George Arthur Stuart’s Chinese Materia Medica: Vegetable Kingdom and the Westward Transmission of Ben Cao Knowledge

Abstract:

Since the late Qing dynasty, the westward transmission of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) knowledge has been more than a linguistic translation; it has represented a profound reconstruction of epistemic paradigms. As a foundational work in the modern history of the global dissemination of Ben Cao (本草 Chinese materia medica) knowledge, George Arthur Stuart’s Chinese Materia Medica: Vegetable Kingdom (1911) systematically reflects the logic of knowledge transformation employed by Protestant medical missionaries. From the dual perspectives of Western sinology and the global circulation of knowledge, this paper argues that Stuart facilitated the “de-contextualization” and “re-contextualization” of Ben Cao knowledge—shifting it from traditional natural philosophy to a modern biomedical framework—through the introduction of Linnaean taxonomy, Wade’s system, and Customs sequence numbers in the Maritime Customs’ List of Chinese Medicines . The study reveals that while Stuart “scientized” the Ben Cao Gang Mu (《本草纲目》 The Grand Compendium of Materia Medica ) using positivist logic, he also preserved the social life histories and cultural landscapes of medicinal substances through meticulous textual translation and empirical observation. However, the selective filtering and semantic narrowing in his work also reflect the erosion of TCM’s theoretical subjectivity amidst the power dynamics between Eastern and Western medicine. As a pivotal “knowledge hub”, Stuart’s work profoundly shaped the Western cognitive framework of Ben Cao knowledge for subsequent generations. By analyzing the gains and losses in this translation process, this paper aims to provide new historical insights into the complex interactions of Sino-Western knowledge exchange and the contemporary cross-cultural communication of TCM.