The Tang Dynasty and the Xinxiu Bencao By Alex Pelaez
During the chaos that occurred right after the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 , The Chinese states were at constant war with each other. It took 369 years of war for these warring states and dynasties to be united by the Wen-ti and Sui dynasty. Extremely strict and ruthless leadership and laws caused China to flourish, however the overworking of the peasants ordered by the emperors as well as many military losses caused the people to lose faith in the dynasty, causing it to collapse. The Tang Dynasty rose from the ashes of the previous dynasties and ruled successfully from 618 to 906 however it was interrupted briefly by the only Chinese empress regent, Empress Wu, who claimed the throne for the second Zhou dynasty, which only lasted from 690-705. After that, the Tang Dynasty continued it's successful reign. They shrunk the state and empire's government as well as rewrote many harsh laws which made the whole empire prosper, creating a golden age for China.
There are many characteristics that describes a golden age. Some are: Innovation as in the creation of new ideas and new technologies, prosperity, progress, cultural production, and a high level of art and literature. Golden ages tend to follow periods of disorder and chaos. A golden age can be localized to an area of life or to a group of people because it is a matter of perspective. What's interesting is some other characteristics that describes a golden age is expansion of land, either by war or treaties, and Peace. What is a very important characteristic of a golden age is that whatever empire or kingdom that has the golden age must be stable.
What made the Tang Dynasty a golden age was that it matches many of the characteristics. Under the Tang Dynasty, the recording of the history of the dynasties were revolutionized by Tang scholars. Literature and art were flourishing. Poetry became so highly valued and admired that poetry competitions were not uncommon at festivals, feasts, and banquets. The main enemy of the Tang Dynasty were the Turks, however they were defeated in 657, making it easier for the Tang Dynasty to expand this territory. There was a surplus of food which allowed it to be stored in times of famine or natural disasters. The expansion of borders, the flourishing of art and literature, and a long stable governmeant are all characteristics of a successful golden age.
One Influential item made during the golden age was the Xinxiu bacao. The Xinxiu bacao was an encyclopedia of medicine and instructions on how to use it. It gave the reader lists of helpful plants and brews as well as what to do when someone is injured. It was the first pharmacopoeia ever published by the Chinese. The Chinese government made sure to include many if not all of the medical techniques ever discovered. They called out to scholars everywhere to help assemble it all together and made it easy to read through. This project was started in 657 and was finally completed in 659. After the completion of the texts, the government had it distributed across the entire empire and ordered it to be the basis for any medical teaching and application. This changes the life of everyone immensely. While owning this piece of literature would not instantly make you a doctor, people could help out other people when they are injured. They could just open and read the Xinxiu and be able to aid the injured. Because other was distributed across the empire, countless lives were saved. It is not possible to count how many, since it wasn't written down, but because of the Xinxiu Bacao, many people were living who would thought to be injured beyond help. Since the people found it helpful, the Tang Dynasty kept it in circulation until its downfall and even then the next dynasty decided to use it, so it lasted for more than 500 years. Even today some of its methods is still used. The Xinxiu Bencao helped spread medical knowledge which also helped sparked even more interest which helped with the invention of more effective medicine and practices. Few books were as popular or as well put together as the XinXiu Bencao at that time. This helped in times of natural disasters or emergencies because more people could be saved from injuries.
The Xinxiu Bencao helps us understand the people and the society of ancient China immensely. It tells us that the government cared immensely about the people in order to create such an incrediblly useful book. It also shows that the empire had a high literacy rate if the government wanted to distribute the books everywhere. The Xinxiu Bencao also shows that China has a good amount of scholars and doctors since the book involved many different branches of medicine. China also must have developed a machine or invention that distributes literature so fast since it spread throughout the entire country rather quickly, so if they did that for one piece of literature, why not for other scriptures as well? The Xinxiu Bencao offers us a unique view of the Tang Dynasty and of China itself in the past, since this book was the first of its kind. By reading it, we can see the "modern" medical practices at that time so we could tell how far they were developing medicine as well as how much they knew about human anatomy.