Bringing Order from the Chaos of Names, Texts and Nature: Collection and Translation of Chinese Materia Medica in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

Paying attention to the research of Daniel Hanbury (1825–75), whose scientific practice revolved around names, languages and their translations of Chinese materia medica, this article discusses the centrality of names development of drug knowledge in nineteenth-century Britain. Along with the collection of material specimens, names both in transliteration and in Chinese characters were gathered locally through correspondence networks. On the other hand, names within older texts that had hitherto remained disparate were reclaimed by the nineteenth-century effort to consult and collate earlier accounts of each item. As such, the collection, identification and translation of names constituted an integral part of the process of making Chinese materia medica recognizable within a new system of universal scientific knowledge. Hanbury’s extensive efforts collating and streamlining numerous names demonstrates that the early makings of scientific drug knowledge relied heavily upon a series of textual practices and peculiar modes of knowledge brokerage that straddled distant points of time and space.

Keywords

Daniel Hanbury / materia medica / drug knowledge / botany / scientific exchange / global science

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