History of Herbal Medicine (continuation)
China and Japan. The earliest written evidence of the medicinal use of herbs in China consists of a corpus of 11 medical works recovered from a burial site in Hunan province. The burial itself is dated 168 B.C., and the texts (written on silk) appear to have been composed before the end of the 3rd century B.C. Some of the texts discuss exercise, diet, and channel therapy (in the form of moxibustion--see the "Alternative Systems of Medical Practice" chapter). The largest, clearest, and most important of these manuscripts, called by its discoverers Prescriptions for Fifty-Two Ailments, is predominantly a pharmacological work. More than 250 medicinal substances are named. Most are substances derived from herbs and wood; grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and animal parts are also mentioned. Underlying this entire text is the view that disease is the manifestation of evil spirits, ghosts, and demons that must be repelled by incantation, rituals, and spells in addition to herbal remedies.
By the Later Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.), medicine had changed dramatically in China. People grew more confident of their ability to observe and understand the natural world and believed that health and disease were subject to the principles of natural order. However, herbs still played an important part in successive systems of medicine. The Classic of the Materia Medica, compiled no earlier than the 1st century A.D. by unknown authors, was the first Chinese book to focus on the description of individual herbs. It includes 252 botanical substances, 45 mineral substances, and 67 animal-derived substances. For each herb there is a description of its medicinal effect, usually in terms of symptoms. Reference is made to the proper method of preparation, and toxicities are noted (Bensky and Gamble, 1993).
Since the writing of the Classic of the Materia Medica almost 2,000 years ago, the traditional Chinese materia medica have been steadily increasing in number. This increase has resulted from the integration into the official tradition of substances from China's folk medicine as well as from other parts of the world. Many substances now used in traditional Chinese medicine originate in places such as Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and the Americas. The most recent compilation of Chinese materia medica was published in 1977. The Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Medicine Substances (Zhong yao da ci dian), the culmination of a 25-year research project conducted by the Jiangsu College of New Medicine, contains 5,767 entries and is the most definitive compilation of China's herbal tradition to date (Bensky and Gamble, 1993).
Traditional Chinese medicine was brought to Japan via Korea, and Chinese-influenced Korean medicine was adapted by the Japanese during the reign of Emperor Ingyo (411-453 A.D.). Medical envoys continued to arrive from Korea throughout the next century, and by the time of the Empress Suiko (592-628 A.D.), Japanese envoys were being sent directly to China to study medicine. Toward the end of the Muromachi period (1333-1573 A.D.) the Japanese began to develop their own form of traditional oriental medicine, called kampo medicine. As traditional Chinese medicine was modified and integrated into kampo medicine, herbal medicine was markedly simplified.
