Friedrich Hirth (1845-1925), custom officer in Xiamen and later a renowned sinologist, introduced Danggui, often rendered as Chinese Angelica, to Germany: “The root is hardly missing in Chinese recipes for menstrual regulation, whereas it is hardly used for other cases of illness”. Hirth claimed to have based his knowledge on Tao Hongjin’s (456-536) Annotations to the Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica. Hirth may have overlooked the growing knowledge and changing conceptions of Danggui as well as its multiple medicinal functions throughout Chinese history. However, his information aroused interest among German pharmaceutical company. Articles that discussed the efficaciousness of Eumenol, a menstrual regulator extracted from Danggui, began to appear in medical journals since 1899. The business attracted attention from China, and in 1930s Shanghai more than one company was advertising similar products.

       This project will investigate the process in which a Chinese materia medica was exported and transformed in Europe. It will also explore its return to China decades later, marketed as a modern formula in a bio-medical context but relied heavily on rhetorical appeals of the gendered body view in traditional Chinese medicine. It is hoped that the research will serve as a point of entry for further discussion on the international communication of women’s medicine in specific and the circulation of materia medica in general.