Read an Excerpt
Rhubarb
The Wondrous Drug
By Clifford M. Foust PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1992 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-08747-4
CHAPTER 1
The Roots of Rhubarb
The Lord hath created Medicines out of the Earth and he that is wise will not abhor them.
—Ecclesiastes 38:4
There is no reference to rhubarb in the Bible. Although 120 plants are mentioned, including aloe, rue, and madder, along with the old standbys of frankincense and myrhh, rhubarb is not to be found either as a medicine or a foodstuff.
The Greek and Roman worlds, however, knew of rhubarb and found many medicinal uses for it. Dioscorides of Anazarba, the Greek who flourished between 60 and 78 A.D. but whose influence extended down nearly to our day—"undoubtedly the greatest pharmacologist of all antiquity," according to Singer—prescribed rhubarb mainly as a stomachic and antiflatulent, but believed it useful for a variety of afflictions that were by no means limited to the digestive system, including poisonous animal bites. He clearly knew the drug well, at least in its dried market form, describing it in terms that could have been used centuries later: outwardly black like the large docks and red within, saffron colored when chewed. Most striking, he found its chief virtue to be its astringent quality, identifying one of the features which made it much later such a popular cathartic, its binding action following catharsis.
Confirmation of Dioscorides in the writings of contemporary or later authors is not particularly straightforward. Pliny refers to a rhacoma, which is arguably rhubarb, as astringent, of reddish color inclining to saffron if infused, sharp when tasted, and so on. Like Dioscorides, Pliny observed that it was imported from beyond the kingdom of the Pontus, but he extended Dioscorides's uses: it was useful for colds and attending symptoms; for liver, kidney, or spleen ailments; and for cramps and convulsions. It also healed wounds and helped bruises. Ifhis rhacoma was indeed rhubarb, Pliny made it a virtual panacea. Still, we cannot be certain.
Rhubarb was, however, one ingredient among thirty-nine different herbs, plus castoreum and honey, in mithridatium, an antidote to poisons attributed to Mithridates, king of Pontus in the first century B.C. This antidote remained credible throughout the Middle Ages. The laxative action of rhubarb certainly could not have damaged a poisoned constitution and might well have helped eliminate some toxic substances.
From where did this rhubarb come to the ancient Mediterranean world? Dioscorides indicated it was imported from beyond the Bosphorus, an opinion that originated or contributed to one of the most durable explanations of the source of the ancient drug. Rha, the name by which Dioscorides knew his rhubarb, was believed to be an early name for the river Volga. Because the river was located beyond the Pontus, the Black Sea, Rha ponticum (rhapontic) became a name for a common rhubarb. By similar token, another of the most common names for rhubarb, Rha barbarum, the root of the word rhubarb in nearly all modern European languages, suggested an origin of the drug beyond the civilized Mediterranean region. Most subsequent students of ancient trade routes have taken these skimpy etymological suggestions as the first piece of evidence showing that Dioscoridian rhubarb arrived in Greece and Rome by way of the Black Sea and the northern Caspian.
If rhubarb came from someplace east, how far east? Southern Russia, Iran, India, China? From Marco Polo on, the most popular assumption favored China, its western hinterlands, Tibet, or Tartary, first because, it was assumed, the species grown there produced the finest medicinal rhubarb, in contrast to those of the southeast European or trans-Volga regions. Second, there was the very existence of that fabled Silk Route, the long overland caravan carriage from western China to Samarkand, Yarkand, and other Central Asian depots, and from there westward by one of three major routes: north of the Caspian to the Black Sea, through Mesopotamia to the Levant, or south through Kabul to India. That one or the other of these routes brought some of the world's most exotic and expensive commodities to Greece and Rome was evidence enough that the best rhubarb must have been carried as well. Finally, we know that rhubarb, probably from as distant as the Chinese dominions, has been carried to Europe since the tenth or twelfth century. Why not earlier?
There is no direct evidence that Chinese rhubarb reached the Mediterranean in the first century A.D. or earlier. As we shall see later, dried rhubarb, even in the best of circumstances, was and is a fairly fragile commodity, vulnerable to pests and deterioration by rot, which at all times reduced its market value and affected its efficacy. The sheer length of the journey militated against carriage from China. The failure of Dioscorides to prescribe rhubarb as a cathartic, when there was certainly no shortage of concern in Greek medicine for regularity, indicates he may not have employed the finest Oriental roots. Rather, he may have used those we now know as rhapontic, which at the time probably came from the southern Ural or trans-Volga regions. Or he may have used the Iranian sort (Rheum ribes), as suggested by W. T. Stearn. We cannot be certain.
China knew and employed rhubarb from earliest times. The legendary emperor, Shen-nung, was said to have written the first herbal, the Shennung Pen-ts'ao-ching, and therefore perhaps wrote the first notice on tahuang, the Great Yellow, as rhubarb has been generally known throughout Chinese history. This herbal, a classic (ching) to the Chinese, although not extant, was probably compiled during the early Han period and copied and amplified in later herbal and botanical works. In the late sixteenth century the compiler Li Shih-chen and his son reproduced the index of the ancient work in their now fundamental herbal, Pen-ts'ao-kangmu, and epitomized the notices on rhubarb in several herbals of the preceding six or seven centuries. Largely concerned only with the medicinal aspects of botanicals, Li Shih-chen's Pen-ts'ao reported that over the years rhubarb has been variously known as Yellow Excellent or Yellow Efficacy (huang liang) and Captain General (chiang-chun), references to its acknowledged medicinal virtue, in addition to ta-huang and other names denoting local species. The finest root came from northwestern China (Shensi and Kansu) and western China (Ssuchuan), where it grew to a height of three to six feet with apparently little tending. From early times it was harvested in the eighth month or so of growth, then carefully dried by artificial means or by the sun according to local tradition, a common manner being to slice the thick roots, pierce them with holes, and string them together. The stalks were sometimes eaten raw, and the root was regarded as poison by some observers; the leaves were not used, suggesting a knowledge of their toxicity. The drug was used more as a general eliminant, a depurative, and a stomachic tonic than as an efficient purgative, although it was also recommended for women's diseases and for malarial and childhood fevers.
How and when, then, did this superior Chinese rhubarb reach Europe? With reasonable certainty, we can presume that rhubarb, among many other valuable Chinese goods, reached Mediterranean Europe by the eighth or ninth century. By then Chinese junks ventured regularly into southeastern and southern Asia, but more important, Arab dhows coursed easily across the Indian Ocean to the Malabar Coast and points east, carrying back to the Mediterranean silks, porcelains, sugar, iron, rice, camphor, and spices. Equally important, Persian and Arab pharmacologists and physicians from the tenth century on wrote liberally about rhubarb, beginning with Abu Mansur about 970. In this earliest of Persian pharmacological works, he identified two general kinds of rhubarb: Chinese and Khorasan. He was the first Persian writer to specify the former and thought it was the best. In addition, there was probably the species of rhubarb indigenous to Persia, Rheum ribes, which produces a drug far inferior to Chinese rhubarb and others.
The Arab contribution went far beyond merely carrying Chinese rhubarb to the West and of cultivating a major Arab species. This lay in the preservation of many of the critical classical works on medicine and pharmacology that otherwise would have been lost. In addition to Dioscorides, the Arabs drew upon Galen, Theophrastus, Pliny, and others. By the twelfth century, the great Arab impact on Europe had begun not the least part of which was the strong Arabian apothecary tradition. The Arab pharmacopoeia contributed perhaps several hundred new plants. The mild laxatives and cathartics, it seems, were the most distinctive: senna, cassia, manna, and especially rhubarb. The rhubarb that Ibn Baithar and other well-informed Arab writers spoke of was probably not the rhapontic known by Dioscorides and his copiers (Alexander of Tralles of the late sixth century, Paulus Aegineta of the early seventh century, and Rufinus of the thirteenth century, among others), but was a root imported from the East, from China in all likelihood. Through influential practicing physicians such as Moses Maimonides of Cordova, who served Saladin and prescribed a rhubarb and tamarind pill, interest in rhubarb as a cathartic quickened. Ibn Baithar listed four varieties of rhubarb, the first of which was probably rhapontic. Dioscorides, Galen, and Paulus, had written about it earlier, but he claimed they did not know about the genuine purgative rhubarb "discovered" not long before. Of the several kinds of rhubarb, Baithar praised the one traded through Turkish territory, which may well have originally come from China, as having the best purgative qualities. He lists, as have physicians and pharmacopoeias even in the twentieth century, a large number of disparate illnesses for which rhubarb purge was useful: mental diseases, dropsy, jaundice, and others, when associated with obstructions; and chronic diarrhea, uterine fluxes, and dyspepsia. Other Arab physicians also contributed precise accounts. Mesuë (Yuhanna ibn-Masawayh) of the turn of the ninth century and Averrhoës (Ibn-Rushd) of the twelfth, both of whom were highly influential and cited as authorities until the nineteenth century, described rhabarbarum for its purgative virtue. Mesuë mentioned three species—indianum, barbarum, and turcicum—all distinct from rhapontic, which he perhaps did not know. Like his Arab contemporaries but with "some originality," as Francis Adams put it in the mid-nineteenth century, he argued that an effective purgative medicine stimulated vital heat in the body, thereby increasing the heat's attractive powers to die offending humor, as iron is attracted to a magnet; the medicine thus simply augments Nature, which ultimately cures the disease.
Discovery
The rediscovery and renewal of interest in the ancient medical and botanical classics, and the fresh contributions of Arab medicine and science, heightened considerably the passion harbored in adventuresome European breasts to search out the fabled lands to the east and to learn of their reputed botanical and medical wonders. In 1254 the Belgian friar William of Rubruck, visiting Karakorum, the court of the Mongol chieftain Mangu and now a ruin in central Mongolia, witnessed the illness of a lady of the court. A Nestorian or an Armenian monk was called to attend her, and promised to offer up his own head if the lady failed to improve. The monk regretted his rash promise, but called upon Rubruck and others to keep an all-night vigil. Alixing a potion of rhubarb, chopped fine and infused in water, he convinced Rubruck that the medicine was a holy mixture from Jerusalem, and persuaded the patient and her court that the movement that began to stir in her bowels was a miraculous outcome. Rubruck's account, written not long after his return, could only have deepened the European resolve, already quickened by Arab writings and classical texts enjoying renewed interest, to search out and obtain wondrous botanical remedies such as rhubarb.
It was Marco Polo who put the capping touch on these earliest of botanical explorations from Europe: in 1295 he found, and later tersely recorded, an abundance of rhubarb in a vague location in Tangutia and in Suchou, Kiangsu province. This record became a point of contention, especially in the nineteenth century, regarding the accuracy of his geographic locations. Even so, Polo's information was significant in that at long last someone purportedly observed this oriental exotic in situ, strengthening thereby Europe's conviction that China was the source of the genuine rhubarb and, furthermore, it was accessible.
Polo's account was made more influential by that sometime secretary of the Venetian government, Giovanni Battista Ramusio. He wrote a preface to Polo's account in the first half of the sixteenth century, adding the report of a Persian of Gilan, one Chaggi Memet, a merchant active in Venice, who had brought to Venice a large store of rhubarb from China. About 1550, Memet described to Ramusio a plant from the same Chinese or Tangutian locations as Polo's, with hirsute leaves of two spans in length (eighteen inches or so), and a green stalk or trunk of only four fingers or perhaps a span in height. The root was black on the outside, "some as bigge as a mans thigh or legge," and when harvested revealed a yellow interior with "many veynes of faire red." The root juices readily stained the skin with a yellow dye. When dug, usually in the winter when the plants are dormant, the roots were cut and laid to dry in the sun with many turnings "that the juyce should be incorporated therein, lest it lose the goodnesse." After four or five days, the pieces were hung in the wind, out of the sun, to complete the drying process in two months. Memet's sixteenth-century description of both the plant and its curing, much of it new to Europe, remained essentially unrevised until well into the nineteenth century.
It seems certain that those who reached beyond Europe in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had rhubarb as consciously in mind as other highly valuable medicinal herbs, and spices such as pepper, cloves, and cinnamon. In comparison with his discovery of tobacco and its subsequent habitual use in Europe and the New World, it is easy enough to overlook Christopher Columbus's single reference to his "discovery" of rhubarb (and cinnamon as well) in the New World, about which he wrote in his letter of February 1493 to Luis de Sant' Angel. It is less easy to ignore the other European outreachings for rhubarb, although it was not until a half century or so after Columbus that the tempo of mixed commercial quest and botanical inquiry picked up.
Some two hundred or so people gathered in London in the spring of 1553. They were prepared to buy 240 shares at twenty-five pounds each, a substantial sum, in order to form a company that would seek out and exploit a northeast passage to China, thereby hoping to outflank the imposing Portuguese. They founded the Russia or Muscovy Company. Its very early voyages, led by Willoughby and Chancellor, did not get beyond Moscow and ended in disaster. In 1558 Anthony Jenkinson struggled on to Bokhara and became the first European merchant to visit there in several centuries. He confirmed what he already knew, that caravans regularly traveled there from China, a nine-month journey, laden with satins, damasks, musk, and rhubarb, although no caravan had arrived in several years because of heavy warfare in the region. Jenkinson's arduous trek had not been lightly undertaken. Like Chancellor before him, he had tried his hand in the Levant trade, and after several years of trading in the Mediterranean, he secured an interview in 1553 with the Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, who granted him the privilege of conducting free trade through Turkish lands. He could now try to reach Persia and even China, flanking the Mediterranean competition of the French and Italians. For the next thirty years or so, English investors and adventurers largely neglected the Levant. After Jenkinson, three other expeditions crossed Russia into Persia, carrying English kerseys and returning with silks and spices. The last of them found the trading possibilities in Persia poor, and, on its return journey, Tsar Ivan IV seized some of its goods. It was rhubarb, among other things, that drew the English across Russia at great expense and with immense difficulty, but they failed to secure appreciable amounts of the root, and the scene shifted.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rhubarb by Clifford M. Foust. Copyright © 1992 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
