{"product_id":"healing-with-poisons-1","title":"Healing with Poisons","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2023 William H. Welch Medal, sponsored by the American Association for the History of Medicine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA revealing study of risky cures in classical Chinese pharmacy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAt first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything from chills to pains to epidemics. \u003ci\u003eHealing with Poisons\u003c\/i\u003e explores the ways physicians, religious devotees, court officials, and laypeople used powerful substances to both treat intractable illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of \u003ci\u003edu\u003c\/i\u003e—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of techniques to transform dangerous poisons into efficacious medicines.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRecounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the early Tang period, Yan Liu considers how the concept of \u003ci\u003edu\u003c\/i\u003e was central to the ways people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. Liu also examines a wide range of \u003ci\u003edu\u003c\/i\u003e-possessing minerals, plants, and animal products in classical Chinese pharmacy, including the highly poisonous herb aconite and the popular arsenic drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with potent medicines, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHealing with Poisons\u003c\/i\u003e is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University at Buffalo Libraries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDOI 10.6069\/9780295749013\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Yan Liu","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43572655259830,"sku":"9780295748993","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9780295748993.jpg?v=1727951585","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/healing-with-poisons-1","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}