From the second half of the twentieth century onward, the more that modern biomedicine has developed, the more skepticism there has been toward synthetic drugs in Euro-American societies. Chinese herbs, on the other hand, are considered natural, safe, toxin-free remedies. However, in Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China, Yan Liu insightfully reminds us that Chinese herbs are not as safe as we imagine. He utilizes medical documents from medieval China to illustrate that poisonous drugs, or “potent drugs” as he calls them, possess “the power not just to harm as a poison but also to cure as a medicine in Chinese medicine” (6). With this fluid characteristic of potent drugs in mind, we need to rethink the concept of “poison” and reevaluate the role that poison played culturally and politically in medieval China (and even in modern society).
