Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body

The earliest known example is the 168 BCE Wushier bingfang medical text that prescribes using ingredients such as hair, fingernail, and nüzǐbù (女子布, "women's [menstrual] cloth").

[1] Li Shizhen's (1518-1593) magnum opus, the Bencao gangmu or "Compendium of Materia Medica" is still one of the traditional Chinese physician's standard reference books.

Number 37 "Human beings in extraordinary conditions and of odd forms" ranges across cosmology, male and female sterility, pregnancy, hermaphroditism, metamorphosis, evolution, and monsters.

Chǐyìn 齒垽 "tartar; dental calculus; plaque" (52.20) uses the rare name yìn 垽 "sediment: dregs" instead of gòu 垢 "filth" in the common yágòu 牙垢.

Renshi 人勢 "penis" (52.32) uses shì 勢 "power; circumstance" in the archaic sense of "male genitals" seen in qùshì 去勢 "castrate; emasculate".

Hair on the upper lip, called Zi [髭] (moustache), pertains to Large Intestine Channel of Hand Greater Yang.

"[8] Li gives examples of similar things "formed due to congelation of a kind of essence substance": niúhuáng 牛黄 "ox bezoar; calculus bovis", gǒubǎo 狗寶 "stone in a dog's kidney/gall bladder", zhǎdá 鮓答 "white stone that forms between the liver and gall of livestock, used for rain prayers", and shèlìzi 舍利子 "śarīra; a Buddhist relic supposedly found in cremated ashes".

[12] In ancient times, doctors used urinary precipitates to "keep the blood in motion, greatly help sexual debility, bring down heat, kill parasites, and disperse poisons; but the princes and wealthy patricians disliked using it because they considered it unhygienic.

The Bencao gangmu lists six methods of processing qiushi through techniques including dilution, precipitation, filtration, evaporation, calcination, and sublimation.

In south China, people blend human placenta with gāncǎo 甘草 "Glycyrrhiza uralensis; Chinese licorice root", shēngmá 升麻 "Cimicifuga simplex; bugbane", and other drugs, which they store in a bottle, and bury in the ground for 3 to 5 years.

"[14] The Bencao gangmu compares a hanged person's soul with similar phenomena, "When a star descends to the earth it turns into a stone.

Cooper & Sivin say drilling the skull in order to provide a passage is still part of the initiation ritual for members of the esoteric Shingon sect in Taiwan today.

Li Shizhen recounts this foreign legend and expresses skepticism, The book Chuogeng Lu by Tao Jiucheng: It is recorded that in the Tianfang country there was an old man 70 or 80 years old was willing to sacrifice his body for the general public.

A few Bencao gangmu prescriptions are cited from non-medical literature, such as Zhang Hua's (c. 290) Bowuzhi "Record of Wide Knowledge" collection of wonders (but this magical marital formula is not found in the current reconstituted version).

Since more than one-third of the human drugs were first added in Li Shizhen's time,[20] suggested that "research into the origin of these relatively recent remedies which may reveal a new interchange of thought and practice between China and other civilizations.

Burn 14 pieces of pubic hair of the patient's husband, blend the residue with pig lard, and make into pills the size of soy beans.

Li Shizhen: Female pubic hair is good for treating stranguria of five types and the Yinyangyi syndrome (febrile disease transmitted by sex).

Reflecting the well-known Confucianist inhibition against mutilating one's body,[26] Li Shizhen's preface to chapter 52 ethically condemns the use of some human drugs.

Chen Cangqi's (early 8th century) Bencao Shiyi prescribes flesh as a good drug for láozhài 癆瘵 "consumptive and infectious diseases", and Li Shizhen says, "Our bodies, skin, and hair are inherited from our parents and should be well protected.

[29]Luo's "those whose genitals are physically damaged" euphemistically translates the original metaphor cánshì 蠶室 "silkworm nursery; (traditional) prison where the punishment of castration was inflicted".

Compare Cooper & Sivin's version,[30] "Contemplating this story, it would seem that those 'who go down to the silkworm room' [who are administratively sentenced to castration] should not be ignorant of this method, so I append it here."

Under the human breath or qi section (52.23),[31] Li says a "very effective" method for treating an elderly person who is suffering from cold and deficiency in the lower body is to have a boy or girl blow air through a cloth into the navel.

Lu Gwei-djen and Joseph Needham, historians of science and technology in China, analyzed urinary steroid hormones in the first serious scientific study of Chinese human drugs.

The Book of the Later Han described three Daoist fangshi "adepts; magicians" who lived in the late 2nd century; Gan Shi 甘始, Dongguo Yannian 東郭延年, and Feng Junda 封君達[34] "were all expert at following the techniques of [Rong Cheng 容成, a semi-legendary figure associated with sexual physiology] in commerce with women.

Cooper & Sivin[37] applied the criteria of clinical pharmacology to analyze the possible medicinal value of the Bencao gangmu pharmacopeia's human drug prescriptions for 66 diseases, 58 (88%) of which prescribe one or more ancillary ingredients.

[45] For example, the Bencao gangmu (52.28) says "bregma; skull bone" is good for treating several tuberculosis-like diseases that are supposedly caused by evil spirits.

The (sometimes synonymous) names of these sicknesses are difficult to translate, as shown by the following renderings by Cooper & Sivin,[6] Luo,[7] and Zhang & Unschuld:[46] Li Shizhen quotes Chen Cangqi's explanation that when a piece of skull is cleaned, simmered in a young boy's urine, and then buried in a pit, "This will infuse the drug with a soul".

"[49] Prescription 52.28.1[50] Tianlingaisan "Powder of human Skull Top", which is said to be "good for killing worms in a consumptive disease", mentions seeing a chuanshi.

Cooper & Sivin translate the chant that Luo omits, "This incantation is recited seven times in one breath: "Divine Father Thunder, Sage Mother Lightning, if you meet a cadaver vector you must control it.

The first Bencao gangmu prescription for human nails is not from Chinese medical texts but from Daoist rituals for expelling what Cooper & Sivin describe as the "Three Corpse-Worms 三尸, the chief of the "inner gods" who are to the individual microcosm what the celestial bureaucracy is to the cosmos.