Here are 2 books that Artisans in Early Imperial China fans have personally recommended if you like
Artisans in Early Imperial China.
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People often have the idea that traditional medicines and herbs are a gentle, natural way of solving health problems, and that chemotherapy is a modern, Western invention... but not at all! This book charts the use of seriously toxic compounds in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in medieval times, to demonstrate that substances like arsenic and aconite have long had a really important place in medical practice. This is an eye-opening book, which serves to demonstrate that very toxic substances have been to fight cancer and other horrible conditions within TCM for more than fifteen centuries, and "natural" doesn't necessarily mean that these remedies come without some pretty brutal side-effects. This is a shocking read and some of the case histories described are horrendous, but then that's true of any book about the history of medicine. This is a subject written in human blood and pain!
Winner of the 2023 William H. Welch Medal, sponsored by the American Association for the History of Medicine
A revealing study of risky cures in classical Chinese pharmacy
At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China's formative era of pharmacy (200-800 CE), poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything from chills to pains to epidemics. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious devotees, court officials, and laypeople used powerful substances to both treat intractable illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du-a word carrying a core…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
As climate catastrophes happen around the globe, this is a fantastic account of the early history of environmental degradation across the north China plain from the first humans down to the unification of China in 221 BCE. This book connects social and political developments to the increasing and unsustainable exploitation of the environment in just this one corner of the world, but it's an important corner, because the north China plain is where a succession of major Chinese states had their capital cities. This is a depressing read, but also an acknowledgement of just how significant the impact of changes in human behavior on flora and fauna can be, and how things people view as positive progress in the moment can have a truly devastating effect on the environment (and the quality of human life) in the long term. It doesn't look good for us, and when contemplating the future,…
A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China's political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological data
"Over four thousand years of unsustainable growth, Chinese states replaced a diverse ecosystem with a monocropping grain state. All states destroy environments, but only the state can save us. So ancient China's spectres still haunt our modern crisis. A brilliant and disturbing analysis!"-Peter C. Perdue, author of Environmental History in China and the West: Its Origins and Prospects
This book is a multidisciplinary study of the ecology of China's early political systems up to the fall of the first empire in 207 BCE. Brian Lander…
