Li Shizhen

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Li Shizhen (1518-1593) whose compendium of natural medicines is celebrated in China as the most complete survey of natural remedies of its time. He trained as a doctor and worked at the Ming court before spending almost 30 years travelling in China, inspecting local plants and animals for their properties, trying them out on himself and then describing his findings in his Compendium of Materia Medica or Bencao Gangmu, in 53 volumes. He’s been called the uncrowned king of Chinese naturalists, and became a scientific hero in the 20th century after the revolution.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Craig Clunas 5 episodes
  Professor Emeritus in the History of Art at the University of Oxford
• Anne Gerritsen 2 episodes
  Professor in History at the University of Warwick
• Roel Sterckx 4 episodes
  Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History at the University of Cambridge

Reading list

• Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368-1644
  Craig Clunas (Reaktion Books, 2007) Google Books →
• Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History
  T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• Innovation in Chinese Medicine
  Elizabeth Hsu (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• The Essential Book of Traditional Chinese Medicine
  Liu Yanchi, Kathleen Vian, and Peter Eckman (Columbia University Press, 1998)
• Imagining Chinese Medicine
  Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (eds.) (Brill, 2018) Google Books →
• Science and Civilisation in China, VI: 4 Biology and Biological Technology
  Georges Metailie (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
• The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and its Transformations in Early Modern China
  Carla Nappi (Harvard University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• The Crafting of the Ten-Thousand Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China
  Dagmar Schafer (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
• Compendium of Materia Medica: Bencao Gangmu
  Li Shizhen (trans. Xiwen Luo) (Foreign Languages Press, 2003)
• Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding
  Roel Sterckx (Penguin, 2019) Google Books →
• Traditional Chinese Medicine: Heritage and Adaptation
  Paul U. Unschuld (Columbia University Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Medicine in China: A History of Ideas
  Paul U. Unschuld (University of California Press, 2010) Google Books →
• Dictionary of the Ben Cao Gang Mu
  Paul U. Unschuld and Zhang Zhibin (eds.) (University of California Press, 2014-18) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Journey to the West
  
  20 May, 2021 890 Other literatures
• Galen
  
  10 Oct, 2013 610 Medicine and health
• Matteo Ricci and the Ming Dynasty
  
  16 Apr, 2015 950 History of Asia
• Tang Era Poetry
  
  12 May, 2022 890 Other literatures
• Linnaeus
  
  20 Apr, 2023 580 Plants
• Maimonides
  
  17 Feb, 2011 100 Philosophy
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms
  
  27 Jun, 2013 950 History of Asia
• The An Lushan Rebellion
  
  16 Feb, 2012 950 History of Asia
• Sources of Early Chinese History
  
  23 Jan, 2014 950 History of Asia
• Montaigne
  
  25 Apr, 2013 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Al-Ghazali
  
  19 Mar, 2015 210 Philosophy and theory of religion
• Pliny’s Natural History
  
  8 Jul, 2010 500 Science
• Chinese Legalism
  
  10 Dec, 2015 950 History of Asia
• Avicenna
  
  8 Nov, 2007 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Long March
  
  29 Nov, 2018 950 History of Asia
• The Ming Voyages
  
  13 Oct, 2011 950 History of Asia
• Sir Thomas Browne
  
  6 Jun, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Bishop Berkeley
  
  20 Mar, 2014 100 Philosophy
• Zen
  
  4 Dec, 2014 290 Other religions
• Confucius
  
  1 Nov, 2001 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy

---

Programme ID: m000bp3g

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bp3g

Auto-category: 615.321 (Chinese traditional medicine)