Available online 16 December 2014
Research Paper
Scent and synaesthesia: The medical use of spice bags in early China
Abstract
Ethnopharmacological relevance
The
history of Chinese spices has received increasing attention in recent
years, but little research been carried out on where they fit on the
food-medicine continuum for early China, during the formation of the
classical medical system. This paper describes how the synaesthetic
qualities of spices attracted a particular analysis in that emerging
system which serves to mark them as different to other medical materials
and foodstuffs. We aim to clarify the special role created for spices
to accommodate their boundary-crossing synaesthetic action on the body.
Material and methods
This
paper analyses the contents of several spice bags excavated in 1972
from a tomb that was closed in the second century BCE. It uses
archaeological reports of material culture together with the early
Chinese textual record, extant in both manuscripts and received texts,
to bring out the role of spices in ritual, food and medicine.
Results
Noting
that the flavours and aromas of early China were assigned physiological
potency in the first centuries BCE, we argue that by medieval times the
unique synaesthetic role that spices played in mediating the senses was
systematically medicalised. While being deployed for the purpose of
curing disease in medicine, they also remained within the realm of
everyday healthcare, and religious practice, deployed both as aromatics
to perfume the environment, attracting benign spirits, but also to ward
off the agents of disease, as well as for enhancing health through their
use in cookery.
Conclusion
While
foodstuffs entered the digestive system spices were all considered
‘pungent’ in the emerging clasical medical system. They acted on the
body through the nose and lungs, making them neither food nor drug. This
implicit categorisation medicalised spices which, like music, could
affect the passions and lighten the spirit, codifying observations about
the impact on the body of the ritual environment.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
- Spice;
- Sichuan pepper;
- Zanthoxylum armatum DC.;
- Yangsheng;
- Han dynasty
Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
