The Transmission of Foreign Medicine via the Silk Roads in Medieval China: A Case Study of Haiyao Bencao

Abstract

The importance of cultural exchange along the Silk Routes to the cosmopolitan identity of High Tang culture has long been acknowledged. This paper develops that understanding for the medical context by examining the Haiyao bencao 海瑶本草 (Overseas Pharmacopoeia), a specialist materia medica work made up of foreign remedies. With a deeper understanding of the sociocultural and religious context within which its author, Li Xun 李恂), a Persian born in China, worked we can begin to build a vivid picture of the background against which foreign medicines arrived from the Western regions to Medieval China.

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