pharmacy at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) in Beijing in 1909.69 Before moving to the Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research in Shanghai in 1932, Read had already spent much energy examining the scientific value of Chinese materia medica.70 He was also selected as one of the nine censors of the Zhonghua Yaodian (Chinese Pharmacopoeia, 1930), the first national pharmacopoeia of Republican China, devoted to scientific medicine.71 As Mary B. Bullock remarks, ‘some at PUMC had been active in assessing the chemical properties of traditional Chinese drugs, and perhaps no one person 68 Yang Shoushen, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Junsu (Cordycepin) Zhi Chubu Yanjiu Baogao’, Guofang Kexue Jianbao, 1948, 2(9): 711–717. The scientific names of the bacteria are not provided in the article but added by myself. 69 For Bernard E. Read’s life and publications, see Kurt L. Schwarz, ‘Bernard Emms Read, May 17, 1887–June 13, 1949’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1950, 5(2): 216–217; Hartmut Walravens, ‘Bernard Emms Read (1887–1949), a List of His Publications’, Monumenta Serica, 2012, 60(1): 481–516. 70 For a brief account of Bernard E. Read’s research on Chinese materia medica, see Fan Yanni, ‘Lundunhui Chuanjiaoshi Yiboen Zaihua Zhongyiyao Yanjiu Huodong Tezheng Ji Yingxiang’, Zhongyiyao Daobao, 2019, 25(9): 11–14. 71 Liu Ruiheng (ed.), Zhonghua Yaodian, Nanjing: Neizheng Bu Weisheng Shu, 1930, p. i; Liu Ruiheng, ‘Zhonghua Yaodian Xu’, Yiyao Xue, 1931, 8(9): 78.

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contributed more to their understanding prior to 1950 than Bernard Read, Professor of Pharmacology.’72 One of his best known publications deals with the medicinal plants recorded in the sixteenth-century Chinese herbalist Li Shizhen’s magnum opus on materia medica.73 What Read did was not to translate or interpret ancient records as he had done elsewhere, but instead he reconstructed modern knowledge of these plants mainly by listing their species identities, Chinese names, chemical constituents and habitats on the basis of what had become by then copious European, American and Asian secondary sources; the plants were also rearranged into modern taxonomic categories. In 1940, he published an article on the use of insects in Chinese medicine, in which he provided a photograph of six specimens of the ‘remarkable’ drug ‘Tung Ch ‘ung Hsia Ts ‘ao’, alias ‘Cordyceps sinensis ’, ‘a parasite fungus growing on the caterpillar Hepiyalus virescens of great repute as a tonic for tuberculosis and jaundice.’74 The participation of the Chinese themselves, no doubt, was indispensable to firmly rooting modern pharmacology in China. As early as 1909, Wang Huanwen wrote that the Japanese pharmacologist Nagai Nagayoshi once told him it was reasonable for natives to perform (scientific) research on domestic natural products.75 The above and other academic and educational institutions provided important arenas for this dimension of knowledge innovation and transmission. Throughout the Republican period, there was no lack of medical schools devoted to

72 Mary B. Bullock, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 223–224. 73 Bernard E. Read, Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu, Beijing: Peking Natural History Bulletin, 1936. 74 Bernard E. Read, ‘Insects used in Chinese Medicine’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1940, 71: 22–32, 31. 75 Wang Huanwen, ‘Bukury¯ o No Seibun Nitsuite’, p. 472.

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scientific medicine.76 Some of them were even specialist schools of pharmacology.77 In 1936, the National Specialist School of Pharmacology, the first and only national school of this kind in modern China, was established in Nanjing.78 Meng Mudi (1897–1983) was appointed founding principal by the Ministry of Education.79 Meng studied at PUMC and afterwards received training in pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of London in the early 1920s; after returning to China, he took part in compiling the national pharmacopoeia in 1929, and was elected president of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association in 1948.80 Before the school came into being, the Association had requested the Ministry of Education to set up an independent educational institution of pharmacology.81 Meng had also communicated to the Ministry his proposition about the practical importance of pharmacology and related education and industries in terms of economy, national defence and humanitarianism.82 Due to the Sino-Japanese War, this school was forced to move westward, finally reaching Chongqing in 1938. Eight years later, with the end of the SinoJapanese War and the Second World War in 1945, teachers and students

76 Zhou Bangdao (ed.), Diyici Zhongguo Jiaoyu Nianjian (Bingbian), Shanghai: Kaiming Shudian, 1934, pp. 16, 18, 86, 132, 134, 137, 143–146; Chen Dongyuan (ed.), Dierci Zhongguo Jiaoyu Nianjian (Vol. 5), Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1948, pp. 89– 99. Cf. Ruan Xiang (ed.), Diyihui Zhongguo Nianjian, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1924, pp. 1843–1848; Anonymous, ‘Quanguo Zhiye Daxuexiao Ji Zhuanmen Xuexiao Yilan’, Xuesheng Zazhi, 1925, 12(8): 126–128; Zhongxi Yiyao Zazhishe, ‘Quanguo Zhongxi Yiyao Xuexiao Diaocha Baoao’, Zhongxi Yiyao, 1935, 1(4): 361–370; Zhongxi Yiyao Zazhishe, ‘Quanguo Zhongxi Yiyao Xuexiao Diaocha Baoao’, Zhongxi Yiyao, 1936, 2(1): 55–68; Zhongxi Yiyao Zazhishe, ‘Quanguo Zhongxi Yiyao Xuexiao Diaocha Baoao’, Zhongxi Yiyao, 1936, 2(5): 362–371. 77 Youcun, ‘Quanguo Yaoxuexiao Kecheng Diaochabiao’, Yaobao, 1936, (46): 73–75; Chen Xinqian and Zhang Tianlu, Zhongguo Jindai Yaoxue Shi, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1992, pp. 102–111. 78 Dai Lichun, ‘Zhongguo Diyisuo Duli Gaodeng Yaoke Xuexiao: Guoli Yaoxue Zhuanke Xuexiao’, Zhongguo Yaoxue Zazhi, 1990, 25(12): 747–750. 79 Jiaoyubu, ‘Jiaoyubu Pinrenshu’, Jiaoyubu Gongbao, 1936, 8(22): 20. 80 Huang Yi et al., ‘Meng Mudi Zhuanlue’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2020, 50(3): 176–

192. See also Zhongguo Yaoxuehui (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxuehui Shi, Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaotong Daxue Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 32–24, 223–224. 81 Zhonghua Minguo Yaoxuehui, ‘Benhui Chengqing Jiaoyubu Sheli Yaoxue Jiaoyu Zhuanmen Weiyuanhui Wen’, Zhonghua Yaoxue Zazhi, 1936, 1(1): 95–96. 82 Meng Mudi, ‘Cheng Jiaoyu Buzhang Lun Yaoxue Zhi Zhongyao Ji Yaoke Yaocheng Zhi Jiyi Choushe’, Zhonghua Yaoxue Zazhi, 1936, 1(1): 75–78.

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started to migrate back to Nanjing.83 Soon, in 1947, the new principal Meng Xinru (1903–1947) put forward four missions for the school: First, to explore effective constituents in special Chinese medicinal substances, extract and refine them, establish their physiological and pathological effects, and then introduce them to the global medical and pharmaceutical community; second, to reproduce and invent synthetic drugs; third, to publish academic articles and series of popular books on pharmacology so as to improve Chinese people’s knowledge of pharmacology and convey relevant general knowledge to people from all walks of life in China; fourth, to establish links with world renowned pharmaceutical institutions for the purpose of communicating with each other and interchanging ideas and information.84

Meng Xinru completed his doctoral studies in chemistry in Berlin in 1925.85 Here, he actually suggested chemical and biomedical approaches to rediscovering Chinese materia medica, which, as he envisioned, constituted part of the global enterprise of pharmacology. The regard he showed for both cutting-edge studies and science communication also embodies his dual roles as a scientist and educator. At that time, the school under his leadership offered both specialist and vocational training, oriented to high school and junior high school graduates, respectively.86

83 Jiaoyubu (ed.), Quanguo Zhuanke Yishang Xuexiao Yaolan, Shanghai: Zhengzhong Shuju, 1942, pp. 329–338; Chen Dongyuan (ed.), Dierci Zhongguo Jiaoyu Nianjian (Vol. 5), Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1948, pp. 257–258. 84 Meng Xinru, ‘Yaowu Kexue Zhi Guoqu Ji Guoli Yaoxue Zhuanke Xuexiao Zhi Shiming’, Yaoxun Qikan, 1947, (5): 1–4, 4. Meng Xinru was appointed principal of this school in 1946, and held this position until his death next year, see Jiangnan Wenti Yanjiuhui (ed.), Nanjing Diaocha Ziliao Jiaozhu, Fang Fang and Zhang Jun (eds.), Nanjing: Nanjing Chubanshe, [1949] 2019, p. 863. 85 Hsin-Yü Mong, Zur Kenntnis der Salze und Komplexverbindungen des Vierwertigen Vanadiums (Doctoral Dissertation), Berlin: Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, 1925; Arthur Rosenheim and Hsin-Yü Mong, ‘Über Salze und Komplexverbindungen des Vierwertigen Vanadiums’, Zeitschrift für Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie, 1925, 148(1): 25–36. For Meng Xinru’s life, see Anonymous, ‘Guoli Yaozhuan Xiaozhang Meng Xinru Tu Binggu’, Shenbao, 21 October 1947, Section 6; Huang Yuanyu (ed.), Changzhou Shizhi (Book 3), Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1995, p. 981. 86 Anonymous, ‘Guoli Yaoxue Zhuanke Xuexiao Gaikuang’, in Zhongguo Di’er Lishi Dang’anguan (ed.), Zhonghua Minguo Shi Dang’an Ziliao Huibian (Collection 5, Division 3, Education 1), Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe [1947] 2000, pp. 307–309.

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The establishment and running of this school reflected government sponsorship of pharmacology and related professional education. This school survived the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and became a precursor of the present-day China Pharmaceutical University, which set up the School of Chinese Pharmacy at the beginning of its establishment in Nanjing in 1986.87 In a sense, this school is still alive, and continues to undertake the mission of valorising Chinese materia medica on its own terms. In the first half of the twentieth century, overall, the caterpillar fungus was entangled with science popularisation and new scientific efforts in association with the rise of the scientific enterprise in the Chinese world. From microscopical observations to chemical and pharmacological analyses, Chinese scientists delved deeper into its interior, and thereby created new intellectual boundaries beyond the reach of indigenous empirical knowledge. Meanwhile, the rhetorical power of science provoked cognitive tensions surrounding its biological nature and formation in concert with a rupture between the old and the new in the far-reaching project of scientific modernisation with national sponsorship. The new scholarship on the caterpillar fungus suggests a conceptual divide between a nature being objectified in scientific practice and a subjective culture shaped by social norms. In reality, however, scientific efforts were often more or less interwoven with cultural or social factors, forming what Bruno Latour calls ‘hybrids’ or ‘imbroglios’.88 Not only did the material quality of the caterpillar fungus engaged scientific attention, but modern science also did not necessarily collide with relevant empirical knowledge that arose from Chinese culture. This being so, the caterpillar fungus remained sceptical about metaphysical assumptions about the natural and the cultural, and evinced certain continuity in the making of a new self during its interaction with Chinese scientific advocates. As shown below, the scientific disenchantment of the caterpillar fungus did not prevent its longstanding consumption as a medicine, tonic, or foodstuff in Chinese society.

87 Chen Qi, ‘Zhongguo Yaoke Daxue Zai Nanjing Chengli’, Zhongguo Yaoxue Zazhi, 1987, (7): 439; Ji Xiaofeng (ed.), Zhongguo Gaodeng Xuexiao Bianqian, Shanghai: Huadong Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 1992, pp. 530–534. 88 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Catherine Porter (trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 1–3.

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Domestic Circulation and Consumption During the Republican period, the central government promulgated some legal documents and one national pharmacopoeia devoted to the regulation of medicine merchants and medicinal substances.89 They echoed the broad trend towards globally unified standards for drugs and formulae,90 while the internal cause of the creation of the regulations and pharmacopoeia was the chaotic domestic manufacture, sale and use of medicinal substances.91 However, zhongyao (Chinese medicines) or jiuyao (old medicines), as opposed to xiyao (Western medicines), were relatively marginalised or unequally treated to varying degrees.92 Despite the Nationalist government imposing certain legal restrictions on the sale and use of Chinese medicines, there was a substantial gap between expectation and realisation before the outbreak of the full-scale Sino-Japanese War in 1937, due to the resistance of medicine merchants, local governments’ dereliction of duty and such. During the war, the Nationalist government had temporarily softened the restrictions, partly because of medication shortages.93 Meanwhile, the Communist regime encouraged the employment of both native and imported medicinal substances in its wars with

89 Di Lu, ‘Minguo Shiqi Yaoshang He Putong Yaopin Guanli Fagui De Zhiding Yu Tuixing’, Jindai Zhongguo, 2017, 27: 77–102. 90 Frederick B. Power, The International Conference for the Unification of the Formulae of Potent Medicaments, London: The Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratories, 1903; Anonymous, International Agreement Revising the Agreement of 1906 Respecting the Unification of Pharmacopoeial Formulas for Potent Drugs, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1931; George Urdang, ‘Pharmacopoeias as Witnesses of World History’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1946, 1(1): 46–70; George Urdang, ‘The Development of Pharmacopoeias: A Review with Special Reference to the Pharmacopoeia Internationalis’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 1951, 4(4): 577–603. 91 Weisheng Bu, ‘Cheng Xingzheng Yuan Chengsong Guanli Yaoshang Guize Cao’an Qing Jianhe Lingzun Wen’, Weisheng Gongbao, 1929, (9): 63; Weisheng Bu, ‘Cheng Xingzheng Yuan Chengsong Niding Guanli Chengyao Guize Cao’an Qing Jianhe Lingzun You’, Weisheng Gongbao, 1929, (10): 49–50. 92 For the use of the three terms, see, for example, Weisheng Bu, ‘Guanli Yaoshang Guize’, Weisheng Gongbao, 1929, (9): 59–62, 59; Yu Dawang et al., ‘Zhonghua Yaodian Bianzuan Jingguo’, Yiyao Xue, 1930, 7(2): 23–36, 34. 93 Wen Xiang, Yizhi Yu Chaoyue: Minguo Zhongyi Yizheng, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 102–108.

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the Japanese army and the Nationalist government.94 These circumstances, together with the power of tradition, ensured the ongoing use of Chinese medicines. Chinese physicians continued to apply the caterpillar fungus in their medical practices.95 In particular, as many medicinal substances, like the caterpillar fungus, could be used as food or culinary ingredients, their use and sale could thus circumvent state regulation of medicines. As the twentieth century commenced, as mentioned before, the caterpillar fungus growing in present-day Tibet began to be briefly recorded as a medicinal product in local chronicles; this suggested increasing local attention to its medicinal or commercial value. The British explorer Frederick M. Bailey (1882–1967), who crossed the Kamba pass in Tibet on 9 September 1913, noted that ‘on the pass the coolies found caterpillars with the parasitic fungus Cordiceps sinensis growing from their heads’. Further, he recalled, ‘I had seen them once before near Batang [in western Sichuan]. The descriptive Tibetan name for the parasite and its host is Yartsa Gumbu, which means ‘Summergrass Winterinsect’.’96 Between 1916 and 1917, Oliver R. Coales (1880–1926), the British consul in Dajianlu, journeyed to Chamdo, a city in present-day eastern Tibet.97 Among the medicines exported from Tibet to the Chinese market, as he observed, ‘the most interesting is the curious Chungtsao or insect grass, a dried caterpillar about 2 inches long, which has been killed by a fungus 94 Yang Lisan, ‘Di Shiba Jituanjun Yezhan Houqinbu Yang Lisan Buzhang Zai Yaoping Cailiaochang Gongzuo Huiyi Shang De Zongjie’, in He Zhengqing (ed.), Liudeng Dajun Weisheng Shiliao Xuanbian, Chengdu: Chengdu Keji Daxue Chubanshe, [1941] 1991, pp. 27–30; Jin Jin (ed.), Zhongguo Renmin Jiefangjun Yaocai Gongzuo Shi, Beijing: Zong Houqin Bu Weisheng Bu, 1997, pp. 29–32, 66–67, 119, 151; John R. Watt, Saving Lives in Wartime China: How Medical Reformers Built Modern Healthcare Systems amid War and Epidemics, 1928–1945, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 77–95. 95 For example, see Lu Jinsui, Jingjing Yihua, in Shen Hongrui and Liang Xiuqing (eds.), Zhongguo Lidai Mingyi Yihua Daguan, Taiyuan: Shanxi Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1916] 1996, p. 1382; Ding Ganren, Ding Ganren Yi’an, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [c. 1926] 1960, p. 106; Qin Bowei, Qianzhai Gaofang’an, in Zhang Yuping and Bao Jianxin (eds.), Qin Bowei Gaofang Ji, Fuzhou: Fujian Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1938] 2007, p. 43; Shi Jinmo, Zhuxuan Shi Jinmo Yi’an, Beijing: Huaxue Gongye Chubanshe, [1940] 2010, pp. 46–47. 96 Frederick M. Bailey, No Passport to Tibet, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957, p. 196. Cf. Henry T. Morshead, Report on an Exploration on the North East Frontier, 1913, Dehra Dun: Printed at the Office of the Trigonometrical Survey, 1914, p. 68. 97 Oliver R. Coales, ‘Eastern Tibet’, The Geographical Journal, 1919, 53(4): 228–249.

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of about the same length growing out of one of its segments.’ He added, ‘it is supposed to be an excellent restorative to weak constitutions.’98 Geographically considered, when this product from Tibet was transported eastward, it had to first pass through Sichuan, Yunnan and/or Qinghai, where it also grew in the wild. An investigation in 1919 disclosed that the caterpillar fungus was then already a special export product of Yushu, Qinghai. Many people were collecting it there and trading with merchants; the collecting activities even bred discontent among local headmen who, by purportedly invoking an accomplished monk’s inference, claimed that the ‘pulse’ of the land was thus being broken by the impact of digging for this product, and many flocks and herds were dying in consequence.99 By around the mid-1930s, the caterpillar fungus was still among the medicinal substances or special products in Yushu.100 Doubtless, the trade in this product contributed to the local economy in Yushu, despite tensions between local headmen and merchants. Compared with Tibet and Qinghai, however, Sichuan and Yunnan were more widely known as the areas where it grew naturally. An extensive investigation of products in postal delivery areas of China, conducted by the General Post Office of the Ministry of Communications during the period from 1934 to 1936, enables an overview of the production and nationwide dissemination of the caterpillar fungus in the mid-1930s. With this investigation came a published book in 1937, whose prefaces indicated its aim of giving a general idea of available Chinese products so as to facilitate their procurement. Underlying the investigation was the belief that the flourishing of local commodities on the national market would help rescue the war-beleaguered national economy from shortages and crises, while simultaneously improving the 98 Oliver R. Coales, ‘Economic Notes on Eastern Tibet’, The Geographical Journal, 1919, 54(4): 242–247, 244. 99 Zhou Xiwu, Yushu Diaocha Ji, in Huang Chengzhu (ed.), Zhongguo Fangzhi Congshu (Xibu Difang, Book 37), Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, [1919] 1968, pp. 149– 150, 180. See also Zhou Xiwu, Yushu Xianzhi Gao, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 35), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [1919] 2003, pp. 393, 401. 100 Deng Chengwei and Ji Shenglan, Xining Fu Xuzhi, in Zhang Yuxin (ed.), Zhongguo Xizang Ji Gan Qing Chuan Dian Zang Qu Fangzhi Huibian (Book 34), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [1928] 2003, p. 145; Li Xiaosu, ‘Qinghai Zhi Jingji Gaikuang’, Xin Yaxiya, 1934, 8(1): 43–58, 49; Ma Hetian, Gan Qing Zang Bianqu Kaocha Ji, Shanghai Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1947, pp. 374–375, 386–388.

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postal services.101 Indeed, by then the economy of China was developing towards capitalism.102 But northeastern China had been under Japanese occupation, while the growth of the Chinese Communist Party often set the central government’s nerves on edge.103 In this context, the production and consumption of products took on a special significance. Though excluding a few regions as in present-day western Tibet, the investigation shows that the bulk of the caterpillar fungus as a medicinal substance was mainly produced in present-day Sichuan and then Yunnan provinces.104 The caterpillar fungus produced in Maogong (Sichuan), Kangding (Sichuan) and Lijiang (Yunnan) was treated as a representative local product, and thus was photographed for the investigation.105 By and large, the investigation points to the eastward flow of this medicinal product to Hankou, Shanghai, Guangdong and even Hong Kong. The significance of geographical information on its areas of growth is rooted in, as Emily T. Yeh and Kunga T. Lama state, ‘the fact that the larvae-fungus complex cannot be cultivated’, which means that ‘nonhuman nature determines where it can and cannot be found.’106 In 1936, a social survey of Songpan, Lifan, Maoxian, Wenchuan and Maogong in

101 Jiaotongbu Youzheng Zongju, Zhongguo Tongyou Difang Wuchanzhi, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1937, pp. 5–8. 102 Kenneth S. Chan, ‘The Late Qing Dynasty to the Early Republic of China: A Period of Great Institutional Transformation’, in Gregory C. Chow and Dwight H. Perkins (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Economy, London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 21–40. 103 John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker (eds.), The Cambridge History of China (Vol. 13, Part 2), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 99–116, 492–518; Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, The Rise of Modern China, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 514–518, 553–563. 104 Jiaotongbu Youzheng Zongju, Zhongguo Tongyou Difang Wuchanzhi, pp. 529–543, 607, 655–665, 1089. In this investigation, the caterpillar fungus was assigned into the category of medicinal substances, see Jiaotongbu Youzheng Zongju, Zhongguo Tongyou Difang Wuchanzhi, pp. 1211–1212, 1214. 105 Jiaotongbu Youzheng Zongju, Zhongguo Tongyou Difang Wuchanzhi, pp. 527, 609, 651. The picture of the caterpillar fungus from Maogong can also be found elsewhere, see Shina Sh¯obetsu Zenshi Kank¯okai, Shinsh¯ u Shina Sh¯ obetsu Zenshi (Vol. 2), Tokyo: T¯ oa D¯obunkai, 1941, p. 383. 106 Emily T. Yeh and Kunga T. Lama, ‘Following the Caterpillar Fungus: Nature, Commodity Chains, and the Place of Tibet in China’s Uneven Geographies’, Social & Cultural Geography, 2013, 14(3): 318–340, 322.

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Sichuan complained about the difficulty in its artificial cultivation while noting the local production of this medicinal product.107 In the 1930s and 1940s, a variety of other sources both confirm the ongoing exploitation of the medicinal caterpillar fungus in Sichuan and Yunnan and show how it sold well in Shanghai, Hong Kong and elsewhere.108 Sichuan, for example, was acclaimed for its abundance of medicinal products109 ; and the caterpillar fungus ranked among its major medicinal exports.110 In 1947, the export volume and prices of medicinal products from Chongqing (neighbouring Sichuan) were reported to have recently increased significantly; some merchants from Guangdong were even willing to spend one million four hundred thousand Chinese dollars more for the caterpillar fungus as they had before.111 In the same year, moreover, it was also reported that the tonic caterpillar fungus produced in the Tibetan borderlands of western Sichuan first gathered in Kangding and Guanxian, then went forward to Chengdu and Chongqing and later realised its commercial value in Jiangsu, Zhejiang,

107 Deng Xihou, Sichuan Song Li Mao Mao Wen Tunqu Tunzheng Jiyao, Publisher Unknown, 1936, pp. 133–139. 108 For example, see Li Bingchen et al., Weixi Xianzhi, in Zhongguo Difangzhi Jicheng

(Yunnan Fuxianzhi Ji, Book 83), Nanjing: Fenghuang Chubanshe, [1932] 2009, pp. 262, 268; Zhuang Xueben, Qiangrong Kaocha Ji, Shanghai: Liangyou Tushu Yinshua Gongsi, 1937, pp. 127–128; Feng Keshu, Lifan Xian Shichan Shuyao, in Dong Guanghe and Qi Xi (eds.), Zhongguo Xijian Difang Shiliao Jicheng (Book 43), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [1935?] 2010, p. 239; Ran, ‘Chongcao’, Shusheng Zhoubao, 1937, (51): 16; Daxuesheng Shuqi Bianjiang Fuwutuan, Chuanxi Diaocha Ji, in Wang Xiaoli and Jia Zhongyi (eds.), Zhongguo Bianjiang Shehui Diaocha Baogao Jicheng (Collection 1, Book 5), Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [1941] 2010, pp. 494–495; Long Yun et al., Xinzuan Yunnan Tongzhi (Book 4), Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, [1944] 2007, pp. 126–129; Long Yun et al., Xinzuan Yunnan Tongzhi (Book 7), Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, [1944] 2007, p. 108. 109 Anonymous, Sichuan Kaocha Baogaoshu, in Wang Xiaoli and Jia Zhongyi (eds.), Zhongguo Bianjiang Shehui Diaocha Baogao Jicheng (Collection 1, Book 5), Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [1935] 2010, p. 59. 110 Lü Pingdeng, Sichuan Nongcun Jingji, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1936, pp. 313–314, 319; Sichuan Sheng Zhengfu, Sichuan Sheng Gaikuang (Vol. 3), Chengdu: Sichuan Sheng Zhengfu Mishuchu, 1939, pp. 14–15; Li Yingong, ‘Sichuan Linye Fuchan Zhi Yiban’, Dongfang Zazhi, 1939, 36(13): 41–42. 111 Lianhe Zhengxinsuo, ‘Benshi Guoyao Zhangchao Fanlan’, Zhengxin Xinwen, 1947, (646): 7.

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Fujian, Guangdong, Hong Kong and even Southeast Asia.112 Clearly, over the decades leading up to the Communist victory, economic interests facilitated a west–east trend in its transportation to economically more developed areas. In November 1948, the governor of Chamdo issued a proclamation in which one of the demands was the opening up of the mountains, previously forbidden by local lamaseries; this change would allow people to collect the caterpillar fungus and other natural products there.113 The announcement would doubtless be conducive to collection of this profitable substance and thus promote the growth of the local economy. The domestic circulation of medicinal products was then accompanied by lively consumer demand for them in Chinese society, a culture that was by no means confined to medical care for curative purposes. In many cases, there was no distinct boundary between medicinal products and food, and tonics for improving health, rather than treating illness, were embedded throughout the region, and sold in drugstores, dispensaries, food companies and restaurants. When Chinese physicians used the caterpillar fungus in medical treatments in late Qing China, as mentioned before, merchants also explored its commercial value by developing new products.114 In the Republican period, it continued to be sold in drugstores in Suzhou and other domestic and overseas cities.115 Its value was greatly exploited in Shanghai, the commercial capital of China. The food company Guanshengyuan, for example, once advertised its new tonic food called the caterpillar fungus-duck on New

112 Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Chanzai Chuan Kang Bianqu’, Dazhong Yebao, 29 October 1947, Section 1; Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Chanxiao Xiankuang’, Shishi Xinbao Wankan, 29 October 1947, Section 1; Anonymous, ‘Chuan Kang Techan Zibuping Chongcao Chanxiao Gaikuang’, Yishi Bao, 30 October 1947, Section 2; Anonymous, ‘Chuan Kang Chongcao Chanxiao Gaikuang’, Jinrong Ribao, 30 October 1947, Section 2. 113 Anonymous, ‘Changdu Gelunlalu Gaoshi Xiaochu Zangkang Liangzu Jiexian’, Shenbao, 23 November 1948, Section 2. 114 For example, see Liuyutang Zhuren, ‘Jishou Chongcaogao’, Shenbao, 19 December 1881, Section 6; Liuyutang Gushi, ‘Shenqi Chongcaogao’, Shenbao, 7 November 1884, Section 6. 115 Curtis G. Lloyd and Nathaniel Gist Gee, ‘Cordyceps sinensis, from N. Gist Gee, China’, Mycological Notes, 1918, (54): 766–768; Anonymous, ‘Xuzhongdao Guoyao Zongfenhao Shijia Lianhe Jintian Dajianjia’, Shenbao, 30 September 1932, Section 17.

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Year’s Day 1925.116 Some shrewd restaurants also served tonic dishes involving the use of the caterpillar fungus, such as the chongcao ruge (caterpillar fungus-young pigeon).117 These dishes count as variations on the caterpillar fungus-duck combination described by Parennin about two centuries earlier. Some gourmets also actively introduced the recipes for these dishes to the public. One of them promoted such a recipe with additional reference to the magical transformation of the caterpillar fungus, and a premodern medical record of its potency, in the Shanghai journal Changshou (Longevity).118 Even in 1946, the latest guidebook to Shanghai listed the duck stewed with the caterpillar fungus as a famed tonic dish produced in local Sichuan-style restaurants and allegedly only sold to frequent customers.119 So profitable and popular was the caterpillar fungus that some speculative merchants sold it even though it was beyond the scope of their original business. A snow fungus (Tremella fuciformis ) company in Shanghai advertised on 4 January 1928 that it sold not only the snow fungus, but also medicinal substances and tonics such as the caterpillar fungus.120 The Sichuan Store in Shanghai, too, additionally mentioned its sale of the caterpillar fungus and other Sichuan products in its advertisement about the snow fungus on 23 September of the same year121 ; besides, the store also advertised the caterpillar fungus in its promotional brochure about the snow fungus.122 By the mid-1930s, price lists for medicinal products from Kangding and Lijiang demonstrate that the caterpillar fungus was significantly more expensive than most or all of 116 Guanshengyuan, ‘Xin Faming Dongchong [Xia]cao Ya Shangshi’, Shenbao, 1 January 1925, Section 19. 117 See, for example, Anonymous, ‘Nanyuan Jiujia’, Shenbao, 16 November 1928, Section 21; Anonymous, ‘Weiya Jiulou Xinfengji Shangshi’, Shenbao, 21 September 1929, Section 16; Anonymous, ‘Yanhualou Jiujia Zhi Zibu Dunpin’, Shenbao, 1 November 1929, Section 25. 118 Shen Xi, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Weiya’, Changshou, 1935, (144): 350. 119 Leng Xingwu, Zuixin Shanghai Zhinan, Shanghai: Shanghai Wenhua Yanjiushe,

1946, p. 107. 120 Anonymous, ‘Shutongsen Yinerzhuang Jianjia Zhanqi’, Shenbao, 4 January 1928, Section 21. 121 Anonymous, ‘Sichuan Shangdian (Yizhou Jinian) Yin’er Dajianjia’, Shenbao, 23 September 1928, Section 13. 122 Li Xunfu, Yin’er Zhi Yanjiu, Shanghai: Sichuan Shangdian, [1928] 1936, p. 29; Li Xunfu, Yin’er Zhi Yanjiu, Shanghai: Sichuan Shangdian, [1928] 1948, p. 30.

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the other medicinal plants and fungi, but was cheaper than medicinal animal products such as bear bile. In about 1935, a drugstore of repute in Shanghai sold it for 52.8 yuan/jin, about 8.8–5.9 times the prices in Kangding, where it fetched 6–9 yuan/jin.123 By comparison, a common strain of rice sold in Shanghai in 1935 was a fraction of the price, around 0.066–0.085 yuan/jin.124 According to Sherman Cochran, science took a strategic role in modern Chinese consumer culture.125 However, the promotion of native foodstuffs, medicinal substances, or tonics would not necessarily invoke the power of science. Traditional accounts of the potency and transformative ability of the caterpillar fungus, for example, were able to provide impetus for the consumption of this product, while deconstruction of its magical transformation in a scientific context did not seem to undermine its sales. In a special issue of the Shanghai magazine Liangyou (The Young Companion), particularly devoted to the propaganda of the new western province of Xikang in wartime China, several representative local medicinal substances were briefly publicised; the caterpillar fungus was described as ‘insects-grass’ and ‘favorite Chinese tonics’ growing on the high mountains.126 Then the economic politics of the caterpillar fungus also occurred in the guohuo (national products) movements delivered in nationalistic and anti-imperialist tones and infused with propaganda about

123 Jiaotongbu Youzheng Zongju, Zhongguo Tongyou Difang Wuchanzhi, pp. 607, 662; Hu Anbang, Shiyong Yaoxing Cidian, Shanghai: Zhongyang Shudian, 1935, p. 40. It is unknown whether 1 jin here equaled 596.8 or 500 grams because the authors did not indicate whether or not they employed the metric system of weights and measures. The investigators of the General Post Office of the Ministry of Communications also pointed out that the weights and measures used in different regions were not unified, see Jiaotongbu Youzheng Zongju, Zhongguo Tongyou Difang Wuchanzhi, p. 9. 124 Zhongguo Kexueyuan Shanghai Jingji Yanjiusuo and Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo (eds.), Shanghai Jiefang Qianhou Wujia Ziliao Huibian (1921 Nian-1957 Nian), Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1958, p. 217. The price of a common strain of rice was originally recorded as 10.350–13.300 yuan/156 jin. According to the source, here 1 jin equaled 500 grams. 125 Sherman Cochran, Chinese Medicine Men: Consumer Culture in China and Southeast Asia, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 109–115. 126 Anonymous, ‘Daodi Yaocai’, Liangyou, 1940, (158): 12. The province of Xikang was established on New Year’s Day 1939; its territory roughly covered present-day eastern Tibet and western Sichuan, see Alvin Barber and Norman D. Hanwell, ‘The Emergence of China’s Far West’, Far Eastern Survey, 1939, 8(9): 99–106.

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how the products could benefit national economic interests.127 Against this background, exhibitions became important platforms for the promotion of national products. The largest such exhibition held in China at that time took place in Shanghai between 1 November 1928 and 3 January 1929. Two representatives of Sichuan and Yunnan promoted the caterpillar fungus as one of their most prized local medicinal products.128 As the consumer market for the caterpillar fungus was not confined to China, a company, which was probably hoping to expand its overseas market, once advertised its caterpillar fungus stocks and futures in the weekly for Shanghai’s Consulting Institute for International Trade in 1946.129 While being diffused and consumed in society, the caterpillar fungus also enriched the spiritual life of the Chinese people. In the winter of 1899, the Qiuzhi Shuyuan (College of Pursuing Ambitions, Shanghai) proposed several examination topics to assess the students’ academic performance in the subject of literature. One of the topics required students to compose a eulogy of the caterpillar fungus.130 Perhaps this topic was inspired by relevant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poems. The literatus Shen Zengzhi (1850–1922) of Zhejiang, too, once referred to the caterpillar fungus and its transformation in one of his poems.131 Later, on the eve of the full-scale outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the caterpillar fungus was even used as a pen name by an author who satirised the alleged new life in the city of Shantou under the governance of the 127 Karl Gerth, China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 125–202. 128 Dong Shaoshu, ‘Zhonghua Guohuo Zhanlanhui: Dong Shaoshu Zhi Yanci’, Shenbao, 26 December 1928, Section 14; Li Kui’an, ‘Zhonghua Guohuo Zhanlanhui: Sichuan Daibiao Li Kuian Zhi Baogao’, Shenbao, 29 December 1928, Section 13. More than ten thousand invited guests and fifty thousand tourists attended the exhibition, see Hong Zhenqiang, ‘1928 Nian Zhonghua Guohuo Zhanlanhui Lunshu’, Huazhong Shifan Daxue Xuebao (Renwen Shehui Kexueban), 2006, 45(3): 83–88. 129 Guoji Maoyi Zixunsuo, ‘Chukou Xiaoxi’, Jinchukou Maoyi Xiaoxi, 1946, (122): 1. 130 Anonymous, ‘Qiuzhi Shuyuan Jihai Dongji Keti’, Shenbao, 27 December 1899,

Section 3. This college was established in Shanghai in 1876, and discontinued in 1905, see Ma Xuexin et al. (eds.), Shanghai Wenhua Yuanliu Cidian, Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1992, p. 342. 131 Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi Ji Jiaozhu, Qian Zhonglian (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 1922] 2001, p. 699. In a reply to Shen, Zhang Qin, a friend of Shen’s, composed a poem which also mentioned the caterpillar fungus, see Shen Zengzhi, Shen Zengzhi Ji Jiaozhu, Qian Zhonglian (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, [c. 1922] 2001, p. 1239.

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Nationalist Party.132 Possibly, this pen name echoed his or her disappointment at the transience of the new life which actually soon transformed to what it was before. Not long after the Sino-Japanese War, another author mocked the poor performance of the government during the famine of the time, and wrote that although the grass roots in some regions had been eaten up by starving people in spring, the caterpillar fungus could still generate grass for them to eat in the forthcoming summer; however, this creature was so expensive that it could hardly serve as a saviour of the thirty million famine victims.133 For Chinese physicians, the caterpillar fungus was not simply a medicament but also engaged with their deep concerns over the prospects of Chinese medicine in a time of dramatic change.

In the Spotlight of Medical Reform The dynamic production and consumption of the medicinal caterpillar fungus suggest the social influence of indigenous medical culture. Meanwhile, the encounter of modern science and a Chinese medicine being nationalised and also questioned brought about an increasing interest in medicinal substances shared by Chinese physicians and scientists or doctors representing the new scientific medicine. There were those who supported what they understood as Western or scientific medicine, and those who proposed to abolish antiquated Chinese medicine.134 There were others who suggested integrating Chinese medicine and scientific medicine,135 or abolishing Chinese medicine but while retaining the use of Chinese medicinal substances.136 In some cases, the causes behind such

132 Dongchong Xiacao, ‘Cong Beiping Dao Shantou’, Yanda Zhoukan, 1936, 7(13): 10–13. 133 Hu Mingshu, ‘Huangnian Beiwanglu’, Guomin, 1946, (5): 28–30. 134 Wang Weizhen, ‘Qizhong Zexi: Qingren Wu Rulun Yixueguan De Zhuanbian Ji

Yuanyin Fenxi’, Anhui Shixue, 2006, (2): 68–74; Feng Erkang, ‘Wanqing Xuezhe Wu Rulun De Xiyiguan: Jianlun Wenhua Fansi De Fangfalun’, Tianjin Shehui Kexue, 2007, (3): 121–129. 135 Tian Feng and Wang Mimi, ‘Cong ‘Yangwu Yundong’ Dao ‘Zhongxi Yi Huitong’’, Zhongyi Wenxian Zazhi, 2007, (1): 56–58. 136 Hao Xianzhong, ‘Yu Yue ‘Feiyi Cunyao’ Lun Jiqi Lishi Yingxiang’, Zhongyi Wenxian Zazhi, 2004, (3): 4–6.

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varied views of medicine were rooted, at least in part, in medical experiences of individuals or their family members. For example, the deaths and illness that befell his wife and children played an important part in the shaping of the Confucian scholar Yu Yue’s proposal for the abolition of Chinese medicine.137 The renowned writer Lu Xun’s (1881–1936) antagonism to Chinese medicine bore a tight relationship with the death of his father in his youth despite treatments offered by Chinese physicians.138 This antagonism famous in the preface to his collection of short stories, the Nahan (Call to Arms), was part of the larger rhetorical position against Chinese feudalism in the pursuit of a revolutionary modernity.139 Facing the rhetoric and competition of scientific medicine, Chinese medicine and its proponents were seeking coping strategies and selftransformation. Integrating the two medical systems gradually evolved into an influential ideology among the community of Chinese physicians. In this respect, historians often invoke the idea proposed by the viceroy Li Hongzhang in 1890, that is, to integrate Chinese and Western medical doctrines and achieve confluence.140 Soon after, the physician Tang Zonghai directly used the expression Zhongxi Huitong (integrating Chinese and Western [medicine]) in the title of a collection of his medical 137 Zhao Hongjun, Jindai Zhongxi Yi Lunzheng Shi, Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 1989, pp. 52–54; Liu Zesheng, ‘Yu Yue Feizhi Zhongyi Sixiang Genyuan Tansuo’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2001, 31(3): 171–174; Zhang Yuan, ‘Yu Yue Fei Zhongyi Zhi Mi’, Dushu, 2014, (2): 168–173. 138 Pi Guoli, ‘Yiliao Yu Jindai Shehui: Shixi Lu Xun De Fanzhongyi Qingjie’, Zhongguo

Shehui Lishi Pinglun, 2012, 13: 353–376. Lu Xun’s son recalled that Chinese drugs had also been used in his family, and Lu Xun was not absolutely opposed to the use of Chinese drugs, see Xu Guangping, ‘Zhuiyi Xiao Hong’, in Zhang Yumao and Yan Zhihong (eds.), Xiao Hong Wenji (Vol. 3), Hefei: Anhui Wenyi Chubanshe, [1946] 1997, pp. 375– 382, 379–380; Zhou Haiying, Lu Xun Yu Wo Qishi Nian, Haikou: Nanhai Chuban Gongsi, 2001, pp. 247–278; Zhou Haiying, ‘Lu Xun Bingbu Fandui Zhongyi’, Zhishi Jiushi Liliang, 2008, (5): 12. 139 Lu Xun, ‘Nahan’, in Lu Xun, Lu Xun Quanji (Vol. 1), Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, [1923] 1973, pp. 269–462, 269–270. 140 Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006, p. 204. CF. Li Hongzhang, ‘Wanguo Yaofang Xu’, in Stephen A. Hunter, Wanguo Yaofang (A Manual of Therapeutics and Pharmacy in the Chinese Language), Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1890, pp. 11–14; Li Hongzhang, ‘Jinglu Li Shaoquan Boxiang Wanguo Yaofang Xu’, Wangguo Gongbao, 1890, 2(23): 24–25. There is an opinion that Xu Shou (1818–1884) proposed the idea of integrating Chinese medicine and Western medicine earlier than Li Hongzhang, see Wu Wenqing, ‘Xu Shou Yu ‘Zhongxi Yi Huitong’ Zhuzhang De Youlai’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2001, 31(4): 240–241.

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texts published in Shanghai in 1892.141 Tang was among the earliest Chinese physicians to take an integrationist approach in their intellectual production.142 Physicians of the integrationist school basically laid emphasis on Chinese medicine, while recognising that scientific medicine possessed some merits that could supplement and rationalise Chinese medicine despite the absence of consensual norms in practice.143 As this scholarly trend developed, especially in Shanghai,144 a somewhat radical proposition for scientising Chinese medicine emerged and prevailed from the beginning of the twentieth century, bringing materia medica into sharp focus. Ding Fubao (1874–1952) pioneered the spread of this methodology for adapting Chinese medicine.145 And how the caterpillar fungus was treated held a mirror to the reshaping of Chinese materia medica and its relationship with Chinese medicine. Materia Medica of Growing Importance In 1899, Ding Fubao began to buy and read an extensive range of Chinese and Western medical books due to his own health issues,146 although his acquisition of new medical knowledge actually came from

141 Tang Zonghai, Zhongxi Huitong Yishu Wuzhong, Shanghai: Qianqing Tang Shuju,

1892. 142 Zhang Yanjie, Qingdai Zhongyi Congshu Yanjiu (MA Thesis), Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyi Kexueyuan, 2009, pp. 49–55. 143 Wang Zhenrui, ‘‘Zhongxiyi Jiehe’ Yu ‘Zhongxiyi Huitong’ De Benzhi Qubie’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 2002, 32(2): 122–124. For example, see Tang Zonghai, Bencao Wenda, in Wang Mimi and Li Lin (eds.), Tang Rongchuan Yixue Quanshu, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe, [1893] 1999, pp. 533–534; Zhang Xichun, Yixue Zhongzhong Canxi Lu (Book 2, Section 5), Shijiazhuang: Hebei Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1928] 1985, pp. 174–181. 144 Bi Lijuan et al., ‘Jindai Shanghai Zhongxiyi Huitong Yundong De Fazhan Jiqi Yiyi’, Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Tushu Qingbao Zazhi, 2014, 38(5): 41–45. 145 Zhao Hongjun, Jindai Zhongxi Yi Lunzheng Shi, Hefei: Anhui Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 1989, pp. 177–180; Bridie Andrews, ‘Ding Fubao and the Morals of Medical Modernization’, East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 2015, 42: 7–37. 146 Ding Fubao, Weisheng Xue Wenda, Wuxi: Chouyinlu, [1900] 1901, p. 4; Ding Fubao, Chouyin Jushi Ziding Nianpu, in Zhou Heping (ed.), Beijing Tushuguan Cang Zhenben Nianpu Congkan (Book 197), Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe, [1921] 1999, pp. 55–188, 76–77.

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Japanese sources.147 In the preface to his book on new materia medica based on chemical experiments, finalised in 1909, Ding mentioned Western medical practitioners in China and their contempt for Chinese medicinal substances. He stressed, Chinese medicine has degenerated to an extreme degree, but [Chinese] medicinal substances may not be useless. … Because Japanese and Western pharmacologists carry out chemical analyses of their constituents and further experimented on them, they are able to make thorough inquiries [into Chinese medicinal substances], and therefore drive out the practice of spreading fallacies [about Chinese medicinal substances]. If practitioners of Chinese medicine follow this approach in the treatment of illnesses, and further associate it with old [Chinese] prescriptions, the day will surely come when Chinese and Western [medicine] have been integrated.148

Despite his disappointment with Chinese medicine in general, Ding pinned his hope on Chinese medicinal substances which, however, must disengage with Chinese medical theories and other fallacious ideas, and combine with chemical analysis and pharmacological experimentation. Relevant Japan literature, from which the book was translated, must have inspired his confidence in this new type of materia medica.149 In fact, Ding himself had produced two kinds of Chinese medicinal pills used for replenishing blood and dispersing phlegm, which won him the top prize at the Nanyang Industrial Exposition held in Nanjing in 1910.150 But it is unknown whether the pills were made as to the procedure he recommended. In his later years, Ding affirmed the value of Chinese empirical medical knowledge and medicinal substances at large. But the Japanese

147 Ding Fubao, Chouyin Jushi Qishi Zixu, in Xiong Yuezhi (ed.), Xijian Shanghai Shizhi Ziliao Congshu (Book 3), Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian, [1944] 2012, p. 497. 148 Ding Fubao, ‘Huaxue Shiyan Xinbencao Xu’, Yixue Shijie, 1909, (13): 1–2. See also Ding Fubao, Huaxue Shiyan Xinbencao, Shanghai: Wenming Shuju, [1909] 1912, pp. 1–2. Cf. Ding Fubao, ‘Ershi Shiji Xin Bencao Xu’, Yixue Shijie, 1908, (7): 1–4. 149 In the book, Ding did not mention the original literature he consulted. But the copyright page shows that this book was translated and edited by him. Mayanagi Makoto thinks that this book was translated from Japanese literature on pharmacognosy, see Mayanagi Makoto, ‘Nikkanetsu no Igaku to Ch¯ugoku Isho’, Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi, 2010, 56(2): 151–159. 150 Ding Fubao, Chouyin Jushi Ziding Nianpu, p. 94.

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medical reform in the Meiji period, which he had investigated in Japan in 1909,151 reinforced his critical attitude towards Chinese medicine: I have carefully examined the most serious shortcomings of Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine lacks elementary medical intelligence in anatomy, physiology, histology, embryology, bacteriology and pathology, as well as international new intelligence concerning epidemiology and internal medicine. Therefore, Chinese physicians are unable to attend medical conferences held by governments or international conferences on the prevention of epidemics. Even when they and Western doctors are seeing patients in the latter’s homes together, their discourses of etiological factors, symptoms and pathological mechanisms all disaccord with scientific principles and go against the international progressing trends in medicine.152

Ding’s criticism of an unscientific Chinese medicine indicates his advocacy of modern science as the correct epistemology in the field of medicine. He valued the empirical knowledge and effective material in Chinese medicine because they were supposed to be truthfully verified and even reinvented by scientific approaches and thereby add new intelligence to both Chinese and Western medicine. In the 1920s and 1930s, the idea of scientising Chinese medicine became increasingly popular.153 Meanwhile, materia medica took on an added importance especially in the case that some of those who had received scientific or biomedical training actively engaged in reflection on the relationship between modern science and Chinese medicine. Yu Yunxiu (1879–1954), who had studied scientific medicine in Japan and then started his medical career in Shanghai in 1916, published two critical articles on Chinese medicine in 1920. In the articles, he suggested separating the wealth of empirical knowledge of using medicinal substances from medical theories rooted in yin and yang, 151 For his journey and experience in Japan, see Ding Fubao, Chouyin Jushi Ziding Nianpu, pp. 90–93; Ding Fubao, Chouyin Jushi Xueshu Shi, Shanghai: Gulin Jingshe Chubanshe, 1949, pp. 167–189. 152 Ding Fubao, Chouyin Jushi Zizhuan, Shanghai: Gulin Jingshe Chubanbu, 1948, pp. 18–19. 153 He Shuangmei, Zhongguo Yaowuxue Shigang, Shanghai: Zhongyi Shuju, 1930, pp. 85–97; Gu Zhishan and Li Rong, ‘Jindai Yixue Shi Shang De ‘Zhongyi Kexuehua’ Yundong’, Nanjing Zhongyi Xueyuan Xuebao, 1989, (2): 50–53; Liu Weidong, ‘20 Shiji 30 Niandai ‘Zhongyi Kexuehua’ Sichao Lunxi’, Qilu Xuekan, 2008, (2): 35–41; Li Bingkui, ‘Minguo Yijie ‘Guoyi Kexuehua’ Lunzheng’, Lishi Yanjiu, 2017, (2): 57–72.

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wuxing (five phases) and other fallacious doctrines. Further, he made an appeal that scientific studies of Chinese materia medica follow Western pharmacological methods, employing scientific approaches to determine the effects of drugs. The first step, as he suggested, was to select some target medicinal substances by consulting old and famous Chinese physicians or valuable ancient Chinese prescriptions. The substance he chose as an example was the herb fuzi (aconite, Aconitum carmichaelii).154 Three years later, he explicitly formulated a complete three-step procedure: besides the first step described above, the other two steps were animal experimentation and chemical analysis.155 Yu’s critical discourse reflects his tripartite division of Chinese medicine into ‘theory, Chinese drugs, and experience’.156 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei points out that Yu Yunxiu, influenced by the Japanese ‘ancient formula current’ which attached importance to practice and empirical knowledge rather than theoretical frameworks, drew on the concept of experience to reassemble an empirical subtradition of Chinese medicine. Inspired by Japanese pharmacology, Yu also ‘actively promoted the study of Chinese drugs’ against the backdrop of the ‘valorization of Chinese drugs as promising objects for scientific research’ in modern East Asia.157 Though experience provided valuable reference for exploring new effective drugs, it did not equal truthful knowledge but must be objectified by chemical and biomedical analyses. Despite this methodological change, however, Yu’s procedure for studying Chinese drugs cannot be simply treated as representing a paradigm shift in the light of its significant reliance upon indigenous empirical knowledge. Compared with Ding Fubao, Yu suggested abolishing rather than scientising Chinese medicine, and thus became a key figure in persuading the government to abolish Chinese

154 Yu Yunxiu, ‘Kexue De Guochan Yaowu Yanjiu Zhi Diyibu’, Xueyi, 1920, 2(4): 1–8; Yu Yunxiu, ‘Kexue De Guochan Yaowu Yanjiu Zhi Diyibu (Xuqian)’, Xueyi, 1920, 2(5): 1–10. For Yu’s life, see Zhonghua Yixuehui Shanghai Fenhui Yishi Xuehui, ‘Yu Yunxiu Xiansheng Zhuanlue He Nianpu’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 1954, (2): 81. 155 Yu Yunxiu, ‘Yanjiu Guochan Yaowu Chuyi’, Tongde Yiyao Xue, 1923, 5(5): 15–26.

See also Yu Yunxiu, ‘Yanjiu Guochan Yaowu Chuyi’, Yiyao Xue, 1926, 3(5): 45–56; Yu Yunxiu, ‘Yanjiu Guochan Yaowu Chuyi’, Xinyao Yu Shehui Huikan, 1928, 1: 296–307. 156 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse, p. 94. 157 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse, pp. 92–95. See also Sean Hsiang-

Lin Lei, ‘How Did Chinese Medicine Become Experiential? The Political Epistemology of Jingyan’, Positions, 2002, 10(2): 333–364.

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medicine in 1929.158 Nevertheless, Yu also bore certain similarities to Ding in terms of, for example, their partition of Chinese medicine and emphasis of medicinal substances. The tension between modern science and Chinese medical theories, together with scientific interest in Chinese materia medica, pointed out to integrationist Chinese physicians a potentially more feasible direction for the scientification of Chinese medicine. One of such physicians was Chen Cunren (1908–1990), who found himself in direct ideological conflict with Yu’s proposal for abolishing Chinese medicine but also encouraged scientific research on Chinese medicinal substances. Chen acknowledged Ding Fubao as his teacher, and recognised the importance of scientification. In 1929, Chen had gone to the national capital Nanjing with four other representatives of all Chinese physicians in the country to protest against the government’s suppression of Chinese medicine.159 Chen’s medical ideology and intellectual practice, furthermore, was reflected in part in his treatment of the caterpillar fungus and thereby provides a significant window into how integrationist physicians specifically scientised Chinese materia medica with the expectation of rejuvenating Chinese medicine. Chinese Materia Medica Reformed in the Form of a Dictionary Chen Cunren was born into a merchant family running the silk and cloth business in Shanghai.160 Following graduation from middle school, Chen proceeded to study Western medicine at the Nanyang Medical University in Shanghai. After one year of undergraduate study, during the summer vacation he suffered from shanghan (cold damage) which baffled Western medical skills but was finally cured by Ding Ganren, a famous Chinese 158 Yu Yunxiu, ‘Feizhi Jiuyi Yi Saochu Yishi Weisheng Zhang’ai An’, Quanguo Yiyao Tuanti Daibiao Dahui Tekan, 1929, 1: 25–26; Yu Yunxiu, ‘Yixue Geming De Guoqu Gongzuo Xianzai Xingshi He Weilai De Celue’, Zhonghua Yixue Zazhi, 1934, 20(1): 11– 23. See also Hao Xianzhong, ‘Feizhi Zhongyi Pai De Lingxiu: Yu Yunxiu Qiren Qishi’, Ziran Bianzhengfa Tongxun, 2004, 26(6): 72–76. 159 Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960, pp. 138–139; Gao Wenzhu and Liu Ping (eds.), Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Xueke Shi, Beijing: Zhongguo Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2014, p. 193. 160 Zhang Ruwei, ‘Jieshao Guoda Houxuanren Chen Cunren Jun Xiaoshi’, Xiandai Yiyao Zazhi, 1947, 2(23–24): 47; Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, [1973] 2000, p. 5.

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physician of the Menghe School. This incident prompted him to terminate his study at the university and enrolled in the Shanghai Specialised School of Chinese Medicine in 1923. Four years later, the Nationalist government was established in Nanjing, and Chen graduated.161 This school was a self-funded educational institution, established by Ding Ganren and other Chinese physicians, and first opened in 1916.162 Not the earliest new-style school of Chinese medicine, though, it wielded a profound influence on Chinese medicine education.163 Ding and his colleagues emphasised the role of education on the future development of Chinese medicine while aware of the rise of education in Western medicine in China. However, they did not blindly reject or denigrate Western medicine, but treated the two medical systems as having their respective strengths and limitations. They stated that medicine was a humanitarian art, and people should learn good medical knowledge regardless of its origin. With this idea, they planned to employ a Chinese person skilled in Western medicine especially anatomy.164 Of the courses initially offered in the school, there were some involving Western medical expertise despite their low proportions.165 Given the education he received in the two institutions, clearly Chen cannot be considered

161 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 15–16, 60; Yang Xinglin, ‘Yilin Guaijie Chen Cunren’, Zhongyi Wenxian Zazhi, 1995, (3): 28–30; Mingyi Yaolan Bianshen Weiyuanhui, Mingyi Yaolan: Shanghai Zhongyi Xueyuan (Shanghai Zhongyi Zhuanmen Xuexiao) Xiaoshi, Shanghai: Shanghai Zhongyiyao Daxue Chubanshe, 1998, p. 145. 162 Yang Xinglin and Lou Shaolai, ‘Youguan Shanghai Zhongyi Zhuanmen Xuexiao Chuangli De Kaozheng Shuoming’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 1998, 28(4): 225. 163 Some scholars consider that the first new-style school of Chinese medicine was founded in 1885, see Lin Ganliang, ‘Woguo Jindai Zaoqi De Zhongyi Xuexiao’, Zhonghua Yishi Zazhi, 1980, 10(2): 90–92; Wu Dantong, ‘Woguo Jindai Diyisuo Xinxing Zhongyi Xuetang Xingshuai Yuanyin Chutan’, Ziran Bianzhengfa Yanjiu, 2011, 27(11): 112–117. 164 Ding Ganren et al., ‘Cheng Gebu Wen’, Shaoxing Yiyao Xuebao, 1916, 6(2): 42– 43; Neiwu Bu, ‘Neiwu Bu Pi Zhun Zhengshitang Jiao Ding Zezhou Deng Bingqing Kaishe Zhongyi Xuexiao’, Shaoxing Yiyao Xuebao, 1916, 6(2): 43; Ding Ganren et al., ‘Wei Choushe Shanghai Zhongyi Xuexiao Cheng Dazongtong Wen’, Zhongxi Yiyao, 1937, 3(6): 368–369. 165 Mingyi Yaolan Bianshen Weiyuanhui, Mingyi Yaolan: Shanghai Zhongyi Xueyuan (Shanghai Zhongyi Zhuanmen Xuexiao) Xiaoshi, Shanghai: Shanghai Zhongyiyao Daxue Chubanshe, 1998, pp. 10–12, 27.

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ignorant of Western medicine even when he later embarked on his career as a Chinese physician.166 Before migrating from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1949,167 Chen Cunren gradually made his mark among Chinese physicians in Shanghai. While running for delegate of the National Assembly in 1947, Chen stated that he had constantly aimed to serve the community of Chinese physicians, to strive to advance the status of Chinese medicine and to seek improvement in Chinese medicine.168 Relevant efforts he had made by then include the compilation of the voluminous Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian (Great Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica) which was published in Shanghai in 1935. Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei commends the work as ‘the most salient example’ of reorganising Chinese medicine as to scientific methods.169 How the information in the entry for the caterpillar fungus was organised then enables closer observation of the academic and methodological transformation as embodied in the dictionary. At that time, the sense of the Chinese term cidian had also transformed from literary elegance to dictionary under Japanese influence.170 Moreover, although Chinese dictionaries are often considered to have their origin in the ancient text Erya (Literary Expositor, finalised before the common era),171 their sources, purposes, and categorisation and organisation of knowledge had undergone significant changes under Japanese and 166 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 51, 56–57, 76–77; Chen Cunren, Wode Yiwu Shengya, Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [1976] 2007, pp. 7–8. 167 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 201, 218. See also Deng Yuhai and Zhu Shengliang, ‘Chen Cunren Zaoqi (1949 Nian Qian) Yishi Huodong Chukao’, Zhongyi Wenxian Zazhi, 2016, (4): 44–49. Chen also mentioned elsewhere that he moved to Hong Kong in 1948, see Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, p. 261; Chen Cunren, Wode Yiwu Shengya, p. 131. 168 Chen Cunren, ‘Chen Cunren Zhi Jingxuan Xuanyan’, Zhongyiyao Qingbao, 1947, (6): 8. Cf. Anonymous, ‘Zhongyishi Xuanju Guoda Daibiao Chen Cunren Yiyou Shanghai Qianshu Tuichu’, Zhongyiyao Qingbao, 1947, (5): 2. 169 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, ‘From Changshan to a New Anti-Malarial Drug: ReNetworking Chinese Drugs and Excluding Traditional Doctors’, p. 331. 170 Ciyuan Xiudingzu and Shangwu Yinshuguan (eds.), Ciyuan, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1998, p. 3042; Pan Jun, Riben Cishu Yanjiu, Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 1–12; Huang Heqing, Jinxiandai Ciyuan, Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe, 2010, p. 112. 171 Yong Heming, ‘Guanyu Zhongguo Cidian Shi Yanjiu De Sikao’, Cishu Yanjiu, 2004, (2): 14–21; Hongyuan Dong, A History of the Chinese Language, London: Routledge, 2014, p. 35.

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Western influence in modern times, while bearing a distant relationship with ancient Chinese textual traditions.172 In this sense, Chen’s dictionary actually provided a new form of representing a new Chinese materia medica. In 1921 Xie Guan, then principal of the Shanghai Specialised School of Chinese Medicine, published the first modern comprehensive dictionary of Chinese medicine.173 He strongly favoured the form of dictionaries, stating that dictionaries were the most appropriate means of simplifying complexity and presenting essential information.174 Though his dictionary did not merely deal with materia medica, dictionaries of Chinese materia medica followed. Chen’s dictionary was not the first but it was the most influential dictionary of Chinese materia medica in the Republican era.175 It was finalised in June 1933, containing about fourteen thousand entries consisting of three million two hundred thousand characters in total.176 Chen submitted the manuscript and eight hundred colour pictures to the World Book Company in Shanghai, expecting the latter to publish them in one single volume. When the materials were 172 Zhong Shaohua, Renlei Zhishi De Xin Gongju: Zhongri Jindai Baike Quanshu Yanjiu, Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe, 1996, pp. 49–87; Pan Jun, Riben Cishu Yanjiu, Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 249–256; Milena DoleželováVelingerová and Rudolf G. Wagner, ‘Chinese Encyclopaedias of New Global Knowledge (1870–1930): Changing Ways of Thought’, in Milena Doleželová-Velingerová and Rudolf G. Wagner (eds.), Chinese Encyclopaedias of New Global Knowledge (1870–1930): Changing Ways of Thought, Berlin: Springer, 2014, pp. 1–27. 173 Mingyi Yaolan Bianshen Weiyuanhui, Mingyi Yaolan: Shanghai Zhongyi Xueyuan (Shanghai Zhongyi Zhuanmen Xuexiao) Xiaoshi, Shanghai: Shanghai Zhongyiyao Daxue Chubanshe, 1998, p. 141; Zhang Xiaoxia, ‘Shoubu Zhongyiyao Cidian: Zhongguo Yixue Da Cidian’, Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Bao, 23 January 2015, Section 8. 174 Xie Guan (ed.), Zhongguo Yixue Da Cidian, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1921,

p. ii. 175 Li Nan et al., ‘Chen Cunren Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian Xueshu Pingjia’, Zhongguo Zhongyi Jichu Yixue Zazhi, 2014, 20(3): 307–308. For a brief review of modern dictionaries of Chinese materia medica in the Chinese language, see Chen Xinqian, ‘Zhongguo Jindai Yaoxue Shukan De Chuban Gongzuo’, Zhongguo Keji Shiliao, 1988, 9(1): 20–36; Li Nan and Wan Fang, ‘Minguo Shiqi Zhongyao Cidian De Bianzuan Jiqi Dui Zhongyaoxue Fazhan De Yingxiang’, Beijing Zhongyiyao Daxue Xuebao, 2013, 36(9): 586–588, 594. 176 Anonymous, ‘Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian’, Shenbao, 12 February 1935, Section 2; Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, Shanghai: Shijie Shuju, 1935, p. 1982. For the unsuccessful episode about Chen’s dealing with the Commercial Press concerning his dictionary, see Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 227–230.

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finally published in April 1935, the company turned out to have reedited them, without consulting the author, as two separate volumes, one containing the text and the other some selected pictures. The latter volume was entitled Zhongguo Yaowu Biaoben Tuying (Pictures of Chinese Medicinal Specimens). Though Chen was dissatisfied with the company’s approach, the dictionary was widely welcomed and frequently reprinted. Its abridged edition also came out in 1937, and, according to Chen’s narrative, was later purchased by Chinese physicians in almost all counties of every province in China.177 Due to the informativeness of the original unabridged dictionary, in 1956, it was republished with revisions in Beijing, the capital of Communist China,178 though it had just incurred some criticisms one year before.179 To compile this dictionary, Chen Cunren extracted a great deal of information from two hundred and twenty-two Chinese books, forty Japanese books, one hundred fifty-nine Chinese articles and three Japanese articles.180 Of the Chinese books, over three quarters were written in the Qing and pre-Qing periods. The Japanese books, though small in number, provided much new taxonomic, anatomical, chemical and physiological knowledge. When the manuscript of the dictionary was already in proof, Chen obtained the Japanese pharmacognosist Nakao Manz¯o’s (1882–1936) report on the chemical constituents of one hundred and forty-two Chinese medicinal substances. He considered the report to have great value, but was no longer in time to add the chemical information to different entries. Thus, the report was appended to the end of dictionary.181 This was basically because Chen’s dictionary did not reject new doctrines, which made it apparently different from the aforementioned dictionary published by his predecessor Xie Guan. But Xie did not entirely repel new doctrines. The entry for the caterpillar fungus in his dictionary assimilated some scientific information which could be found 177 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 253–265; Chen Cunren, Wode Yiwu Shengya, pp. 127–140. 178 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, [1935] 1956. 179 Ye Sanduo, ‘Ping Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian’, Zhongyao Tongbao, 1955, 1(2): 70– 73; Huang Shengbai, ‘Zaiping Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian’, Zhongyao Tongbao, 1956, 2(1): 16–18. 180 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, pp. 2030–2039. 181 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, pp. 1982–2009.

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in the Ciyuan (Origins of [Chinese] Terms).182 As for Chen, though he fought against doctors of scientific medicine when it came to the abolition of Chinese medicine, he actually stood with the latter in view of his favour for scientific knowledge. Chen Cunren considered the yin and yang and wuxing theories to be ‘imaginary empty discourses’, which, after their incorporation into Chinese medicine, ‘led Chinese medical scholarship to catastrophe, and caused it to be denounced by modern scientists’. He was also deeply dissatisfied with classical Chinese materia medica, criticising the Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1578), for example, for its excessive inclusion of medicinal substances and prescriptions, and insufficient attention to morphological characteristics, dosage and so on. By compiling the dictionary, he expected to produce an informative reference book, which would in addition arouse the interest of scientists and specialists in Western medicine and pharmacology in Chinese materia medica, so that they would ‘carry out real work on the scientification of Chinese medicinal substances’.183 The expectation is consistent with what he expressed in his introduction to Nakao Manz¯o’s report about his emphasis on Chinese medicinal substances, suggestion of textual research on them and criticism of empty discourses.184 Here is found a partition of Chinese medicine into medicinal substances, empirical knowledge and medical theories. This is reminiscent of Yu Yunxiu’s treatment of Chinese medicine. According to Chen, his dictionary was completed by means of ‘scientific methods’, and ‘all the scientific material in old [Chinese] materia medica and new doctrines developed through modern chemical analysis were adopted as much as possible, and were compiled in the form of a dictionary’.185 Obviously he acknowledged the existence of both unscientific and scientific material in old Chinese materia medica, which helps reveal that the term yaoxue (materia medica) in the dictionary title actually denoted a scientised materia medica comprised of both old and new, and Chinese and foreign knowledge. To legitimate his advocacy of scientific methods and support his propaganda for reforming Chinese materia

182 Xie Guan (ed.), Zhongguo Yixue Da Cidian, pp. 668–669. 183 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, pp. i, vii–viii. 184 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, p. 1982. 185 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, p. x.

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medica, Chen particularly spoke of German, British, Japanese and American scientific attention to Chinese medicinal substances.186 While writing his memoirs in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, Chen recorded the satisfaction that he still continued to feel with his own procedure in compiling the dictionary, that is, discarding old Chinese medical theories: ‘In the past some books on [Chinese] materia medica resorted to wuxing and liuqi (six climatic factors) theories when they were unable to explain primary effects of medicinal substances’; however, ‘I treated such theories unscientific, therefore none of the three million two hundred thousand characters in the whole dictionary was devoted to wuxing and liuqi’; thus, it represented ‘a revolutionary spirit, which more or less brought about a reform in Chinese books on medicine and materia medica.’187 Chen’s enthusiasm for modern science did not grow out of nothing. Republican Shanghai walked in the forefront of modernisation and remained a centre where Chinese medicine and Western or scientific medicine contested and both possessed great vitality.188 His first enrolment in the Nanyang Medical University in a way reflected the social influence of scientific medicine in Shanghai. Though he later turned to Chinese medicine, some of his teachers and friends, for example, Ding Fubao, with whom he enjoyed an intimacy,189 played an important role in the rise of the integrationist ideology in the community of Chinese physicians.190 Chen himself also did not reject scientific medicine, but had employed a doctor of scientific medicine to tutor him on internal medicine for approximately two years before ultimately leaving for Hong Kong.191 Of course, chemical analysis of Chinese medicinal substances, highly valued by Chen, did not exist in ancient Chinese medicine. But this did not prevent him from having a firm conviction in the practical value and a scientificity of Chinese materia medica, which was also embodied 186 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, pp. ii–vi. 187 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, p. 262. 188 Shanghai Shi Yiyao Gongsi et al., Shanghai Jindai Xiyao Hangye Shi, Shanghai:

Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1988; Ji Weiping (ed.), Shanghai Zhongyiyao Fazhan Shilue, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 107–188. 189 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 202–221. 190 Shanghai Shi Zhongyi Wenxianguan and Shanghai Zhongyiyao Daxue Yishi

Bowuguan (eds.), Haipai Zhongyi Xueshu Liupai Jingcui, Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaotong Daxue Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 257–282. 191 Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 502–503.

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elsewhere in his collection of notes on ancient Chinese medical history. He wrote them in order to prove that some great Western medical and pharmacological discoveries were actually influenced by Chinese medicine and materia medica. Within this context he enumerated certain ancient Chinese medications as ‘neglected inventions’, because they could be explained by relevant modern scientific knowledge, yet were applied before the latter was created.192 The Caterpillar Fungus Scientised in an Entry The entry for the caterpillar fungus in the dictionary epitomises how Chen Cunren reformed Chinese materia medica through his scientific methods. It consists of nine sections: mingming (naming), guji bieming (other names in ancient texts), waiguo mingci (foreign names), chandi (production areas), xingtai (morphological characteristics), caiqu (collection), xingzhi ([medicinal] properties), zhuzhi (main efficacies) and jinren xueshuo (recent doctrines).193 The number of sections in different entries may vary due to different amounts of available information. Here, scientific knowledge about the caterpillar fungus in the entry is distributed in the ‘foreign names’ and ‘recent doctrines’ sections, whereas the knowledge in the other sections can be found in Zhao Xuemin’s Bencao Gangmu Shiyi (Supplement to the Compendium of Materia Medica, c. 1803).194 The ‘foreign names’ section only gives the Latin name ‘Cordyceps sinensis ’, which is what Chen referred to as xueming (scientific name) in his instructions on the principles of compilation.195 As for the ‘recent doctrines’ section, it was extracted from the Chinese physician Cao Bingzhang’s 1917 article on the caterpillar fungus.196

192 Chen Cunren, Bei Hushi De Faming: Zhongguo Zaoqi Yiyao Shihua, Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, [c. 1970] 2008, pp. i, 11–78. 193 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, pp. 303–306. 194 Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhongyiyao Chubanshe,

[c. 1803] 1998, pp. 139–141. An abbreviated title of Zhao Xuemin’s book, i.e. Gangmu Shiyi (Supplement to the Compendium), is cited in the ‘other names in ancient texts’ section of the entry. 195 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, p. xi. 196 Cao Bingzhang, ‘Taolun Dongchong Xiacao Zhi Zhonglei Ji Xiaoyong’, Shaoxing

Yiyao Xuebao, 1917, 7(3): 25–33. See also Cao Bingzhang, Caoshi Yiyao Lunwenji, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1936] 2013, pp. 181–187.

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In Cao’s original article and also the ‘recent docrtines’ section in the entry, Cao started with the statement that Japanese and Western naturalists had already found the caterpillar fungus to be a parasitic fungus, but unlike the Chinese, they did not use it as a medicine. Then he began to introduce some modern European and Japanese discoveries from three aforementioned Chinese articles: two published in the Nongxue Bao (Journal of Agriculture, Shanghai) in 1900 and 1903; one published in the Bowuxue Zazhi (Journal of Natural History, Shanghai) in 1914.197 After this, he proceeded to present some Chinese natural knowledge from the works of Zhao Xuemin and others. In general, his accounts of the morphological characteristics, life cycle, taxonomic classification and scientific names relating to the caterpillar fungus in the scientific context were almost all taken verbatim from the former two articles, which were actually translated from their Japanese counterparts. In the ‘naming’ section, however, Chen Cunren still explained that the caterpillar fungus was called winter worm summer grass because of its transformation from a worm in winter to a blade of grass in summer. This might be understood for its antiquarian value of preserving a traditional explanation. But in the ‘morphological characteristics’ section, Chen, assigning the caterpillar fungus to the category of shancao (mountain herbs), again used the popular theory about its seasonal transformation to explain its appearance and life cycle, and in the ‘recent doctrines’ section, Chen retained Cao’s comment that ‘Doubtless it [i.e. the caterpillar fungus] transforms between a worm and a fungus; and scientists identify it as a parasitic fungus by merely observing its specimens, which is probably incorrect.’ It seemed that Cao, and probably also Chen, then accepted the idea that the ‘grass’ part of the caterpillar fungus was actually a kind of fungus, but he still believed in the caterpillar fungus’s transformative ability. Such statements in the entry make one doubtful of Chen’s scientific literacy and scientific methods. Moreover, in the ‘[medicinal] properties’ and ‘main efficacies’ sections, there are terminologies from the conceptual system of classical Chinese medicine, such as wen (warm),

197 For the original Chinese articles, see Oda Seisuke, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, pp. 6–7;

It¯o Tokutar¯ o, ‘Dongchong Xiaocao Shuo’, pp. 4–8; Wu Bingxin, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, p. 8. The illustration of the caterpillar fungus in Cao’s article was extracted from the 1903 article in the Nongxue Bao (Journal of Agriculture); but the elements of the illustration were reorganised. The entry for the caterpillar fungus in Chen’s dictionary did not adopt Cao’s illustration.

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ping (balance) and zhuxu baisun (all deficiencies and a hundred impairments). Probably, Chen treated these concepts as self-evidently scientific, or as material to be rationalised by scientific research on Chinese materia medica sooner or later, but there are no direct matches for them in modern scientific terminology. Besides, the Chinese medicinal specimens drawn and photographed by Chen and his collaborators were classified into twenty-eight groups, ranging from jinyu (metal and minerals), shi (stone) and shancao (mountain herbs) to qin (birds), shou (beasts) and tu (earths).198 These categories were not devised by Chen, but were established much earlier in Chinese medical texts, such as the Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1578) and Bencao Congxin (Renewed Materia Medica, 1757). Yet they were inconsistent with modern biological taxonomy as hidden behind the above Latin binomial name. Chen attached much importance to images drawn from actual specimens. While compiling the dictionary, he collaborated with four assistant editors, four copyists, two illustrators, two photographers and four students. In addition to text editing, he delegated the students to borrow Chinese medicinal substances from medicine markets so as to make drawings of them, and entrusted some others in different regions with the task of collecting specimens of local medicinal plants. Chen himself also made field investigations in Qichun, Hubei province and Guangdong province. Through these joint efforts, he obtained over five hundred medicinal specimens.199 According to his own words, commonly used and important medicinal substances were drawn in colour; secondary medicinal substances and those requiring three-dimensional representations were photographed and rendered in monochromatic drypoint etchings; and rare and seldom used medicinal substances were illustrated with pen drawings.200 Given the colour drawing of the caterpillar fungus as a mountain herb in the dictionary, he clearly treated it as one of the commonly used and important medicinal substances.201 The drawing realistically displays eight different specimens and their dorsal, ventral and lateral sides. Probably 198 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaowu Biaoben Tuying, Shanghai: Shijie Shuju, 1935, pp. i–xiii. 199 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, pp. viii–ix; Chen Cunren, Yinyuan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, pp. 234–240, 253. 200 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, p. x. 201 Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaowu Biaoben Tuying, p. 24.

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to intensify the three-dimensional effect, it even retains the projected shadows of the specimens. The combination of text and illustration in premodern Chinese works on materia medica might have wielded some influence on Chen’s adoption of images. The earliest extant complete work in this style was the Jingshi Zhenglei Beiji Bencao (Classified Materia Medica for Emergency Use, Based on Classics and Historical Sources, c. 1108, reprinted in 1211 and other years).202 Such illustrated Chinese materia medica texts of the Song and late imperial periods contain printed or hand-painted ink or colour pictures drawn from life, over-simplified, or distorted or artistically embellished to varying degrees.203 The fine illustrations in Wu Qijun’s Zhiwu Mingshi Tukao (Treatise on Names and Entities of Plants, c. 1847) once motivated Emil Bretschneider to acclaim the book as ‘incomparably the best pictorial work of the Chinese of this class’.204 The illustration of the caterpillar fungus in this book depicts two specimens outlined with black lines, showing the dorsal oblique and ventral oblique views. Yet it does not render a three-dimensional view, and morphological details are largely insufficient, including the absence of microscopic structures, although to some extent Wu’s textual description supplements the visual representation.205 Furthermore, the pictures in both Wu Qijun’s and Chen Cunren’s books lack scale bars, and thereby themselves cannot indicate the actual sizes of depicted organisms or objects. In the drawing of the caterpillar fungus in Chen’s dictionary, the eight specimens differ 202 Tang Shenwei, Jingshi Zhenglei Beiji Bencao, Liu Jia (ed), Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe, [1211] 2004. The first edition of this work, printed in around 1108, is now lost, whereas some of its subsequent revisions printed in 1211 and other years survive. Cf. Roel Sterckx, ‘The Limits of Illustration: Animalia and Pharmacopeia from Guo Pu to Bencao Gangmu’, in Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (eds.), Imaging Chinese Medicine, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 135–150, 142. 203 Zhang Jinsheng, ‘Lun Bencaoshu Zhong De Xieshi Chahua Yu Yishu Chahua’, in Wang Shumin and Vivienne Lo (eds.), Xingxiang Zhongyi: Zhongyi Lishi Tuxiang Yanjiu, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 83–89; Zheng Jinsheng, ‘Observational Drawing and Fine Art in Chinese Materia Medica Illustration’, in Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (eds.), Imaging Chinese Medicine, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 151–160. 204 The sinologist and botanist Emil Bretschneider acclaimed Wu’s book as ‘incomparably the best pictorial work of the Chinese of this class’, Emil Bretschneider, ‘The Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works (To Be Continued)’, The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, 1870, 3(6): 157–163, 163. 205 Wu Qijun, Zhiwu Mingshi Tukao, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, [c. 1847] 1957, p. 242.

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from each other, and seem to be photographed despite them drawn from life. From the perspective of scientific image-making, the illustrator did not seem to typify the caterpillar fungus, but pursued an epistemic virtue different from truth-to-nature but close to the blind sight of mechanical objectivity.206 Chen did not, however, claim that the pictures he and his collaborators produced, useful for identification of medicinal substances, were scientific images. The entries in Chen’s dictionary reveal his effort to introduce what he understood to be scientific knowledge about the caterpillar fungus and other Chinese medicinal substances through certain Japanese and Chinese literature. Such knowledge often relates to binomial nomenclature in Latin, modern biological terminology for morphological characteristics, chemical constituents and/or their physiological functions as to biomedicine. But the dictionary also retains much Chinese knowledge concerning ancient names, production areas, appearance, medicinal properties, preparations, prescriptions and so on. The integration of these different categories of knowledge from disparate sources sometimes seems mechanical. No doubt Chen Cunren aspired to compile a dictionary that reflected the scientific spirit as he understood it, but his scientific literacy and belief in the existence of scientific material in old Chinese materia medica finally led to his construction of a new Chinese materia medica characterised by epistemological inconsistencies and intellectual plurality. Despite this, the use of the character xue (-ology) in the dictionary title suggests his ambition to establish Chinese materia medica as an individual branch of learning in Republican China and contribute to the general field of Chinese medical studies. Chen’s great dictionary soon became an important reference for those who aspired to know something about Chinese medicinal substances. In 1937, for example, an author reported in a Shanghai literary journal that a friend from Xikang once gave him a big pack of famous medicinal material, namely the caterpillar fungus, and informed him of the method of consuming it together with a boiled duck. Ignorant of this curious organism, he referred to the Ciyuan (Origins of [Chinese] Terms) but was dissatisfied with the definition and illustration in the relevant entry. In particular, he found the illustrated species significant different from what he received. However, his puzzle was said to have been completely solved 206 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007, pp. 17–19, 124.

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after consulting Chen’s dictionary. Much delighted, he even excerpted a passage from the entry for the caterpillar fungus in the dictionary.207 Also in 1937, the Chinese physician Zhu Peiran, another proponent of the scientification of Chinese medicine who later composed a poem in praise of Chen Cunren’s contribution to Chinese medical periodicals,208 perhaps had also referred to Chen’s dictionary while replying to a reader’s enquiry about the caterpillar fungus.209 In 1945, the entry for the caterpillar fungus in Chen’s dictionary was even extracted and republished as an article in the Xiandai Yiyao Zazhi (Journal of Modern Medicine and Materia Medica, Guiyang).210 Though it is difficult to precisely evaluate its influence on the public knowledge, Chen’s dictionary established itself as a conspicuous or hybrid model of the scientification of Chinese materia medica as illustrated through its entry on the caterpillar fungus.

Between Scholarship and Practice The prefaces and afterwords to Chen Cunren’s dictionary, written by celebrated Chinese physicians, a humanities scholar and a politician, all give lavish praise to its quality.211 Given the popularity of this dictionary, it is possible to speculate that Chinese physicians confronted with this informative work would have considered it a useful reference, and despite 207 Shushan, ‘‘Chongcao’ Ji Qita: Lüetan Xichui De Miaoyao’, Tanfeng, 1937, (11): 511–513. 208 Zhu Peiran, ‘Zhongyi Kexuehua’, Guoxun, 1936, (129): 460–461; Zhu Peiran, ‘Zhong yi Kexuehua’, Guoxun, 1936, (130): 483–485; Zhu Peiran, ‘Zhu Peiran Yinshi Jingyang Chen Cunren’, Zhongyiyao Qingbao, 1947, (5): 5. In 1947 Zhu was reported to have carried out scientific studies of Chinese medicinal substances, see Anonymous, ‘Zhu Peiran Yishi Yanjiu Yiyao Zhi Xinshouhuo’, Yiyao Yanjiu, 1947, 1(2): 18. 209 Zhu Peiran, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Yu Maoyan’, Guoxun, 1937, (156): 100. Zhu did not indicate whether he had consulted Chen Cunren’s dictionary. But the relevant information he provided, except his own experience, can be found in Chen’s dictionary. Of course, it is also possible that what Zhu consulted was the previously mentioned article by Cao Bingzhang or other sources. 210 Chengren, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Xiandai Yiyao Zazhi, 1945, 1(3–4): 15–18. 211 The prefaces to Chen’s dictionary were written by Zhang Taiyan (humanities

scholar), Jiao Yitang (politician), Xiao Fangjun (Chinese physician) and Chen Cunren himself. While authors of the afterwords include Ding Zhongying (Chinese physician), Wang Zhongqi (Chinese physician), Lü Zhegong (Chinese physician), Xia Shaoting (Chinese physician), Cao Bingzhang (Chinese physician), Yun Tieqiao (Chinese physician) and Xie Liheng (Chinese physician).

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its emphasis on indigenous medicinal knowledge, doctors of scientific medicine would not have rejected it out of hand due to the embedded idea of scientification and Chen’s positive expectations of scientists and biomedical experts.212 In fact, the dictionary includes several congratulations from Niu Huisheng, Lü Zhegong, Yu Yunxiu, Li Ting’an, Xu Xiangren, Lu Zhong’an, Chen Lifu, Chu Minyi and Yan Fuqing.213 Over half of these people were doctors of scientific medicine, including Yu Yunxiu and Chu Minyi who advocated the abolition of Chinese medicine.214 They both attended the Nationalist government’s conference on public health in February 1929, at which proposals for abolishing Chinese medicine were accepted. Soon later, Chen wrote a letter of protest to Chu, defending the value of Chinese medicine.215 Nonetheless when his dictionary came to be published, Chen turned to Yu and Chu to ask for their support in a display of remarkable tolerance and as part of his strategy for popularising the dictionary. But this time there was already a consensus among them, that is, the importance of modern science, which spoke for the combination of the caterpillar fungus and modern science in the field of Chinese medicine.

212 Of over ten Republican dictionaries of Chinese materia medica published before

1936, Chen’s dictionary was one of the two (the other, compiled by Wu Weier, will be mentioned below) referred to by the pharmacologist Bernard E. Read in his Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu, see Bernard E. Read, Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu, Beijing: Peking Natural History Bulletin, 1936, p. xiii. 213 Niu Huisheng was a medical graduate of Harvard University; Lü Zhegong was a Chinese physician, also president of the Association of Chinese Physicians in Hong Kong; Yu Yunxiu was a medical graduate of Osaka Medical University; Li Ting’an was a medical graduate of Harvard University; Xu Xiangren was a Chinese physician; Lu Zhong’an was a Chinese physician; Chen Lifu was a politician, also proponent of Chinese medicine; Chu Minyi was a medical graduate of Université de Strasbourg, also politician; and Yan Fuqing was a medical graduate of Yale University. 214 For Chu’s attitude towards Chinese medicine, see Zhang Zanchen and Chu Minyi, ‘Zhang Zanchen Yu Chu Minyi Lun Tuche Yu Qiche, Fu Chu Minyi Dui Xinjiu Yiyao Fenzheng Zhi Yijian’, Yijie Chunqiu, 1929, (34): 31–33. 215 Chen Cunren, ‘Chen Cunren Zhi Chu Minyi Han’, Xinglin Yixue Yuebao, 1929, (3): 15–16. Chen Cunren had contact with Chu Minyi in his daily life. But according to Chen’s memoirs, his impressions of Chu were not very positive, sometimes even negative, see Chen Cunren, Kangzhan Shidai Shenghuo Shi, Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, [1979] 2001, pp. 56–76.

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Extending Textual Life from Dictionaries to Textbooks Before the publication of Chen’s dictionary, there had been several similar dictionaries.216 But comparatively they were short in length. They also did not pay particular attention to scientific sources except the Zhonghua Xin Yaowuxue Da Cidian (Great Dictionary of Chinese New Materia Medica) by Wu Weier, published in Tianjin in 1934. This dictionary does not spare space for the caterpillar fungus, but it helps illuminate how a doctor of scientific medicine, like Wu, introduced modern science to Chinese medicinal substances in the form of a dictionary. The character xin (new) in the title can be comprehended through Wu’s statement that his dictionary aimed to help scholars of old medicine remove their stale concepts and imagination associated with the fallacious yin and yang and wuxing theories; in addition, the dictionary was expected to serve as a guide for scholars of new medicine to study Chinese medicinal substances and thereby used them as substitutes for Western drugs especially in case of the latter’s shortage situation. The dictionary adopted some empirical knowledge from old Chinese discourses of materia medica, but Wu more emphasised his collection of European, American and Japanese sources on new medicinal plants, as well as his investigations on the production, cultivation and other aspects of Chinese medicinal substances, indication of their Latin scientific names and taxonomic statuses, microscopic observations of their internal structures, chemical analyses of their constituents, tests of their efficacies on animals and calculations of dosages.217 The informativeness of Chen’s dictionary made it stand incomparable among similar Republican publications. In contrast, Wu’s included far less medicinal substances, about one thousand and four hundred in number; relevant indigenous and scientific or biomedical knowledge was also assimilated very briefly. This new materia medica constructed

216 For example, see Jiang Ren’an, Zhongguo Yaowu Xin Zidian, Shanghai: Zhongguo Yiyao Yanjiuhui, 1925; Chen Jingqi, Guoyao Zidian, Shanghai: Zhongxi Shuju, 1930; Weisheng Baoguan Bianjibu (ed.), Zhongyao Da Cidian, Shanghai: Weisheng Baoguan, 1930; Wu Keqian, Yaoxing Zidian, Shanghai: Dazhong Shuju, 1933; Zhang Juying, Yingyong Yaowu Cidian, Shanghai: Minyou Yinshuasuo, 1934. 217 Wu Weier, Zhonghua Xin Yaowuxue Da Cidian, Tianjin: Zhonghua Xin Yixue Yanjiuhui, 1934, pp. i–iv. Wu Weier’s life remains largely obscure. However, a Chinese physician named Cao Xizhen once went to study scientific medicine under Wu in Tianjin in 1925, see Pang Chengze and An Baohua, ‘Caoshi Anmo De Chuangshiren: Cao Xizhen’, Beijing Zhongyi Zazhi, 1987, (3): 9–11.

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by Wu did not include clinically verified or approved chemical drugs preferred by biomedical practitioners; while Chinese physicians might find it not practical or reliable not only because Wu did not truly practise Chinese medicine, but also because they could find perhaps better experience-based selection of empirical information or suggestions in other dictionaries or references such as their fellow practitioner Hu Anbang’s Shiyong Yaoxing Cidian (Practical Dictionary of Medicinal Properties, 1935). The personal experience Hu shared with the reader included the beneficial effect of the caterpillar fungus, which acquired the yin and yang qi, on the elderly.218 Moreover, the scientific and biomedical knowledge from Wu’s dictionary would not have been intelligible to many Chinese physicians without having received relevant training. And some of such information in the dictionary is very general and thereby can hardly be considered as possessing practical or clinical value to both Chinese physicians and biomedical practitioners. For example, the entry for wheat merely indicates its richness in protein, starch, maltose and other ingredients; the entry for cardamom also just states that it contains volatile oils.219 These factors might help understand why Wu’s dictionary, as compared with Chen’s, enjoyed less popularity in later periods. But undoubtedly it contributed to spreading the idea that suggested scientific research on Chinese materia medica. The assimilation of scientific knowledge to varying degrees occurred in other dictionaries of Chinese medicinal substances as well.220 The Biaozhun Yaoxing Da Zidian (Standard Dictionary of Medicinal Properties, 1935), for example, recorded the caterpillar fungus as parasitic on insects while favourably but contradictorily describing its transformation from a worm to a blade of grass.221 The Zhongguo Yaowuxue Jicheng (Collection of Chinese Materia Medica, 1935), authored by Jiang Yubo, a practitioner and teacher of Chinese medicine, allegedly embodied the

218 Hu Anbang, Shiyong Yaoxing Cidian, Shanghai: Zhongyang Shudian, 1935, p. 40. 219 Wu Weier, Zhonghua Xin Yaowuxue Da Cidian, Tianjin: Zhonghua Xin Yixue

Yanjiuhui, 1934, pp. 15–16. 220 For example, see Pan Xingchu, Biaozhun Yaoxing Da Zidian, Shanghai: Yiyao Yanjiu Xuehui, 1935, p. 58. 221 Pan Xingchu, Biaozhun Yaoxing Da Zidian, Shanghai: Yiyao Yanjiu Xuehui, 1935,

p. 58.

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spirit of scientific methods.222 Indeed, in the entry for the caterpillar fungus, Jiang provided a modern biological explanation of the formation of the caterpillar fungus despite minor inaccuracies (i.e. the fungus parasites living rather than dead insects). But his account of its medicinal properties originated from an old Chinese medical text.223 From the 1930s onwards, this way of organising knowledge about Chinese medicinal substances became increasingly fashionable.224 In 1948, the Chinese physician Zhang Ruoxia introduced the caterpillar fungus in the guoyao jiangzuo (lectures on Chinese medicinal substances) column of a Shanghai medical journal. Not only did he reject the long prevailing worm-grass transformation theory at the beginning of the article, but the majority of the article also dealt with scientific perceptions of the caterpillar fungus and similar species.225 This integrationist trend persisted in some famous dictionaries of Chinese medicinal substances compiled in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.226 Certainly, not all Chinese physicians were sensitive to scientific knowledge. Some remained preoccupied with the medical world of their native inherited tradition. In 1925, the materia medica column of the Zhongyi Zazhi (Journal of Chinese Medicine, Shanghai) once published an article on liquorice, which indicated the author’s engagement with only classical Chinese medical theories.227 The same column simultaneously published a collection of old-style poems on tonic medicinal substances. One of them was devoted to the caterpillar fungus. In view of its content, it was basically a poetic form of the relevant record in the Bencao Congxin 222 Jiang Yubo, Zhongguo Yaowuxue Jicheng, Shanghai: Guoyao Yanjiushe, 1935, p. xi. For Jiang’s career, see Zhou Jinlin et al., ‘Jiang Yubo Jiqi Yixue Sixiang’, Hubei Zhongyi Zazhi, 1987, (6): 36–38; Zhou Wei and Zhou Jinlin, ‘Mingyi Jiang Yubo’, Hubei Zhongyi Zazhi, 2008, 30(12): 3–4. 223 Jiang Yubo, Zhongguo Yaowuxue Jicheng, Shanghai: Guoyao Yanjiushe, 1935, p. 489. 224 For example, see Wen Jingxiu, Zuixin Shiyan Yaowuxue, Shanghai: Zhongyi Shuju, 1934, pp. 215–216. 225 Zhang Ruoxia, ‘Dongchong Xiacao’, Zhongyao Zhigong Yuekan, 1948, 2(1–2): 7–8. 226 For the entries for the caterpillar fungus in some of such dictionaries, see Jiangsu

Xinyi Xueyuan (ed.), Zhongyao Da Cidian, Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1977, pp. 767–768; Song Liren (ed.), Zhonghua Bencao (Book 1), Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 1999, pp. 494–498; Nanjing Zhongyiyao Daxue (ed.), Zhongyao Da Cidian, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1977] 2006, pp. 1055–1058. 227 For example, see Shen Zhonggui, ‘Gancao Shuo’, Zhongyi Zazhi, 1925, (16): 18.

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(Renewed Materia Medica, 1757). But the author added the concept of jin (metal), one of the five elements or phases in the wuxing theory. He associated the lungs with jin (metal), which accorded with the classic system of correlations between the five organs (i.e. xin [heart], gan [liver], pi [spleen], fei [lungs] and shen [kidneys]) and five elements (huo [fire], mu [wood], tu [earth], jin [metal] and shui [water]).228 One year later, another journal of Chinese medicine in Taiyuan, which highlighted its reference to Western medical sciences, published a textual study of the caterpillar fungus. But it just quoted a few relevant eighteenth-century Chinese records.229 Some teachers at schools of Chinese medicine presented varied responses to scientific knowledge, which would then wield educational influences. Zhang Cigong devoted himself to the education in Chinese medicine from the late 1920s. Based on his teaching handout, he published a book on Chinese medicinal substances in Shanghai in 1949. It combines both indigenous Chinese medical accounts and plentiful scientific or biomedical knowledge from Japanese literature, mainly involving modern biological classification and morphology, chemical constituents, and pharmacological and physiological effects.230 In contrast, Meng Zhongsan of the Beijing College of Chinese Medicine argued against mixing classical Chinese materia medica with scientific medicine. His materia medica textbook, finalised in 1932 and published in 1940, was written by consulting ‘high-quality texts by ancient famous [Chinese] physicians’ and ‘the fine part of ancient [Chinese] people’s doctrines’.231 228 Hu Fangxi, ‘Zengbu Bencao Shi: Dongchong Xiacao’, Zhongyi Zazhi, 1925, (16):

7. 229 Anonymous, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Kao’, Yixue Zazhi, 1926, (31): 90–92. This article is said to be written by Yang Baicheng (1861–1928), see Chen Cunren (ed.), Zhongguo Yaoxue Da Cidian, p. 2038; Wang Junmo et al. (eds.), Zhongyao Yanjiu Yu Wenxian Jiansuo, Shanghai: Shanghai Yuandong Chubanshe, 1994, p. 890. 230 Zhang Cigong, Yaowuxue, Xie Songmu (ed.), Shanghai: Guoyi Yinshuguan, 1949. See also Zhang Cigong, ‘Yaowuxue Jiangyi, Shang’, Zhongguo Yixueyuan Yuankan, 1928, (1): 1–4; Zhang Cigong, Yaowuxue Jiangyi, in Shanghai Guoyi Xueyuan (ed.), Shanghai Guoyi Xueyuan Jiangyi, Shanghai: Shanghai Guoyi Xueyuan, 1934. This 1934 handout is preserved at the library of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. For the date of this handout, see Qiu Peiran (ed.), Zhongguo Yiji Da Cidian, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2002, p. 1549. 231 Meng Zhongsan, Yaowuxue, in Zhang Ruqing and Huang Ying (eds.), Jindai Guoyi Mingjia Zhencang Chuanxin Jianggao: Zhongyao Lei, Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1940] 2013, pp. 5, 14.

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In 1926, a set of articles written by students of Chinese medicine came out as model essays in a journal of Chinese medicine. Of them, one was a textual study of the caterpillar fungus, which focused on relevant indigenous Chinese accounts, claiming that its transformation, driven by yin and yang, could baffle modern science.232 More commonly, scientific knowledge was more or less embedded in textbooks on Chinese materia medica. In addition to Zhang Cigong’s book above, some others of this kind that paid attention to modern taxonomy alongside indigenous Chinese medicinal knowledge included, for example, Yang Shucheng’s Zhongguo Yaowuxue (Chinese Materia Medica, 1935) and Zhongguo Zhiyaoxue Dagang (Outline of the Preparation of Chinese Medicinal Substances, 1938).233 Both were compiled for students studying at the Beijing Training School of Chinese Medicinal Substances. The taxonomic information anchored Chinese medicinal substances in the natural order that had its origin in Europe but was increasingly recognised, enriched and revised by scientific communities around the world, as mirrored in the foregoing research on the caterpillar fungus by Deng Shuqun. Such information signified the introduction of modern science, and practically also in a general sense provided alternative but more precise and universal guidance on identifying and procuring Chinese medicinal substances in order to use, study or trade them by reference to their medicinal properties as textualised by Chinese physicians, thus benefiting different groups of people having a common interest in Chinese materia medica. Consequences of Scientification The scientification of Chinese medicinal substances led to two main consequences in practice, both of which can be seen in present-day China: one was using them with reference to scientific or biomedical explanations, while the other was the attempt to isolate effective medicinal substances from their chemical constituents. With regard to the 232 Ming Zhongwei, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Kao’, Yixue Zazhi, 1926, (10): 71–73. 233 Yang Shucheng, Zhongyao Dayi, Xiao Hongyan (ed.), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe,

[1935] 2012; Yang Shucheng, Zhiyao Dagang, Yang Dongfang et al. (eds.), Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, [1938] 2012. For the original titles and dates of the two textbooks, see Xu Suining et al., Minguo Shiqi Beiping Zhongyiyao, Beijing: Huawen Chubanshe, 2016, pp. 340–341.

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former, scientific or biomedical explanations would sometimes affect, and to some extent legitimate, the use of Chinese medicinal substances in the society where the Nationalist government promoted new scientific medicine. The Chinese physician Zhang Xichun (1860–1933) once wrote a multi-ingredient prescription for dizziness, forgetfulness and some other symptoms. Some of the herbal ingredients were used because of their abilities to help the atria contract powerfully to supply more blood to the brain, to guide medicinal substances to the brain and thereby nurse the nerves, and to activate the cranial nerves.234 Elsewhere, Zhang even shared his experiences in using chemical drugs and Chinese medicinal substances together, including employing aspirin, together with sugar, ginger, Chinese yam, ginseng, and/or other substances, to treat warm disease, cold damage, wind heat, weakness of the spleen, stomach and even the whole body, and so on.235 However, this way of medication was somewhat radical, and actually remained rare among Republican Chinese physicians at large. Wu Keqian’s prescription for protecting the lungs and restoring blood volume, invented by himself, did not include chemicals but just mixed the caterpillar fungus with some other raw Chinese medicinal substances.236 Similar mixtures also appeared in Wang Jinjie’s prescriptions involving the use of the caterpillar fungus.237 The terminology they used had its origins in classical Chinese medicine as well. Some other Chinese physicians then occasionally provided scientific or biomedical interpretations. In 1935, Yang Huating additionally mentioned the absence of chlorophyll from the fungi while suggesting using the caterpillar fungus together with, for example, the medicinal plant xiongqiong (Ligusticum striatum) to treat female waist pains.238 Zhang Cigong had employed the caterpillar fungus to treat lumps in his medical practice. Biomedical information, lacked in the 234 Zhang Xichun, Yixue Zhongzhong Canxi Lu (Book 1, Section 3), Shijiazhuang: Hebei Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1924] 1985, pp. 319–320. 235 Zhang Xichun, Yixue Zhongzhong Canxi Lu (Book 2, Section 4), Shijiazhuang: Hebei Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1924] 1985, pp. 141–142. 236 Wu Keqian, Erke Yaolue, in Lu Zheng (ed.), Jindai Zhongyi Zhenben Ji (Erke Fence), Hangzhou: Zhejiang Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [1934] 1994, pp. 616, 622. 237 Wang Jinjie, Wang Zhongqi Yi’an, in Duan Yishan and Ji Wenhui (eds.), Zhongyi Guji Zhenxi Chaoben Jingxuan (Book 17), Shanghai: Shanghai Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [c. 1945] 2004, pp. 8, 22, 29–30, 43–44. 238 Yang Huating, Yaowu Tukao, Nanjing: Zhongyang Guoyiguan, 1935, pp. 140–141.

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relevant cases, appeared in his records of other treatments with multiingredient prescriptions comprised of Chinese medicaments except the caterpillar fungus, for example, bacterial invasion of lymph.239 However, the multi-ingredient prescriptions were not biomedical but represented the long Chinese tradition of compounding medications. In this sense, they seem more likely to have been written as to indigenous aetiology and materia medica despite the simultaneous provision of corresponding biomedical concepts. The continued presence of the caterpillar fungus in the practice of Chinese medicine under scientific influence invites observations on the encounter between modern science and practical use of Chinese medicinal substances. Scientific knowledge about the effects of Chinese remedies usually involved single natural substances and even their individual constituents, while the medicines that Chinese physicians commonly used in practice were compounds of natural substances, each of which usually contained many chemical constituents. In light of this, scientific medicine did not necessarily have a direct or substantial impact on Chinese physicians’ use of medicinal compounds. Rather, scientific explanations would serve to reinforce belief in Chinese ways of using these substances. Furthermore, scientific discourse would even be employed as a strategy for commercial promotion. The Buddhist mercy medicine factory ‘Great China Chemical Works’, which began its preparatory work in 1929 and came into being two years later in Shanghai, declared that what it emphasised most was scientific studies and production of Chinese medicinal substances.240 In 1932, the factory started to advertise a kind of ginseng glue claimed to contain electricity and possess the potency of prolonging life and preventing ageing in the Shenbao (Shanghai News).241 Electricity as the major selling point of this product stimulated Lu Xun to satirise the seller’s overuse of the vocabulary of science in the same newspaper the following year.242 Also in 1933, Pang Jingzhou, a doctor of scientific 239 Zhang Cigong, Zhang Cigong Yi’an, Nanjing: Jiangsu Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, [c. 1940s] 1980, pp. 355–356, 358, 361. 240 Foci Yaochang, ‘Foci Yaochang Zhi Faqi’, Shenbao, 30 July 1931, Section 16. Cf. Foci Da Yaochang, ‘Foci Da Yaochang Gufen Youxian Gongsi Chuangban Yuanqi Ji Zhangcheng’, Haichao Yin, 1932, 13(2): 59–62. 241 Foci Da Yaochang, ‘Foguangpai Guochan Xinyao Wuliangshou’, Shenbao, 9 September 1932, Section 16. 242 Lu Xun, ‘Duzhou’, Shenbao, 14 February 1933, Section 17.

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medicine, commented in this newspaper that, ‘legal research on medicinal substances is a very slow process. It is absolutely unlike what is being done by cunning medicine merchants who feel free to lay claim to producing scientific Chinese medicines, and considered it sufficient merely to label everything as scientific.’243 It is uncertain whether his comment was made with special respect to the factory, but doubtless the factory utilised the public belief in the power of science to promote its products. As for efforts in search of medicinal chemicals from Chinese materia medica, scholars have often taken the example of Chen Kehui (1898– 1988) and ephedrine.244 Ephedrine, a bioactive chemical extracted from the plant mahuang (Ephedra vulgaris ), was first isolated by Nagai Nagayoshi in 1885. But then, pharmacological attention focused on its mydriatic effect.245 In 1923, Chen obtained his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin and returned to China, working under Carl F. Schmidt (1893–1988) at the Peking Union Medical College. Before going back to United States to continue his research two years later, Chen isolated ephedrine without awareness of previous research, and further collaborated with Schmidt in investigating its pharmacological effects. According to Chen, this work was ‘the result of a suggestion made by a Chinese druggist, in response to an inquiry concerning native drugs which might be expected to possess real actions’. It led to clinical trials of ephedrine for the treatment of asthma and other symptoms. In 1926, ephedrine ‘was submitted to the Council of Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association, and was subsequently approved by it’.246 The significance of this case, as Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei writes,

243 Pang Jingzhou, ‘Shanghai Shi Jin Shinian Lai Yiyao Niaokan (Xu)’, Shenbao, 11 September 1933, Section 18. 244 James Reardon-Anderson, The Study of Change: Chemistry in China, 1840–1949, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 150; Xuan Liu et al., ‘Pharmacological Tools for the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine’, Trends in pharmacological Sciences, 2013, 34(11): 620–628; Jia-Chen Fu, ‘Artemisinin and Chinese Medicine as Tu Science’, Endeavour, 2017, 41(3): 127–135. 245 Nagai Nagayoshi, ‘Ephedrine’, Pharmaceutische Zeitung, 1887, 32(98): 700; Nagai Nagayoshi, ‘Kanyaku Mao Seibun Kenkyu Seiseki’, Yakugaku Zasshi, 1892, (120): 109– 114. See also Michael R. Lee, ‘The History of Ephedra (Ma-Huang)’, The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2011, 41(1): 78–84. 246 Ko Kuei Chen and Carl F. Schmidt, ‘Ephedrine and Related Substances’, Medicine, 1930, 9(1): 1–117, 6–7, 15, 65–69; Ko Kuei Chen (ed.), The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Incorporated: The First Sixty Years, 1908–1969,

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was that ‘even those who had originally held conflicting attitudes toward Chinese medicine and had been its biggest critics consequently began to share the opinion that Chinese drugs, unlike other aspects of Chinese medicine, were worthy of serious scientific research’.247 However, the story of ephedrine was a very special case. Throughout the Republican period, a few hundreds of Chinese medicinal substances had been studied by scientists in China and other countries.248 The weak pharmaceutical industrial base, reliance on imported medicinal chemicals, shortage of medicinal chemicals and biological preparations especially during the Sino-Japanese War, and influence of Japanese and Western chemical and pharmacological research on medicinal plants prompted many Chinese scientists and biomedical practitioners to attend to indigenous medicinal substances from the 1920s.249 In 1937, for example, Liu Xiaoliang of the Temple Hill Hospital in Yantai reported the effectiveness of the seeds of yadanzi (Brucea javanica) in the treatment of amoebic dysentery. His clinical trials were driven by an urge to find cheap and local substitutes for the expensive and exotic chemical drugs such as emetine. The Qing physician Zhao Xuemin’s record of this plant then

Washington: Printed by Judd & Detweiler, 1969, p. 67. See also Carl F. Schmidt, ‘Discovery and Development of Ephedrine’, in Williams Haynes, American Chemical Industry: The Merger Era, 1923–1929, New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1948, p. 540. 247 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse, pp. 90–91. 248 Liu Shoushan (ed.), Zhongyao Yanjiu Wenxian Zhaiyao (1820–1961), Beijing: Kexue

Chubanshe, 1963; Zhang Jianzhong et al. (eds.), Zhongyao Yanjiu De Lishi Jincheng Jiqi Zai Pingjia, Harbin: Dongbei Linye Daxue Chubanshe, 2007, pp. 208–217. 249 Zhang Changshao, ‘Sanshi Nian Lai Zhongyao Zhi Kexue Yanjiu’, Kexue, 1949, 31(4): 99–116. See also Zhang Changshao, ‘Sanshi Nian Lai Zhongyao Zhi Kexue Yanjiu’, Zhonghua Yixue Zazhi, 1949, 35(7): 303–310; Zhang Changshao, ‘Sanshi Nian Lai Zhongyao Zhi Kexue Yanjiu’, Zhonghua Yixue Zazhi, 1949, 35(8): 353–370; Zhang Changshao, ‘Sanshi Nian Lai Zhongyao Zhi Kexue Yanjiu’, in anonymous (ed.), Zhongyao Yanjiu Huibian, Harbin: Dongbei Yixue Tushu Chubanshe, 1953, pp. 11–40. For the poor pharmaceutical industry and related comments in Republican China, see Zhang Shibin, ‘Xinyi Jiying Tichang Guozhi Xiyao’, Yiyao Daobao, 1935, 1(11): 1–2; Zhang Shibin, ‘Zailun Xinyi Jiying Tichang Guozhi Xiyao’, Yiyao Daobao, 1935, 1(12): 1–2; Li Yingchuan, ‘Zhongguo Zhiyao Gongye Bu Fada Zhi Yuanyin Ji Zhanshi Zhi Kunnan’, Xinan Shiye Tongxun, 1943, 7(5): 10–13; Jiang Daqu, ‘Ruhe Jiuji Muqian Zhiyao Gongye De Shuailuo’, Shehui Weisheng, 1944, 1(3): 10–12; Lin Yi, ‘Zhongguo Huaxue Zhiyao Gongye Zhi Zhanwang’, Zhongguo Jingji, 1944, 2(6–7): 1–4; Anonymous, ‘Woguo Zhiyao Gongye Zhi Yanzhong Weiji’, Jingji Tongxun, 1947, 2(4): 118–120; Chen Pu, ‘Zhiyao Gongye Ying Ruhe Fazhan’, Xinan Yixue Zazhi, 1948, 6(3): 6; Liu Luya, ‘Jiu Zhongguo De Zhiyao Gongye’, Lishi Dang’an, 1995, (2): 105–112.

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attracted his attention.250 In 1941, he further reported on its curative effects.251 Both reports cited Chen Cunren’s dictionary. Nevertheless, few new chemical drugs had been successfully developed from Chinese medicinal substances and put into clinical use. None of the aforementioned chemical constituents, such as the crystal Cordycepin, extracted by Chinese scientists from the caterpillar fungus in the 1940s, had finally become a drug for humans. In 1946, the British-trained Chinese pharmacologist Zhang Changshao and his collaborators reported the antimalarial chemical dichroine B (alias febrifugine) they extracted from the ‘Chinese antimalarial herb’ changshan (Dichroa febrifuga).252 But it was finally abandoned due to its serious side effects,253 reflecting the tortuous and slow process of new drug discovery and development in the biomedical context. On the other hand, either seeking effective substitutes or probing new chemical drugs often relied in part on indigenous empirical intelligence. This would then somewhat help to acquaint pharmacologists and biomedical practitioners with Chinese materia medica.254 In terms of Republican integrationist Chinese physicians, overall, there was a significant distance between their academic orientation and practical applications of the caterpillar fungus and other medicinal substances. Present-day ‘doctors of Chinese medicine’, as Volker Scheid finds, ‘routinely make biomedical diagnoses, prescribe biomedical drugs, and even perform surgery’.255 This phenomenon can be traced back to

250 Liu Hsiao-Liang, ‘Ya Tan Tzu - A New Specific for Amebic Dysentery’, Chinese Medical Journal, 1937, 52(1): 89–94. See also Liu Xiaoliang, ‘Yadanzi Wei Amiba Li Xin Texiaoyao Zhi Chubu Baogao’, Zhonghua Yixue Zazhi, 1937, 23(5): 670–671. 251 Liu Hsiao-Liang, ‘Ya Tan Tzu (Kho-Sam) in Intestinal Amebiasis’, Chinese Medical Journal, 1941, 59(3): 263–277. 252 Chang-Shaw Jang et al., ‘Ch’ang Shan, a Chinese Antimalarial Herb’, Science, 1946, 103(2663): 59. 253 Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, ‘From Changshan to a New Anti-Malarial Drug: ReNetworking Chinese Drugs and Excluding Traditional Doctors’, pp. 323–358; William R. Burns, ‘East Meets West: How China almost Cured Malaria’, Endeavour, 2008, 32(3): 101–106. 254 Some later historians complain about the neglect of indigenous medical knowledge in Republican pharmacological research on Chinese medicinal substances, see Chen Xinqian and Zhang Tianlu, Zhongguo Jindai Yaoxue Shi, Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1992, pp. 216–217. 255 Volker Scheid, Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis, Durham: Duke University Press, 2002, p. 17.

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early Communist China where Chinese medicine tended to develop an ambiguous relationship with scientific medicine under political influence. Kim Taylor argues that ‘without its deliberate promotion by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese medicine would exist very differently from how it does today’.256 Among Republican Chinese physicians, the idea of scientification had wielded a certain influence upon medication indeed. But this influence must not be exaggerated, as the scientification of Chinese medicinal substances basically remained at a level of academic discourse; it had not yet significantly affected Chinese physicians’ ways of using these substances in general despite their dynamic evolution in the long history of Chinese medicine. To be sure, ‘scientific’ use of Chinese medicinal substances barely existed among Chinese physicians and even biomedical practitioners if premising scientificity strictly upon the use of curative and safe chemicals, because Chinese medicinal substances usually did not consist of one or several chemicals, but had very complex chemical compositions, while extracted medicinal chemicals, such as ephedrine, can hardly be treated as part of ‘Chinese’ materia medica.

Conclusion In the first half of the twentieth century, the caterpillar fungus became even more popular than ever before. Its further commercial exploitation facilitated its continuous flow from western alpine regions and circulation to drugstores, restaurants, food companies, physicians, patients, scientists and such. Meanwhile, it was implicated in the transmission and development of modern science in China, as well as emergent tensions and negotiations between different intellectual domains. According to Tong Lam, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Chinese cultural and political elites have shared a myth that ‘modernity is purely rational and that the triumph of science and reason is a self-evident, natural, and unproblematic process’.257 Under the discursive power of science, Chinese natural history and materia medica underwent a process of profound transformation. The caterpillar fungus would sometimes turn into an object of scientific inquiry that mediated or prompted new facts

256 Kim Taylor, Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945–63, p. 1. 257 Tong Lam, A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese

Nation-State, 1900–1949, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, p. 8.

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about its natural properties, life cycle, taxonomy, chemical constituents and pharmacological effects within different scientific boundaries, whereas the earlier belief in its ability to transform from a worm to a blade of grass did not entirely vanish in society. Along with a sense of incommensurability embodied in the shaping of its truthfulness were efforts made to the integration of scientific and indigenous knowledge about the caterpillar fungus as part of the project of scientising Chinese medicine. The rise of integrationist Chinese physicians resonated with the growth of local scientific attention to Chinese medicinal substances as potential sources for medicinal chemicals or substitutes. The integrationist approach suggested separating fallacious Chinese medical theories as exemplified by the yin and yang and wuxing discourses from valuable Chinese medicinal substances and related empirical knowledge, and emphasised the instrumental value of modern science, especially chemistry and pharmacology, to the reconstruction of Chinese materia medica. However, as the discourses on the caterpillar fungus have demonstrated, modern science did not necessarily dispel indigenous medical, culinary, geographical, morphological, environmental or other forms of empirical knowledge about it or other Chinese medicinal substances. Nor did scientific discourse necessarily significantly impact on indigenous ways of using them or the communities involved in their exchange and prescription. The new Chinese materia medica, as provided by Chen Cunren, retained much indigenous empirical knowledge and featured intellectual plurality related to and in conversation with the goal of scientification. Even in the 1963 Chinese national pharmacopoeia, the entry for the caterpillar fungus still comprised both biological and classical Chinese medical terminologies.258 The rupture and continuity in the transformation of Chinese materia medica, which largely happened on paper rather than in practice, left a hybrid body of knowledge that can neither be said to be truly scientised nor indigenous, neither modern nor traditional. But Chinese medicinal substances and the empirical medical knowledge attached to them, as exemplified in the entry for the caterpillar fungus in Chen’s dictionary of Chinese materia medica, became a bridge of communication and a weapon for Republican Chinese physicians to save the legacy of Chinese medicine as it survived a profound existential crisis.

258 Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Weishengbu Yaodian Weiyuanhui (ed.), Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Yaodian (1963 Nianban), p. 77.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

Following the triumph of the Chinese Communist Party in China, the caterpillar fungus maintained a vigorous social life. In 1953, Chairman Mao presented some caterpillar fungus as a gift to a teacher he had once had.1 The geologist Zhu Kezhen once purchased it and the snow fungus in Chongqing in 1955.2 In the same city, the dish known as steamed duck with the caterpillar fungus stood among the celebrated dishes of the local cuisine.3 The medicinal properties of the caterpillar fungus continued to gain recognition from the 1977 edition of the Chinese national pharmacopoeia.4 Moreover, the cultural geographer Frederick J. Simoons discloses in his 1991 monograph on Chinese food culture that ‘Recently in a Friendship Store in Canton frequented by foreigners, we found cans (380 gm.) of ‘Stewed Cordyceps Sinensis with Chicken 1 Li Shuntong, Daifang Shuwu Wenji, Xiangtan: Xiangtan Daxue Chubanshe, 2013, p. 207. 2 Zhu Kezhen, Zhu Kezhen Quanji

(Vol. 14), Shanghai: Shanghai Keji Jiaoyu

Chubanshe, 2008, pp. 90–91. 3 Chongqing Shi Yinshi Fuwu Gongsi, Chongqing Mingcaipu, Chongqing: Chongqing Renmin Chubanshe, 1960, pp. 38–39. 4 Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Weishengbu Yaodian Weiyuanhui (ed.), Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Yaodian (1977 Nianban), Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe, 1978, pp. 185–186.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1_6

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in Soup’, a product manufactured by the China National Medicines and Health Products Import and Export Corporation, Chungking Branch (Szechwan).’5 In 2004, a news report on the artificial cultivation of the caterpillar fungus even described it as ‘soft gold’.6 These disparate incidents point to the perplexing question of what truly is the caterpillar fungus. Anna L. Tsing’s anthropological study of the delectable matsutake mushrooms as examples of ‘interspecies entanglements’ indicates the intersections between ‘science and vernacular knowledge’ and ‘international and local expertise.’7 The caterpillar fungus counts as a comparable interspecies complex that, however, embodies parasitism rather than the mutualism represented by matsutake and pine trees. It is an interspecies complex that crosses boundaries of species through time, but explanations of its formation varied in different periods and cultures. Crossing boundaries of identity, too, it appeared as a curious natural combination of a worm and a blade of grass and also a potent medicinal substance. Both identities, seldom separated from each other, played important parts in motivating human actors to aid in its outward flow from the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding Himalayas. From the fifteenth to the early eighteenth century, such actors facilitated its entry into Chinese society against the backdrop of Qing westward expansion, gaining traction with the deep-seated belief in interspecies transformation that was already embedded in the Chinese imagination from antiquity. Chinese audiences gradually endowed its marvellous transformation with their own cultural connotations, exploiting its economic value in medicine and foodways, and investigating its medicinal properties within pre-established medical frameworks, thereby transforming it from a Tibetan exotic to an esteemed Chinese medicinal substance. With this new identity, it found favour in the Imperial Palace in Beijing, and was circulated as far as Suzhou, Shanghai, and other eastern or south-eastern cities. Yet significant intellectual tensions did not emerge in the early transmission of the caterpillar fungus in the Sino-Tibetan context. 5 Frederick J. Simoons, Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry, Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1991, pp. 323–324. 6 Xinhua She, ‘Dongchong Xiacao Zai Zangbei Gaoyuan Rengong Peiyu Chenggong’, Zhongguo Yaoye, 2004, 13(9): 6. 7 Anna L. Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, pp. vii, 287.

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From the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, a wider range of actors engaged with this intriguing organism during its travels to France, Japan, Britain, Russia and the United States in different transnational settings while they engaged with the pursuit of new natural history specimens and effective medicinal substances. Its overseas adventures have never ceased since the commencement of the twentieth century. The Austrian naturalist Heinrich Handel-Mazzetti had brought to Vienna several bundles of ‘Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc.’ that he had collected in Sichuan in his natural history expedition in Southwest China between 1914 and 1918.8 In 1917, two scientists of the United States Department of Agriculture published their research on the physiological action of the caterpillar fungus brought to the United States by the plant hunter Frank N. Meyer who first arrived in China in 1905 and finally died there in 1918.9 James W. Spreckley, a British missionary of the Church Mission Society, departed for western China in 1906, and later resided in Mianzhou, Sichuan.10 Several years later, he met the aforementioned naturalist Frank Kingdon Ward passing through that city.11 In 1930, the scientific journal Nature reported that the Department of Botany of the British Museum had received from Spreckley ‘three bundles of the Chinese fungus, Cordyceps sinensis ’, a ‘celebrated drug’ found ‘apparently only on the Tibetan border’ and ‘said to bestow energy and to be partaken of with stewed duck.’12 In Southeast Asia, according to a 8 Heinrich Lohwag, ‘Beobachtungen an Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc. und Verwandten Pilzen’, Öesterreichische Botanische Zeitschrift, 1923, 72(6–8): 294–302. See also Heinrich Handel-Mazzetti, Symbolae Sinicae (Part 2), Wien: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1937, p. 27. For Handel-Mazzetti’s life, see Erwin Janchen, ‘Heinrich Freiherr von HandelMazzetti’, Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, 1939, 57: 179–201. 9 John F. Brewster and Carl L. Alsberg, ‘Note on the Physiological Action of Cordyceps

sinensis ’, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 1917, 10(4): 277–280. For Meyer’s life, see Isabel S. Cunningham, Frank N. Meyer: Plant Hunter in Asia, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984. 10 Anonymous, ‘Missionary Departures during October, 1906’, The Church Missionary Intelligencer, 1906, 57(10): 800; The China Continuation Committee, Directory of Protestant Missions in China, Shanghai: Kwang Hsüeh Publishing House, 1921, pp. 7, 247, 343. 11 Frank Kingdon Ward, On the Road to Tibet, Shanghai: Shanghai Mercury, 1910, pp. 83–84. 12 Anonymous, ‘News and Views’, Nature, 1930, 126(3187): 856. Cf. Anonymous, ‘News: The Department of Botany of the British Museum’, The North-China Daily News, 22 December 1930, Section 7.

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1929 report by David Hooper, the caterpillar fungus was one of the drugs used by Chinese druggists in Malaya, ‘given for its tonic and aphrodisiac properties’.13 In 1983, it had been sold in Chinatown in Boston, United States.14 Clearly, the history of the caterpillar fungus had become increasingly transnational. The caterpillar fungus attracted much attention from those at the forefront of the fields of natural history and materia medica in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Europe. It was the focus of European research on fungal parasitism on animals, and such research resulted in naturalists creating new positions in the European natural order. The demystification of this Chinese wonder or marvel fitted into the European project of objectifying the global natural world, within which it and the other newly described species materialised the nature-culture divide that granted the ‘modern’ human voice the discourse of power to define the modern and ‘an archaic and stable past’.15 Though it was deconstructed into a fungus and a larva, using new European scientific theories and more penetrating ways of looking with the microscope, it was transformed into a scientific wonder that fascinated growing networks of taxonomists, pharmacognosists and doctors. European taxonomic identification of the caterpillar fungus aided its procurement and coordinated the European materia medica enterprise. Now there emerged significant epistemological incommensurability between Chinese and European perceptions about its natural categories and properties. However, Chinese knowledge about its names, medicinal uses and geographical distribution was still valued in Europe for its utilitarian functions, while European scientific knowledge relating to it also led to new medical understanding and practice as evidenced by its intersection with homoeopathy in the late nineteenth century. With the globalisation of the scientific enterprise, the rhetorical power of science and intellectual tensions surrounding the caterpillar fungus turned up in nineteenth-century Japan. The Japanese associated this natural curiosity with other similar domestic and foreign organisms, which 13 David Hooper, ‘On Chinese Medicine: Drugs of Chinese Pharmacies in Malaya’, The Gardens’ Bulletin, Straits Settlements, 1929, 6(1–5): 1–163, 43. 14 Edmund W. Davis, ‘Notes on the Ethnomycology of Boston’s Chinatown’, Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 1983, 29(1): 59–67. 15 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Catherine Porter (trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 10.

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then erased its uniqueness and incorporated it into the category of insectfungi. It was again deconstructed into two different and untransformable species grouped with other similar species in the European natural order; microscopic structures were invoked in support of the scientific theory of its formation; and interestingly, the Chinese term for it also entered the Japanese language, with its meaning being broadened to encompass other similar insect-fungi, indicating the semantic boundaries of shared vocabulary. With political and intellectual investment in the study of natural history and medicine in the community of scientists in Meiji Japan, coupled with the representation of a scientific modernity in the new discourses of power, new-style scientific institutions and research methods became a model for reform-minded Chinese. Significant cognitive changes in perceptions and the styles in which indigenous species and medicinal substances were described and studied in China in the first half of the twentieth century are evident in what happened to the caterpillar fungus. New scientific facts about its fungal nature, taxonomy and so forth initially spread into the Chinese world from Japan through translation, and a variety of Chinese intellectuals also made much effort to popularise such truthful knowledge, and further carried out mycological, chemical and pharmacological studies which extended scientific authority to its interior. The social life of the caterpillar fungus in Republican China intersected with the localisation of modern science during encounters with indigenous natural products that largely underlay Chinese consumer culture and medicine markets. The power of the scientific rhetoric provoked diverse responses concerning Chinese medicine. Despite tensions between modern science and Chinese medical theories, however, many scientists or biomedical practitioners and Chinese physicians of the rising integrationist school shared a common interest in Chinese medicinal substances and related empirical knowledge due to their potential value for the scientific exploration of chemical drugs and medicinal substitutes, as well as their practical effectiveness as evidential to a potential scientificity of Chinese materia medica. Chen Cunren was a representative integrationist physician who rested his project of scientising Chinese medic on materia medica. His 1935 dictionary provided a new and modern Chinese materia medica which reflected his alleged revolutionary spirit of discarding fallacious and unscientific Chinese medical theories. Meanwhile, he retained abundant indigenous empirical medical knowledge, and assimilated much biological, chemical, physiological and other categories of scientific or

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biomedical knowledge. The plural and sometimes inconsistent knowledge in the dictionary, as shown in the entry for the caterpillar fungus, reveals both rupture and continuity in the transformation of Chinese materia medica in Republican China’s pursuit of science as modernity. The integrationist scientification of Chinese medicinal substances nevertheless basically stayed at a theoretical and textual level and added to the rhetoric of power of science. Scientification could hardly be counted as generally incarnated in the medications employed by Chinese physicians. In the Republican period, scientific research on Chinese medicinal substances also did not result in the discovery of, with few exceptions, new clinically safe chemical drugs, which was thwarted by the caterpillar fungus as well. The caterpillar fungus and plentiful other natural products with medicinal uses have been continuously and widely consumed throughout the ensuing periods of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As recent Chinese national policies focus on the invention of a uniquely Chinese modernity, and the reinvention of traditional culture for a successful post-socialist Chinese world, the discourses of power are in rapid transition.16 These are cheerful and lucrative times for Chinese medicine,17 and for the caterpillar fungus who takes pride of place in the marketplace, outdoing ginseng and bird’s nests at about £30 per gram for the top-grade in 2007,18 and an average of somewhere between £44– 66 and sometimes even about £116 a gram in the mid-2010s.19 No doubt, behind the highly commodified caterpillar fungus there must be an intricate amalgamation of commercial capital and knowledge production, which also shapes its ongoing social life. Now fungi serve as a potential source of eco-friendly materials for packing, interior design and even 16 Aleksandra Kubat, ‘Morality as Legitimacy under Xi Jinping: The Political Functionality of Traditional Culture for the Chinese Communist Party’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2018, 47(3): 47–86; Tom Rockmore, ‘Hegel and Chinese Marxism’, Asian Studies, 2019, 7(1): 55–73. 17 David Cyranoski, ‘Why Chinese Medicine is Heading for Clinics around the World’, Nature, 2018, 561(7724): 448–450; Paul Kadetz and Michael Stanley-Baker, ‘About Face: How the People’s Republic of China Harnessed Health to Leverage Soft Power on the World Stage’, Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 2022, 3: 774,765. 18 Richard Stone, ‘Last Stand for the Body Snatcher of the Himalayas?’, Science, 2008, 322(5905): 1182. 19 Dong Caihong et al., ‘Woguo Chongcao Chanye Fazhan Xianzhuang, Wenti Ji Zhanwang: Chongcao Chanye Fazhan Jinhu Xuanyan’, Junwu Xuebao, 2016, 35(1): 1–15.

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house construction.20 On 8 April 2016, an American cargo spacecraft even carried some fungal samples to the International Space Station for the purpose of exploring new drugs from their secondary metabolites.21 These events mark the start of a new era of the coexistence between humans and fungi. Such contemporary stories are for future research initiatives, and lie beyond the small scholarly contribution of this book to the history of medicine and science.

20 Elvin Karana et al., ‘When the Material Grows: A Case Study on Designing (with) Mycelium-based Materials’, International Journal of Design, 2018, 12(2): 119–136. 21 Jillian Romsdahl et al., ‘International Space Station Conditions Alter Genomics, Proteomics, and Metabolomics in Aspergillus nidulans ’, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 2019, 103: 1363–1377.

Index

A Aphrodisiac, 27, 30, 31, 67, 82, 89, 200, 286 Artemisinin, 9

B Bencao Congxin, 32, 33, 55, 99, 152, 265, 272 Berkeley, Miles J., 126, 127, 136, 145, 180–184, 186, 189, 190, 202, 212, 231 Bretschneider, Emil, 120, 123, 129, 142, 143, 146, 147, 198, 199, 266 Britain, 7, 10, 22, 119–121, 123, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 134, 157, 170, 175, 177, 181, 191, 201, 203, 208, 214, 285 British Museum, 100, 123, 126, 133, 134, 145, 180, 187, 285

C Caterpillar fungus, 1–3, 7, 18, 21–23, 25–29, 31–33, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54–56, 58, 59, 61–63, 66–68, 71–75, 77–89, 91–96, 98, 101, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 122, 125, 127–129, 132, 136, 140, 145–147, 152–156, 158, 163, 165, 166, 168, 174, 177–179, 181, 183, 185–187, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, 208, 210, 211, 214, 215, 218–222, 224–229, 231–233, 235, 240, 242–249, 256, 263, 264, 266, 268, 270, 272, 273, 275, 279, 281, 283, 284, 286–288 Chen Cunren, 218, 256–258, 260, 261, 263–269, 273, 279, 281, 287 Chinese medicine, 5, 7–10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 31, 65, 67, 95, 107,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Lu, The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24723-1

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INDEX

116, 120, 141–144, 148, 151, 158, 191, 192, 197, 198, 203, 210, 215, 218, 237, 250–259, 261, 262, 264, 268, 269, 271, 273–276, 278–281, 287, 288 Christianity, 9, 102–104, 140 Cordycepin, 235, 236, 279 Cordyceps , 2, 3, 27, 28, 32, 39, 53, 58, 136, 170, 183–187, 190, 195, 198, 199, 210, 224, 227, 235, 285 Cross-cultural, 3, 22, 23, 96, 217

D De Bondaroy, Auguste-Denis Fougeroux, 168, 173 De Réaumur, René Antoine Ferchault, 163, 164, 166 Dongchong Xiacao, 1–3, 25, 42, 85, 122, 153, 210, 220, 224–226, 229, 235, 246, 250, 264, 268, 272 Dorje, Zurkhar Nyamnyi, 27, 28, 30, 31, 40, 65, 71, 79, 94, 95 Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste, 37, 43, 67, 97, 109–111, 114, 115, 159, 164, 167, 168

E English East India Company, 100, 117–119, 121–123, 128 Entomology, 121, 158, 164, 189 Ephedrine, 234, 277, 278, 280

F France, 4, 10, 22, 101, 102, 104, 105, 108, 110, 113, 116, 152, 157, 158, 164, 165, 170, 174, 194, 214, 227, 285

Fungi, 28, 136, 157, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173–177, 179–184, 189, 191, 193, 211–214, 219, 222–224, 231–233, 248, 289

H Hepialus , 189, 190, 212, 227 Homoeopathy, 130, 201, 202, 286 Horaninov, Paul F., 143

I Imperial Medico-Surgical Academy (St. Petersburg), 141, 143, 146 Integrationist, 252, 256, 262, 272, 279, 281, 287, 288 Ivatts, E.B., 130, 131, 199–201

J Japan, 3, 16, 22, 72, 101, 149–158, 163, 188, 204–215, 217, 219–222, 234, 253, 254, 285–287 Jesuit, 4, 7, 37, 43, 67, 97, 98, 104–110, 112–114, 116, 159, 160, 167

K Kawaguchi, Ekai, 71, 72, 221 Kingdon Ward, Frank, 133–136, 285 Kurimoto, Tanshu, 154

L Li, Shizhen, 15, 45, 63, 64, 70, 91, 124, 155, 237 London, 9, 17, 29, 30, 64, 76, 85, 94, 100, 102, 103, 115, 118–125, 129–131, 133–136, 146, 162, 171, 177–179, 183,

INDEX

189, 194, 197–199, 212, 219, 238, 258 M Maritime Customs, 11, 76, 79, 80, 194, 196, 197, 199, 203 Materia Medica, 3–5, 8, 9, 12–15, 22, 23, 26, 30, 32, 35, 46, 49, 53, 57, 58, 66, 70, 78, 82, 85, 89, 94, 96, 107, 112, 113, 115, 124, 125, 143, 146–148, 150, 155, 180, 181, 189, 190, 192–195, 198, 203, 205, 210, 215, 218, 223, 231, 233, 236, 239, 252–254, 256, 258, 259, 261–263, 265–268, 270, 271, 273, 274, 276, 279–281, 286–288 Missionary, 4, 5, 7, 9–16, 37, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106, 109, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 120, 123, 159, 168, 189, 194, 196, 217, 219, 285 Mycology, 53, 58, 126, 170, 175, 181, 182, 186, 230 N Nagasaki, 149, 152, 154, 156 Natural history, 18, 22, 23, 26, 53, 70, 96, 98–100, 114, 117, 118, 124, 128, 129, 132–134, 142, 144, 148, 150, 156, 157, 162–166, 169, 172, 173, 179, 186, 189, 190, 193, 195, 203, 208, 214, 218, 223, 225, 226, 228, 237, 269, 280, 285–287 Nomenclature, 22, 145, 176, 197, 214, 267 O Objectivity, 21, 161, 212, 267

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P Parasitism, 58, 200, 224, 227, 284, 286 Parennin, Dominicus, 37, 43, 108, 109, 159 Paris, 107, 111, 114, 116, 160, 168, 173 Pereira, Jonathan, 125, 126, 179, 180, 189, 190, 193 Prescription, 4, 14, 27, 31, 43, 67, 83–85, 88, 89, 91–94, 96, 151, 253, 255, 261, 267, 275, 276, 281

Q Qing dynasty, 22, 33, 42, 48, 155

R Read, Bernard E., 4, 5, 236, 237, 269 Reeves, John, 120–125, 132, 161, 191 Republican China, 8, 17, 18, 230, 236, 267, 278, 287, 288 Royal Academy of Sciences (Paris), 106, 110, 114, 116, 159, 163, 164, 168, 172, 174 Russia, 5, 10, 22, 101, 110, 138, 139, 141–144, 148, 157, 158, 285

S Saccardo, Pier Andrea, 184 Scientification, 23, 218, 256, 261, 268, 269, 274, 280, 281, 288 Scientific medicine, 16–18, 236, 238, 250–252, 254, 261, 262, 269, 270, 273, 275–277, 280 Seihaku, Niwa, 155 Shuqun, Deng, 230, 231, 233, 274 Sichuan, 2, 28, 29, 33, 35, 37–51, 53, 55–58, 62, 63, 66, 68, 71,

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INDEX

73, 75, 77, 81, 82, 87, 88, 93, 95, 111, 113, 126, 135, 136, 195, 225, 227, 228, 231, 232, 242–245, 247–249, 285 Smith, Frederick P., 5, 189, 194–196, 200, 202 Sphaeria, 126, 127, 129, 136, 145, 170, 180, 182–184, 187, 189, 210, 213, 220 St. Petersburg, 110, 113, 139–148

T Tatarinov, Alexander A., 78, 141–148, 161, 186 Thunberg, Carl P., 152–154, 167, 188 Tibetan medicine, 27, 29, 31, 42, 78, 89 Transformation, 3, 4, 6, 38, 59, 62, 68–75, 82, 86, 87, 95, 96, 101, 130, 155, 161, 166, 178, 204, 211–213, 218, 220, 221, 224–226, 248, 251, 258, 264, 271, 274, 281, 284, 288 Transnational history, 7, 18, 23, 99 Truth, 23, 178, 179, 185, 218, 223

U United States, 16, 79, 131, 157, 158, 183, 204, 232, 285, 286 V Von Siebold, Philipp Franz, 157 W Western medicine, 11–13, 17, 18, 241, 251, 254, 256–258, 261 Westwood, John O., 121, 178, 179 Wu Qijun, 51–53, 85, 266 Wu Yiluo, 32, 33, 46, 47, 50–52, 55, 56, 59, 64, 71, 84, 85, 99, 152 Y Yunnan, 2, 33, 50–53, 55, 71, 72, 77, 87, 95, 113, 134, 136, 137, 226, 235, 243–245, 249 Yu Yunxiu, 254–256, 261, 269 Z Zhao, Xuemin, 4, 35, 46, 49, 50, 66, 73, 75, 88, 89, 213, 233, 263, 264, 278