Sensing as Knowing: Medicines, the Senses, and Practical Expertise in Late Imperial China

Abstract

The development of the medicinal trade and markets in late imperial China increased anxiety among scholarly physicians about the authenticity of medicines. Even though the market was typically depicted by scholarly physicians as a place full of tricks and deceptions, it was a repertoire where practical knowledge about authentication was created and circulated. The specialized knowledge was mainly transmitted through oral tradition. But in some instances, it was also written down by scholarly physicians or merchants, allowing us to reconstruct the techniques and their underlying rationales. Authentication of medicines mobilized multiple sensory perceptions of the human body, consisting of observing, tasting, smelling, touching, and performing small tests. All these techniques played different roles in the practice of authentication. Even though these sensory techniques seemed like a collection of trivial and practical records without any coherent rationales, an underlying episteme could be detected through a close investigation. Merchants and practitioners in the market did not understand the nature and materiality of medicines by any established theories. Instead, they actively engaged with the tangible form of medicines through the senses and bodily techniques. This sensory form of knowing indicates a type of practical expertise that is distant from the scholarly tradition of materia medica in late imperial China.