17th-Century Materia Medica Pharmacopeias

Timeline

1. 1671–1678Jiangnan · ChinaSince its first printing in 1596, the Compendium of Materia Medica had been reprinted many times; around 1671, multiple commercial editions circulated widely in Jiangnan bookshops, becoming the authoritative reference for physicians. The physician Wang Ang began writing the concise pharmacopoeia Essentials of Materia Medica for grassroots physicians during this period, emphasizing the properties, effects, and clinical combinations of commonly used drugs; it was formally printed in 1694. The rise of abridged materia medica marked the transformation of Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge from elite treatises to practical clinical tools.
2. 1674–1680Paris · FranceNicolas Lémery published Cours de Chymie in 1675, systematically organizing plant, mineral, and animal drugs within a modern chemical-analytical framework; it became the standard textbook of European pharmacy education, reprinted over ten times and translated into many languages. Meanwhile, the London Pharmacopoeia and other official European pharmacopoeias continued to incorporate colonial plant drugs from the Americas and Asia; the compilation of herbals and revision of pharmacopoeias interacted closely, driving the expansion of European traditional herbal pharmacopoeias into global drug catalogues.
3. 1674–1680Beijing · ChinaJesuits in China such as Ferdinand Verbiest and Philippe Couplet systematically recorded Chinese herbal medicine in letters and reports, some of which entered European natural history works. When Couplet traveled to Europe in 1682 he carried a large number of Chinese documents, and the bibliographies of materia medica among them aroused European scholarly interest in Chinese plant drugs. This two-way flow of knowledge laid early groundwork for 18th-century Europe's incorporation of Asian drugs such as rhubarb and cinchona into official pharmacopoeias.