A catalogue of Chinese mineral drugs : current or obsolete, curious or bizarre, therapeutic or toxic ; together with : demystifying Cleyer's Chinese drug list 1682 / Colin B. Lessell.

"This is an essential book for those interested in, or researching, the history of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The first part considers over 180 Chinese mineral drugs, many now obsolete, from an historical perspective, much of the material having been extracted & edited from the works of western authors from the 17th to the early 20th centuries. The second part presents the reader with a unique insight into what we may assume was an everyday Chinese medicinal armamentarium of the 17th C. It is a full dycryption of the names of almost 300 drugs used by the Chinese physician, as listed in a romanized southern Chinese dialect by Andreas Cleyer (physician, pharmacist, botanist and trader) in his rare & seminal work of 1682, Specimen Medicinae Sinicae. This also includes orginal translations of the latin therapeutic notes contained in his entries concerning mineral drugs, which reveal what are probably the first western descriptions of the action of drugs on the meridians of acupuncture & Qi." --Jacket.