John Jaarsveld (@itchigo)

Famine Relief Herbal: 救荒本草 (Jiuhuang Bencao) The Ming Dynasty Guide to 414 Edible Wild Plants translated by Mark Shryock. This edition is the first complete English rendering of all 414 entries into modern, accessible prose. It adds modern safety warnings based on current toxicology. It restores missing entries. It clarifies scientific names that earlier references conflated. It preserves Zhu Su's practical duplicate entry structure so readers can find plants by regional names. It is designed as a usable field reference for modern foragers, homesteaders, and students of ethnobotany. It is beautiful that a prince would care enough to write something like this for his people. Can you imagine any of our political leaders in any country taking the time to create this. Prince Zhu Su wrote this because he had gone through famine, truly understood its horrors and wanted to help others. Even the way he wrote with each plant, "to relieve hunger" speaks volumes. The title itself tells the story. Jiuhuang bencao means Famine Relief Herbal, not General Medical Herbal. Zhu Su did not adapt an existing medical text for emergency use. He built the book from the ground up around one question: when the grain stores are empty, what can a person eat to stay alive? Each entry follows a standard format that centers on survival. Zhu Su states where the plant grows, what it looks like, what it tastes like, and then gives the preparation method specifically for famine conditions. The 1525 preface to a later edition explains the structure: the writer states where the plant grows, gives its synonyms, notes its thermal properties, and then details whatever method of seasoning is necessary. The preface concludes: "If in time of famine people collect emergency plants in accordance with the resources of the local flora, there will be no difficulty and many lives will be saved." The book was classified in later official collections under disaster relief, not general medicine. Xu Guangqi placed it in the Huangzheng or Famine Administration section of his Nongzheng quanshu in the 1630s. Joseph Needham called the work the origin of the Chinese Esculentist Movement, a term he coined for the scholarly study of wild edible plants for emergency survival. Mark A Shryock's original post: https://substack.com/@markashryock/p-212303004 Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967705038?crid=2PQJXNK8GSS66