Qing Era Materia Medica: Wu Yiluo's Ten Volume Zengjiao Bencao Congxin of Medicinal Plants, Minerals, Animals, and Prepared Drugs

Wu Yiluo Qing Era Chinese Medicine Books

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Chinese materia medica in ten illustrated thread bound volumes, early twentieth century, transmitting the Qing physician Wu Yiluo’s pharmacological system through hundreds of compact entries joining the identification of medicinal substances to their properties, therapeutic applications, preparation, and prescription. Wu Yiluo compiled the original Bencao Congxin 本草從新 in 1757 as a revision and expansion of Wang Ang’s influential Bencao Beiyao 本草備要, reorganizing inherited materia medica for practical clinical consultation and adding material drawn from earlier pharmacological literature and his own medical experience. The ten volumes shown here extend that textual tradition through illustration: medicinal roots, whole plants, leaves, flowers, fungi, fish, minerals, and prepared substances appear directly beside dense explanatory texts. The resulting books preserve the material vocabulary of Chinese pharmacy as a system encompassing substances drawn from botanical, zoological, mineral, and processed sources, each classified according to observable form and therapeutic action.

Wu, Yiluo 吳儀洛. Zengjiao Bencao Congxin 增校本草從新 [“Newly Augmented and Corrected Materia Medica”]. China, early twentieth century. Ten volumes, complete, approximately 4.5 x 8 inches each, printed in Chinese, illustrated throughout, traditional thread bound format. The interior is arranged as an illustrated pharmacological reference, with individual substances named above or beside images and followed by columns of medical text. Botanical entries reproduce the distinguishing structures of roots, rhizomes, stems, foliage, and flowers; photographed examples include 天麻, tianma, the medicinal tuber associated with Gastrodia elata, and 茯苓, fuling, the medicinal fungus Poria. Other leaves expand the materia medica beyond plants, illustrating multiple varieties of fish and presenting mineral and prepared drugs through drawings of stones, powders, crystalline forms, vessels, and processed materials. Several pages place multiple related substances within a single bordered field, permitting comparison while preserving separate discussions of their qualities and medical applications. The small woodblock style images function as identification aids embedded within the pharmacological text rather than as decoration, allowing physical form, nomenclature, and therapeutic instruction to occupy the same opening.

The work descends from the Qing expansion and systematization of bencao literature, a textual tradition in which the natural world was ordered according to medicinal properties as well as physical classification. Wu Yiluo’s original eighteen juan ranged across grasses, trees, fruits, vegetables, grains, metals and stones, water, fire and earth, birds and beasts, insects, fish and scaled creatures, and substances derived from the human body, while recording the actions and appropriate use of individual drugs. The illustrated edition converts this extensive textual taxonomy into a portable working pharmacopoeia: drawings establish the substance under discussion before columns of text address its medical character and employment. Its pages consequently preserve not only a repertory of remedies but the classificatory structure through which Chinese practitioners distinguished medicinal materials across the vegetable, animal, and mineral worlds. Complete with no present sign of wear, early twentieth century copies produced a method of faux aging techniques using tea and plant dyes shown here. Overall very good condition. Ten volume illustrated pharmacopoeia preserving the Qing organization of medicinal substances through the names, physical forms, properties, preparation, and therapeutic uses by which materia medica entered everyday Chinese medical practice.

Item #23881

Price: $550.00