Lùróng zhī Yánjiū 鹿茸之研究 / Rokujō no Kenkyū
Research on Deer-Velvet Antler by 峰下鐵雄 (Mineshita Tetsuo 峰下鐵雄, fl. 1920s–30s, 昭和)
About the work
The Lùróng zhī yánjiū is a Japanese early-Shōwa pharmacological monograph devoted to a single substance: lùróng 鹿茸, the velvet of immature deer antler. The work belongs to the 1920s–30s wave of Japanese colonial-pharmacological laboratory studies that took high-value Chinese drugs as objects of chemical and biological investigation. The opening paragraph captures the rationale: “Lùróng in the ancient Chinese pharmacopoeia is paired with rénshēn as the twin jewels of high-value materia medica; even today Chinese drug-store signs write ‘shēnróng’ as a marker of the rare goods on offer. Its antiquity of use and its high price together suggest that the substance must in fact have specific pharmacological action — yet little research has been done on the active principles, the pharmacological effects, or the chemistry. I have therefore set out to investigate the substance comprehensively, to clarify what it is, what it does, and what it contains.”
The work in one volume systematically covers: (1) source-species (the different Cervus species from which Chinese-traded lùróng is harvested — Cervus nippon, Cervus elaphus xanthopygus (Manchurian wapiti), the various dwarf deer of southern China), (2) processing and grading (the commercial pre-and post-processing distinctions), (3) chemical composition (proteins, lipids, the calcium and trace-element profile, the pantocrine-like compounds that Russian-school pharmacology was simultaneously investigating in Cervus-velvet), and (4) experimental pharmacology (Mineshita’s own animal-experimentation results on blood-renewal, anti-fatigue, and reproductive-system action). The work is the principal Japanese-language pharmacological monograph on antler velvet of its period.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The frontmatter file is present and includes Mineshita’s introductory chapter (緒言).
Abstract
Mineshita Tetsuo (峰下鐵雄, fl. 1920s–30s, no confident CBDB id), Japanese pharmacologist. See his person note (sparse biographical detail).
The work’s significance is twofold. As a single-substance pharmacological monograph, it is one of the most thorough early-20th-century investigations of lùróng; subsequent Chinese, Japanese, and Russian pantocrine / cervus-velvet research has built on the foundation Mineshita laid. As a document of Japanese colonial pharmacology, it belongs to the larger Manchurian / North-China pharmacological research apparatus of the 1920s–40s; the Manchurian wapiti was the principal trade source for Chinese lùróng and was therefore a strategic Japanese-colonial interest. The work is in the same series of laboratory-pharmacological investigations as Sugimoto Shigetoshi’s 杉本重利 Niúhuáng study (KR3ec082) and Nakao Manzō’s 中尾萬三 chemical-experimentation series (KR3ec083).
Translations and research
- Liu, Michael Shiyung. 2009. Prescribing Colonization. AAS.
- No modern critical edition; no Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 鹿茸之研究 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB