The spread of foreign toxicology along the Silk Road during Medieval China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Throughout the Middle Ages, antidotes and toxicological learning originating from foreign territories were conveyed along the Silk Road (via both land and maritime routes) – propelled by diplomacy, religious expansion, and trade – eventually into China. In this article, such threads of remnant text that have been discovered along the Silk Road are pieced together to reveal the story of foreign toxicology’s spread and use in China. Accounts aplenty of this trajectory fill the Dunhuang manuscripts and Traditional Chinese Medicine records handed down to posterity. These documents perhaps evince the willingness of Chinese physicians to accept foreign toxicological direction even while engaged upon their own course of development in the field and may even indicate their endorsement of certain imported concepts. What resulted was a broader, multifaceted approach to toxicology by practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The hope is to better understand Chinese medicine culture’s richness and diversity.