What made for a good medicine in early-modern Europe? The cases of tea and ginseng

Abstract

There has been much good work on the transfer, study and medical use of specific exotic plants: rhubarb, ginseng, tea, and chocolate to name a few. For the most part this literature tells us what physicians, apothecaries and other agents of transfer and distribution thought the plants and/or their derivatives were good for. Ginseng was notoriously thought to be a panacea—good for everything, in other words. Linnaeus therefore chose to dub the small ginseng genus Panax. Experts likewise attributed beneficial properties to other stimulants such as tea and chocolate. Many exotic plants were investigated as purgatives—a property linked to that of the stimulant-panacea. Yet learned opinion on the pharmaceutical efficacy of exotic plants was far from unanimous. In my paper I am particularly interested in critical assessments of novel plants and plant products of exotic origin. These instances merit study as evidence of a critical approach not only to medicine but also to knowledge transfer. Two key cases are tea and ginseng, for there is ample evidence of differences of opinion within the medical profession and beyond regarding the purported medicinal properties of these plants. The proposed paper accordingly asks what criteria eighteenth-century savants applied when deciding if a plant had medicinal properties or not. Did they simply adopt trendy remedies or did they subject them to any sort of test, and if so, what test(s)? Did other influences or allegiances come into play in determinations of medical efficacy, e.g. personal connections, local informants, business interests, academic affiliations or national origin?