中國藥一百種之化學實驗

Zhōngguó yào yībǎizhǒng zhī huàxué shíyàn 中國藥一百種之化學實驗

Chemical Experiments on One Hundred Chinese Drugs by 中尾萬三 (撰)

About the work

The Zhōngguó yào yībǎizhǒng zhī huàxué shíyàn 中國藥一百種之化學實驗 (Japanese Chūgokuyaku hyakushu no kagaku jikken) is the principal Japanese chemical-analytical survey of the Chinese materia medica from the inter-war pharmacology programme of the 1920s–1930s, by 中尾萬三 Nakao Manzō 中尾萬三 (1879–1947), the most distinguished early-Shōwa Japanese pharmacist-historian of Chinese pharmacology. The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3ec083 in the present knowledgebase.

Abstract

The work is a systematic laboratory chemical-extraction study of 100 Chinese drugs with the explicit methodological goal of testing whether the Shénnóng běncǎo jīng’s tripartite shàngpǐn / zhōngpǐn / xiàpǐn 上品 / 中品 / 下品 (upper / middle / lower grade) classification correlates with measurable chemical-pharmacological properties.

The experimental protocol is uniform. For each drug, 200 grams of crude material is Soxhlet-extracted (索克萊氏浸出器 = Soxhlet apparatus) sequentially with diethyl ether, then methyl alcohol (methanol) (木精 = 甲醇), then water. Each extract is concentrated to a residue. For the ether extract, an acid-base partition is performed: the residue is taken up in dilute acid, the acid layer extracted with ether (1st partition); the acid layer is then made weakly alkaline with sodium carbonate and re-extracted with ether (2nd partition); finally made strongly alkaline with sodium hydroxide and re-extracted with ether (3rd partition). The three resulting ether residues are tested with the standard suite of 16 alkaloid spot-tests of the period (Mayer’s reagent, Wagner’s reagent, Dragendorff’s reagent, Bouchardat’s reagent, picric acid, mercuric potassium iodide, etc.).

The body of the work is presented in three tables giving for each drug the spot-test positives at each of the three alkaline-extraction stages, plus the methanol and water-soluble fractions. The data display the chemical-presence-of-alkaloid profile for each substance.

The synthesis section, signed by Yuán Shūfàn 袁淑範 — a Chinese collaborator who appears to be the hxwd series translator-editor of Nakao’s results — gives the interpretation. Of the 100 drugs tested, 27 are not in the Shénnóng běncǎo jīng (listed by name: liújìbǎn 劉寄扳, fóěrcǎo 佛耳草, báibiǎndòu 白扁豆, zǐsū 紫蘇, etc. — a striking documentation of how much of the actual contemporary Chinese pharmacy stock falls outside the canonical materia medica). The remaining 73 drugs are sorted by Běncǎo jīng grade, and the percentage of substances showing positive alkaloid reactions to 8 or more of the 16 spot-tests is tabulated. The published table demonstrates that there is a statistical correlation between Běncǎo jīng grade and chemically-detected alkaloid content: lower-grade substances are more likely to test positive on multiple alkaloid-reagents, consistent with their canonical “yǒudú 有毒” (poisonous) labelling, while upper-grade substances are less alkaloid-rich and the rest of their activity must therefore be in the methanol- and water-soluble fractions (terpenoid glycosides, saponins, polysaccharides — though these were not yet routinely assayable in the 1920s–30s).

Yuán Shūfàn’s interpretive comment is methodologically interesting: he reads the experimental result as a partial vindication of the Shénnóng classification. The canonical tripartite grading, often dismissed as Daoist immortality-arts speculation, in fact tracks an empirically observable chemical-pharmacological property when modernly assayed — though the upper / middle / lower distinction is not “as sharp” (嚴格) as the canon claims, the statistical trend is real.

The work is undated internally but the experimental methodology (Soxhlet, the spot-test alkaloid suite, the systematic 100-substance scope) places it firmly in the inter-war 1920s–1930s Japanese pharmacology programme, and publication is in the Shanghai HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. Chén Cúnrén 陳存仁 — the immediate vector for the hxwd-series text.

Translations and research

No substantial Western-language scholarship of the work specifically located.

• Hardy, Anne. 2003. “Pure Science and Practical Interests: The Origins of the Agricultural Research Council, 1930–1937.” Minerva 41 (1): 1–23 — for comparative inter-war agricultural-pharmaceutical research context.
• Karow, Otto. 1968. Bibliographie zur ostasiatischen Pharmazie und Pharmakologie. Wiesbaden: Steiner — bibliographic context for Nakao’s published work.
• Akimoto Kazuhiko 秋元和彥. Nakao Manzō no honzōgakushi-teki kenkyū — Japanese-language scholarship on Nakao.

Other points of interest

The work is a particularly clean example of the 1930s Japanese strategy of using modern laboratory chemistry to evaluate the inherited Chinese pharmacopoeia — neither dismissing the Chinese canon nor accepting it uncritically, but submitting it to disciplined modern test. Nakao’s methodology of correlating canonical grades with measurable chemical properties anticipates several decades of Chinese-and-Japanese pharmacognosy work, including the post-war Chinese zhōngyào 中藥 chemistry research programme that ultimately produced (via 屠呦呦 Tu Youyou’s 2015 Nobel-laureate isolation of artemisinin from Artemisia annua) the most internationally consequential drug-discovery from the Chinese materia medica.

Links

• Author: 中尾萬三.
• Chinese collaborator-editor: Yuán Shūfàn 袁淑範.
• Companion works in same series: KR3eu073 Hànyào yánjiū gāngyào (Kubota, pharmacognosy survey), KR3eu074 Lùróng zhī yánjiū (Mineshita, single-substance pharmacognosy).
• Parallel listing: KR3ec083.
• Series: HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. 陳存仁.