East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)

Cooper, Alix

Latin Words, Vernacular Worlds: Language, Nature, and the 'Indigenous' in Early Modern Europe

Hostetler, Laura

Global or Local? Exploring Connections between Chinese and European Geographical Knowledge During the Early Modern Period

Phillips, Denise

Science, Myth and Eastern Souls: J. S. C. Schweigger and the Society for the Spread of Natural Knowledge and Higher Truth

Guénel, Annick

176 EASTM 27 (2007) 
Pierre Le Roux, Alexandre Yersin, un passe-muraille (1863-1943). Vainqueur de 
la peste et de la diphtérie, explorateur des hauts plateaux d’Indochine. Sui-
vi du récit d’exploration, Sept mois chez les Moïs, par Alexandre Yersin. Pa-
ris: Connaissances et Savoirs, 2007, 123 pp.  
 
Annick Guénel 
 
[Annick Guénel is an assistant researcher at the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (South-
east Asia Centre), C.N.R.S., Paris. Her research concerns the history of medicine 
and public health in Vietnam, and several of her publications focus on the Pas-
teur Institutes of Indochina.] 
 
 
First of all, we have to say that Pierre Le Roux’s ambition is to make the diversity 
of Yersin’s work better known to the general public, not to an audience of histo-
rians of science. As Le Roux reminds us in his introduction, Yersin was not only 
a medical doctor and a Pastorian, but also an agronomist, an ethnographer, a 
meteorologist, and so on, in other words, a chameleon, as the book title suggests. 
The author proposes comparing Yersin’s work with the work of some other 
French scientists whose originality was due to their multidisciplinary training and 
approach. Le Roux is an ethnologist and, to illustrate this comparison, he has 
chosen figures he knows well, such as Jean Boulbet, Georges Dumézil, André-
Georges Haudricourt and André Leroi-Gourhan. Like Le Roux, part of their 
field-work was located in Asia, for some of them in Southeast Asia, a possible 
point of comparison with Yersin, who made Vietnam his land of choice. Is this 
the reason why the greater part of the introduction is devoted to background 
material about these scientists? Does their work, for example, overlap with Yer-
sin’s? Indeed, after having mentioned that he is trying to clear up some obscure 
aspects of Yersin’s life, the author suggests he will accomplish this by using a 
“history of science approach”.  
Nevertheless, from chapter 1, entitled “The Pastorian”, it is clear that Le 
Roux does not use this method. In this very short chapter, we find little informa-
tion on the beginning of Yersin’s medical career, or on his entrance into the Pas-
torian world. His information comes from existing biographies, and we may won-
der whether the author consulted any archival sources at all, in particular those of 
the Pasteur Institute, which contain a voluminous correspondence written by 
Yersin, to which, curiously, Le Roux alludes. Based on this correspondence, he 
could, for example, have verified what he calls the “legend” of Yersin’s encoun-
ter with Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux. Eventually, thanks to a half-page foot-
note we learn much more about Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza than we do about 
Yersin. The second chapter, devoted to “the explorer”, is better documented. 
Unfortunately, it opens with assumptions—concerning Yersin’s political network 
that allowed him to get leave from the Messageries maritimes—which again 
show the lack of archival work. However, in this chapter one can congratulate the 
177 Reviews 
author for arousing the curiosity of readers interested in the history of coloniza-
tion, or in the history of a discipline long linked to it, that is ethnology. Indeed, 
Yersin was the first to explore a region of Central Vietnam, in the middle Don-
nai, although, as Le Roux notes, he only “grazed its borders”. Later on, several 
attempts to penetrate the region were undertaken by Henri Maître, and much later 
Jean Boulbet. However, Le Roux supplies very little material on this long history 
of “pacification”. On the other hand, he carries on with digressions, such as ex-
cessively long footnotes that are often inopportune, while bibliographic citations 
are sometimes either lacking or the author simply refers to a “personal communi-
cation” dating from 2004. The same problem reappears in the next chapter, which 
is devoted to the general history of plague and the history of the discovery of its 
causative bacillus. However, even a non-specialist in the history of medicine 
could have easily found more appropriate references for this subject! Here we 
also find some odd assertions, such as one about the search for germs in the 
blood which the author says was “in use” at this time (1894). Finally, although 
chapter 4 concerns agronomy, the discipline in which Yersin was most interested 
in after microbiology, Le Roux devotes only three pages to it.  
The two next chapters, entitled “The Chameleon” and “The Indomitable one”, 
endeavour to describe Yersin more closely. In the first of these, we learn that his 
name is linked to the creation of the mountain resort Dalat. Unfortunately, the 
reader quickly gets lost, because a succession of figures is evoked whose links 
with the development of Dalat are not well explained. At the end we can under-
stand, or rather guess, that this is how the author wished to approach the question 
of Yersin’s relationship with political and financial powers in the colony. But Le 
Roux does not shed much light on this point. And while the management of the 
Pasteur Institutes in Indochina is well described as an enterprise involving several 
actors, one of them being the colonial government, their final structure is not 
clearly announced. Finally, to justify the title of the chapter, two pages are dedi-
cated to Yersin’s other hobbies which were not mentioned earlier: Cinchona 
plantations, astronomy, meteorology, cars … 
Some topics are treated too briefly. The contempt Yersin had for honours and 
the present day worship of his memory in Vietnam (the two topics in chapter 6) 
merit more than two pages. The final chapter is as surprising as the former ones. 
Praise is brutally followed by a sort of devaluation: Le Roux grants that Yersin 
was a clever man, and one might find him friendly. But, he continues, his talents, 
at least as an explorer, cannot be pitted against the “genius” of a scientist such as 
Henri Maître when he wrote of the highlands of Central Indochina.  
The biggest merit of this short book is without doubt that it reprints one of the 
accounts of a Yersin exploration. Regrettably, this text was not used in the rest of 
book, either to shed light on Yersin as a man or in relation to the history of colo-
nisation and the role played by scientists in it. 
 


Pierre Le Roux, Alexandre Yersin, un passe-muraille (1863-1943). Vainqueur de la peste et de la diphtérie, explorateur des hauts plateaux d'Indochine

Elman, Benjamin

Global Science and Comparative History: Jesuits, Science, and Philology in China and Europe, 1550-1850

Golas, Peter J.

173 Reviews 
Christine Moll-Murata, Song Jianze and Hans Ulrich Vogel (eds.), Chinese 
Handicraft Regulations of the Qing Dynasty. München: IUDICUM Verlag, 
2005, 559 pp. 
 
Peter J. Golas 
 
[Peter J. Golas is Professor in the History Department of the University of Den-
ver. His specialties are the social and economic history of traditional China and 
the history of technology in China. He has published the volume on mining in the 
Science and Civilisation in China series. His current research focuses on the 
question of why illustrations of technology differed so dramatically in Europe 
and in China.] 
 
The lively illustration on the cover of this book, showing in one courtyard a mix 
of craftsmen (carpenters, a wheelwright, someone making a spade, and a group 
fashioning a large blade) hints at its rather protean subject. As Jane Kate Leonard 
points out in her brief but very helpful introduction, the long-established genre of 
Chinese texts called zeli 則 例 do not lend themselves to any neat definition but 
could refer to standards for any kind work done for the government (p. 27). The 
question is complicated by the fact that the sub-set term translated as “handicraft 
regulations”, jiangzuo zeli 匠 作 則 例, has no traditional lineage but is a coinage 
from the 1960’s. By convention, it refers to government regulations not only for 
what is normally thought of as “handicraft” work, such as carpentry or metal-
smithing, but also to other kinds of work such as the transportation of grain or the 
building and maintenance of hydraulic works. 
This volume resulted from a major workshop held at Tübingen University in 
2003 which drew scholars from across the globe. In addition to two prefaces by 
the editors (one in English which introduces each of the contributions to the vol-
ume and a shorter one in Chinese), it includes twenty four contributions by schol-
ars from eight countries; fifteen are in English and nine in Chinese. Each article 
is preceded by an English and a Chinese abstract. An appendix compiled by 
Christine Moll-Murata, Song Jianze 宋 建 昃 and Liu Qiang 劉 蔷 will be a boon 
to researchers; it contains a union list of Qing handicraft regulations and related 
works that is based on a search of forty-eight libraries in Asia, Europe and North 
America. The list is intelligently organized. In Part 1, Regulations and precedents 
(zeli 則 例) on specific topics such as military equipment, shipbuilding and river 
conservancy can be easily found. Part 2 lists “Measurement inventories and cost 
calculations” (qingce 清  冊 ) while Part 3 includes “Technical instructions” 
(zuofa 做 法) of both a general nature as well as those dealing with specific crafts. 
A pinyin title index (there is unfortunately no index for the volume as a whole) 
makes it easy to find where individual works are held. 
Especially important and possibly a little disappointing for readers of this 
journal, the “handicraft regulations” reflect their origin in the administrative 
174 EASTM 26 (2007) 
concerns of government bureaucrats and tend to say little about technology spe-
cifically. In the case of building construction, for example, we have vast amounts 
of information for estimating the needs and calculating the costs of materials and 
labor, but very little about just how the buildings were to be constructed. This can 
be seen, for example, in the topics addressed by Guo Daiheng 國 黛 姮 in her 
very thorough discussion of the Yuanming Yuan Neigong Zeli 圓 明 園 內 工 則 
例 (Regulations and Precedents on Interior Handicrafts in the Garden of Perfect 
Brilliance) and the discussion by Chen Chaoyong 陳 朝 勇 of the costs of build-
ing materials and wages for public construction in five provinces in 1769. As the 
editors point out, “[o]nly when a certain construction or production phase was 
related to an administrative or legal problem can we expect to obtain relevant 
technical information.” (p. 10) 
Despite these caveats, this is nevertheless a very useful, and sometimes quite 
fascinating book. Much of the information it provides helps us to understand 
better the overall institutional, economic and social context in which the technol-
ogy was employed. We learn a great deal about the Qing state and how it dealt 
with those who worked for it. The “handicraft regulations” are also rich in pre-
cise economic information such as price and wage data although, as the editors 
point out, we can arrive at a finely textured historical reality only by crosscheck-
ing these normative data wherever possible against reality-based information for 
different times and different places, data that can be found only by combing a 
wide range of sources. 
The six sections into which the book is divided serve mainly to provide homes 
for the strikingly heterogeneous contributions, generally of high quality but 
sometimes rather tenuously related to the purported subject of the book. Thus, in 
the first section, “Theoretical and Institutional Foundations: Historical Materials 
on the Crafts in China and Europe”, we have a discussion by Dagmar Schäfer of 
Song Yingxing and his Tian gong kai wu 天 工 開 物 (The Exploitation of the 
Works of Nature) that, while interesting in its own right, has little connection 
with handicraft regulations and a discussion by Josef Ehmer on recent views of 
artisans, guilds and craft regulations in Europe that makes no reference to China. 
(The editors on pp. 12-13 attempt to draw some of the relevant connections.) 
Building technology is perhaps the best represented technology in the volume, 
as reflected in the fact that seven of the ten contributions in the section “Handi-
craft Regulations and their Function for the Crafts” deal with it. The remaining 
contributions discuss imperial printing at the Wuyingdian 武 英 殿 or “Hall of 
Military Fame”, river works, and weapons and military equipment. Of special 
interest is Caroline Bodolec’s discussion of vaulting in Chinese architecture that 
interestingly fleshes out a brief discussion of vault calculations in the 1734 
Gongcheng Zuofa 工 程 做 法 (Building Methods) by examining contemporary 
vaulted houses in Shaanxi and Shanxi; this “experimental methodology” enables 
her to hypothesize that technical knowledge used for public buildings may have 
been transmitted to popular constructions in the Qing period (p. 225). 
175 Reviews 
The contributions to the section on monetary policies and minting, while very 
interesting in themselves, generally offer little in the way of technical information 
and, indeed, benefit little or not at all from the examination of handicraft regula-
tions. Hans Ulrich Vogel’s discussion of unrest and strikes at the Beijing mints in 
1741 and 1816 therefore stands out all the more in showing us how one can use 
other types of sources to assess the effectiveness of the norms in handicraft regu-
lations and other similar types of collections. In particular, we see how the rigid-
ity, not to say the wishful thinking, of the normative regulations had to give way 
to the reality of unpredictable fluctuations within the monetary system. (The story 
of the strike in 1741, well told by Vogel on pp. 404-415, is as fascinating and 
instructive an account of labour unrest in traditional China as I have seen any-
where.) 
The theme of adaptation of the regulations to different local conditions and to 
changes over time is also prominent in the final section with its discussions of 
canal, river and coastal shipping. In Jane Kate Leonard’s investigation of the 
revision in 1845 of the Board of Revenue’s code on grain transport, we are pro-
vided with another illuminating case from which emerges a picture of bottom-up 
forces leading to code revisions that “sanctioned flexibility and responsiveness to 
changing local conditions.” (p. 450) As the author stresses, Qing administrative 
norms were not a case of “one size fits all”. 
Finally, this reader would have liked to see rather more done to draw com-
parisons between the Chinese experience and, for example, that of Europe where 
much more work has been done (especially in Germany) on the writing of craft 
history. One step in this direction is Jan Lucassen’s comparison of wage pay-
ments in coins in Europe and China from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. 
Also, Welf Schnell uses a comparison of regulations for the Yuanming Yuan and 
the Ten Books on Architecture of Vitruvius to point out that the Chinese volume 
describes objects using detailed measurements whereas, in Vitruvius’ text, “ob-
jects are determined by their relation to other objects.” He then goes on to sug-
gest that this may reflect the difference between a Chinese mathematics where 
practical computations were stressed versus a Western mathematics strongly 
focused on geometry and therefore “thinking in spatial forms and the relation-
ships between things.” (p. 211) One may or may not be persuaded by this inter-
pretation, but it is certainly stimulating. 
The insights to be obtained from this volume are as rich and varied as the top-
ics and approaches of its contributors. The overall picture they leave us with is 
that of “a governing system in motion in a slow, constant, and persistent adjust-
ment to political reality. Maybe it wasn’t fast, maybe it wasn’t ‘transformative’; 
and maybe it couldn’t cope with the disaster-overload of the late nineteenth cen-
tury. But nonetheless, for the greater part of the Qing period, it was steady, fairly 
reliable, and worked pretty well to serve the broad social / economic interests of 
the diverse peoples and places of the empire. Not a bad track record, all in all.” 
(p.30) 


Christine Moll-Murata, Song Jianze and Hans Ulrich Vogel (eds.), Chinese Handicraft Regulations of the Qing Dynasty

Rusk, Bruce

Old Scripts, New Actors: European Encounters with Chinese Writing, 1500-1700

Contents 
 
 
 
Note from the Editor 7 
 
 
Global Science and Comparative History: Jesuits, Science, and 
Philology in China and Europe, 1550-1850 
—BENJAMIN ELMAN 9 
 
 
Latin Words, vernacular Worlds: Language, Nature, and the 
‘Indigenous’ in Early Modern Europe 
—ALIX COOPER   17 
 
 
Science, Myth and Eastern Souls: J. S. C. Schweigger and the 
Society for the Spread of Natural Knowledge and Higher Truth 
—DENISE PHILLIPS    40 
 
 
Old Scripts, New Actors: European Encounters with Chinese 
Writing, 1500-1700 
—BRUCE RUSK  68 
 
 
Global or Local? Exploring Connections between Chinese and 
European Geographical Knowledge During the Early Modern 
Period 
—LAURA HOSTETLER  117 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Reviews 
 
Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami (eds.), Science and Technology  in 
East Asia. Proceedings of the XXth International Congress of 
History of Science 
 — reviewed by Iwo Amelung  136 
 
Michel Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, ed. Bernard Faure 
 — reviewed by Nathan Sivin  143 
 
Paul Unschuld and Zheng Jinsheng, Hanyu keben—richang 
shenghuo yu yiliao 汉 语 课 本 — 日 常 生 活 与 医 疗 
(Chinesisch—Sprachkurs für Medizin und Alltag). 
 — reviewed by Marc D. Winter and Urs P. Pretôt  148 
 
Paul D. Buell and Eugene N. Anderson; with an appendix by Charles 
Perry, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the 
Mongol Era as seen in Hu Szu-hui’s Yin-shan cheng-yao. 
 — reviewed by Mathieu Torck  152 
 
 
 
 
 
Science and Civilisation in China Series: Forthcoming Books 
 — Christopher Cullen     156 
 
The 12th International Conference on the History of Science  
 in East Asia     158 
 
A Notice from the Board of the International Society for the History 
of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine     163 
 
Call for Submissions: Zhu Kezhen Awards 
 竺 可 桢 奖 征 文 启 示                                  165 
 


Cover

Torck, Mathieu

152 EASTM 26 (2007) 
Paul D. Buell and Eugene N. Anderson; with an appendix by Charles Perry, A 
Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as seen in Hu 
Szu-hui’s Yin-shan cheng-yao. London/New York: Kegan Paul International 
(The Sir Henry Wellcome Asian series), 2000 715 pp., incl. appendices, biblio-
graphic references and index. 
 
Mathieu Torck 
 
[Mathieu Torck is assistant professor at the Department of Languages and Cul-
tures of South and East Asia at Ghent University, Belgium. He finished his Ph.D. 
dissertation in 2007 and is currently doing research on the history of logistics of 
pre-modern Chinese armies and navies, nomadic cultures, comparative food 
science and migration.] 
 
 
In order to understand the medico-culinary traditions during the Mongol era one 
cannot evade the Yinshan zhengyao 飲 膳 正 要 (Proper and Essential Things for 
the Emperor’s Food and Drink) written by the dietary physician Hu Sihui 忽 思 
慧 (Hoshoi) who lived and worked in the service of the Yuan court during the 
first half of the fourteenth century. For the first time since this classic of Chinese 
materia medica was mentioned in western scientific publications1 we have direct 
access to this precious remnant of a bygone era thanks to the efforts of Paul D. 
Buell and Eugene N. Anderson. Their work constitutes the first annotated transla-
tion of the Yinshan zhengyao in a western language. In terms of methodology A 
Soup for the Qan adheres to the “New History” approach, as first initiated by the 
French Annales School. This implies the view that, in studying societies and 
civilizations, not just the course of political events but also topics of every day 
life should be taken into account. That this is a fruitful approach is exemplified 
by A Soup for the Qan. One cannot but agree with the authors that: 
 
…food and foodways are sensitive barometers of material 
and social conditions. They reveal change in progress and 
cultural interactions which may be studied through archae-
ology, art, linguistics, and the philological examination of 
texts. Textual evidence is of particular usefulness for those 
cultures with long written traditions since it permits detailed 
study of food, food production, and foodways over the long 
term. Cultural changes taking place far too slowly or too sub-
tly to draw much notice from contemporaries can be charted 
and explored. Also revealed are periods of sharp departure 
from the past, in which the shock of the new is obvious. This 
                                                 
1
 Such as in Berthold Laufer’s Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of 
Civilization in Ancient Iran, Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1919 (reprinted 
by Taibei: Ch’eng wen Publishing Company, 1973), pp. 236, 252 et alibi.  
153 Reviews 
is the case in the Yinshan zhengyao, above all on account of 
its association with the Mongols (p. 6). 
  
The Yinshan zhengyao is a rare case of a cookbook (shipu 食 譜 or shidan 食 單) 
that has survived the vagaries of time.2 In Chinese food history the culinary as-
pect has always been closely connected with medical and nutritional considera-
tions, and the Yinshan zhengyao is a splendid example of this combination.3 
Thus, the work has both a strong therapeutic tendency and provides an insight 
into a store of culinary curiosities, dainties and delicacies that were enjoyed by 
the emperor and his household.  
The way in which Buell and Anderson have succeeded in bringing the dieti-
cian’s work back to life is truly meritorious. One is not immediately plunged into 
the Yinshan zhengyao, because the classic first requires the painting of a solid 
background. After a brief introduction into the text and the fragmentary docu-
mentation on its author, Buell and Anderson devote themselves to a description 
of the broad historical and cultural context from which the Yinshan zhengyao 
emerged. Before allowing the reader to get a taste of Mongolian dishes, the au-
thors highlight the various geographical, political and cultural dimensions 
blended so vividly in Hu Sihui’s masterpiece. First the historical setting is me-
ticulously laid out starting with the main actors involved: the Mongols, as con-
querors and founders of a great but ephemeral world empire, which soon after its 
heyday fell apart into rival khanates. Yet, Buell and Anderson stress the impor-
tance of maintaining a nuanced view of the Mongols, as not just slaughtering 
barbarians, but also intermediaries in cultural exchange (p. 19). Their conquests 
led to a blending on a different, more constructive level, of many facets of the 
cultural sphere, including culinary tastes. The Yinshan zhengyao, which emerged 
in a time when the united Mongol order was still intact and at its height, is one of 
the most significant and outstanding examples of this multicultural amalgam. 
Buell and Anderson take us on a ride back into history, introducing the Mongo-
lian way of life, social structure and, naturally, foods. Notwithstanding the un-
doubtedly Mongolian recipes, the Yinshan zhengyao is also strongly rooted in 
Chinese culture, reflecting its medical traditions and values. The authors make us 
aware that the foodways of both cultural areas during the Tang period differed 
much less than they were to do one thousand years later. In this way it can be 
understood how the foods of China’s northwest remained under much greater 
external influence from non-Chinese than those of the southeast. The third cul-
tural component of the Yinshan zhengyao is formed by the Muslim world with its 
                                                 
2
 Cf. Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual, Cambridge (Mass.), and 
London: Harvard University Press (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 52), 
2000, p. 649. 
3
 For an introduction cf. e.g. Huang Hsing-tsung, Science and Civilisation in China, 
Vol. 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part V, Fermentations and Food Science, 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 14-16. 
154 EASTM 26 (2007) 
urbanized societies, variegated populations, zealous religion and distinctive culi-
nary arts partly reflecting age-old pre-islamic traditions. This differentiation 
between these three cultural spheres is maintained and further elaborated in chap-
ter 2, where the focus is moved closer to the Yinshan zhengyao itself. This chap-
ter provides insights into the intricate ethnographic situation of China under the 
Mongols to which the various degrees of input from the culinary and medical 
traditions of the various cultures are connected. The reader is introduced in 
greater detail to those food materials and products that were (and on many occa-
sions still are) typical among the Mongols. Subsequently, the same is done with 
respect to what accounts for the “Turko-Islamic influences”. Apart from a discus-
sion of representative foods, materia medica and dietica as well as relevant reci-
pes, the authors deal with the influences of Islam in food culture as well as what 
we need to know in this respect about Arabic medicine. Finally, the attention is 
drawn to what Buell and Anderson call the Chinese framework. Here we get a 
survey of Chinese medical systems, culinary traditions and the social context of 
the foodways as expressed in the Yinshan zhengyao. The tracing of the original 
version of Chinese names of foodstuffs and spices by phonetic interpretation 
constitutes an impressive piece of linguistic work.  
Part B of the book contains the translation of the Yinshan zhengyao, which is 
precise yet elegant, and provided with lucid footnotes. Hu Sihui’s work consists 
of three parts. The first covers avoidances, delicacies and specialities, the second 
common foodstuffs and beverages and prescriptions for various diseases, while in 
the third part the nutritional and medicinal properties of foods are described. In 
essence the recipes listed in the Yinshan zhengyao are profoundly Mongolian and 
originate from the cauldrons of the steppe nomads. In spite of the gap of nearly 
seven centuries, these rich recipes are mouth-watering. Some, such as “carp 
soup” (p. 294) or “Chinese yam noodles” (p. 297), seem to appeal as much to 
modern tastes as they must have pleased the emperor and his entourage. Others, 
such as “deer head soup” (p. 280) or “boiled sheep’s hooves” (p. 311), appear 
less familiar or even strange. Yet the medical and nutritional benefits are always 
of prime concern for the author. This part of the book, moreover, contains a fac-
simile reproduction of the original text mainly based on the 1456 Ming edition 
and surviving fragments from the Yuan period, including woodcut illustrations 
depicting materia dietica and material medica.  
Part C, written by Charles Perry, consists of useful tables listing all foods and 
spices mentioned in the Yinshan zhengyao and showing the frequency of occur-
rence in the text. The second appendix is devoted to the grain foods of the early 
Turks. It represents an exhaustive achievement in philology, tracing and charting 
the origin of words in many Turkic and other languages and cultures of the re-
gions between Eastern Europe and the Altai Mountains. This analysis will be of 
great interest to experts in Turkic linguistics and anthropological studies.  
In their work Buell and Anderson draw on a substantial corpus of secondary 
literature in numerous languages relating to a wide variety of cultures, including 
cuisines of many Turko-Islamic peoples living in the Central Asian republics of 
155 Reviews 
the former Soviet Union. Moreover, A Soup for the Qan is a fine product of the 
incorporation of various disciplines and methods in scientific research. This is 
exemplified by a most particular and attractive aspect of the book, namely, that 
the authors have attempted to bring the past back to life by reviving and testing 
the blending of aromas and tastes of a substantial part of the recipes. Frequently 
the reader gets recommendations regarding ingredients and ways of preparation. 
This constitutes a unique, yet natural and helpful method. Indeed, the best way of 
getting access to this mixture of Chinese, Mongol and Turkic foodways is by 
putting the stove to work. 
In sum, because of the specific nature of the Yinshan zhengyao and the way 
Buell and Anderson deal with it, A Soup for the Qan will appeal to scholars from 
many areas of research. Moreover, although this is unquestionably a specialist 
publication, the authors have created a work that remains accessible for non-
expert readership. Their style is pleasantly descriptive and the book is well pro-
vided, though not overloaded, with bibliographical details. After reading A soup 
for the Qan one is left with a feeling of “well-done”, and one becomes aware of 
the highly contributory value of this work to modern scholarship in the field of 
linguistics, anthropology or history.  
 
 
 
 


Paul D. Buell and Eugene N. Anderson; with an appendix by Charles Perry, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as seen in Hu Szu-huis Yin-shan cheng-yao

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Latin Words, Vernacular Worlds: Language, Nature, and the 'Indigenous' in Early Modern Europe

Global or Local? Exploring Connections between Chinese and European Geographical Knowledge During the Early Modern Period

Science, Myth and Eastern Souls: J. S. C. Schweigger and the Society for the Spread of Natural Knowledge and Higher Truth

Pierre Le Roux, Alexandre Yersin, un passe-muraille (1863-1943). Vainqueur de la peste et de la diphtérie, explorateur des hauts plateaux d'Indochine

Global Science and Comparative History: Jesuits, Science, and Philology in China and Europe, 1550-1850

Christine Moll-Murata, Song Jianze and Hans Ulrich Vogel (eds.), Chinese Handicraft Regulations of the Qing Dynasty

Old Scripts, New Actors: European Encounters with Chinese Writing, 1500-1700

Contents

Cover

Paul D. Buell and Eugene N. Anderson; with an appendix by Charles Perry, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as seen in Hu Szu-huis Yin-shan cheng-yao

370

608