Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica

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History of Science and Natural History History of Science and Medicine History of Medicine Studies

Abstract

The early modern rise of syphilis provoked similar anxieties to those that more recently accompanied the global spread of HIV/AIDS. It also stimulated global demand for remedies. I discuss one of the most popular, known as ‘China root’ and usually identified with various species of Smilax. The drug and instructions for its use were spread westward from China by traders of all nationalities from 1535 onwards. Demand became global before being largely replaced in Europe by supplies of various American Smilax species, known collectively as ‘Sarsaparilla’. I examine the economic, political and cultural dynamics of this process and draw from them some conclusions about the early modern drugs trade and its effects on medical thought.

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References

1993Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.2001Linnaeus: Nature and Nation 2008:Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age 1995What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods 2006The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire 2008:Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe 2013Circulation of Medicine in the Early Modern Atlantic World 1993The Science of Respiration and the Doctrine of the Bodily Winds in Ancient India

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