Death Medicine (or Avoiding Embarrassment)
Prior to the emergence of the Enlightenment in the 17th-century, alchemy, the notional art of transformation, was a popular pastime or profession, although sometimes a dangerous one for its practitioners. But it also served through the millennia as an onramp to the study of chemistry and medicine.[i]
As would-be wizards East and West turned to alchemy from at least as early as the first millennium B.C., their efforts developed principally along two themes: Transforming base metals into gold and finding the key to eternal worldly life.
Cultures approached the subjects with varied twists. In Europe, especially, alchemists more often sought to turn base metals into gold, a practice that Indian alchemists also cherished but with nearly equal attention to eternal life.
While the practice of making imitation gold caught the early eyes of Chinese alchemists (煉金術家), it became so pervasive as fraud that in 144 B.C. of Han Dynasty Emperor Jing Di (景帝) forbade the practice on pain of death, except by imperial license.[ii]
But the more lasting practice of Chinese alchemists, certainly more so than the efforts of their western counterparts, was to seek an elixir for eternal life. Of course, testing of the various concoctions often led to the deaths of slaves and prisoners used as test subjects, and even heads of state.
An anecdote in Strategies of the Warring States (戰國策), also known by the English title as Intrigues of the Warring States—a fictional account of history from the era between the fall of the Zhou Dynasty and the unification of China in 221 B.C.[iii]—illustrates the sway given to the possibility of immortality elixers.
-----The anecdote:
Someone once offered an immortality medicine to the King Jing. A page[iv] took it and entered to give it to the king.
A middle ranking archer[v] inquired about it asking, “Can this be eaten?”
“It can be!” the page replied.
The archer, taking advantage of the page, snatched the medicine and ate it.
The king became angry and ordered a man to kill the archer.
[However, before the command could be realized], the archer sent a man to explain to the king saying, “Your humble servant asked the page about it, the page said it could be eaten. Your humble servant therefore ate it. So, this humble servant is without crime. The crime is with the page.
“Moreover, the advisor offered a medicine of immortality,” the archer’s messenger continued. “Your humble servant ate it, and if the king kills the humble servant, then this would prove that it is a death medicine. So the king would be killing an innocent servant. It would show someone is cheating the king.”
The king thereupon didn’t kill him.[vi]
-----
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Four centuries later, Ge Hong (葛洪, 283-343 A.D.) wrote One Embracing Original Nature, 抱樸子, the earliest extant treatise on alchemy.[vii]
—David Alan Coia
Original Chinese text:[viii]
有獻不死之藥於荆王者，謁者操以入，中射之士問曰：“可食乎？” 曰: “可！” 因奪而食之。王大怒，人殺中射之士。中射之士使人說王曰：“臣問謁者，謁者曰“可食”，臣故食之。是臣無罪而罪在謁者也。且客獻不死之藥，臣食之，而王殺臣，是死藥也，是客欺王也。王殺無罪之臣, 而明人之欺王.”王乃不殺。
[i] Fairbank, John K. and Reischauer, Edwin O. (1978). China, Traditions and Transformations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 85; Bai Shouyi, Ed. (1982). An Outline History of China. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, p. 246.
[ii] Maxwll-Stuart, P.G. (2008/2012). The Chemical Choir, A History of Alchemy. NY: Continuum, p. 2.
[iii] The third-to-first centuries B.C. ext presented in rough chronological order covers the period from 479-220 B.C.; Hightower, James Robert. (1965). Topics in Chinese Literature, Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, p. 16.
[iv] The 古代汉语学常用字字典（北京：商务印书馆1985）defines “謁” as “告诉” or “陈述” as it is used in the 战国策 with “者” acting as a nominalizer giving an English meaning a “teller” of something. Given the court setting “page” seems appropriate.
[v] On second reference I have simply used “archer” rather than repeat the more cumbersome phrase.
[vi] This translation was originally reviewed with minor edits by Prof. Feng-sheng Hsueh, 薛鳳生, 1931-2015.
[vii] China, Traditions and Transformations, p. 85.
[viii] 馮作民. (1979). 白話戰國策，中冊。台北：星光出版社，pp. 466-467。