Glossary

Tai Du 胎毒 comes from an extension of the theory that strong emotions are harmful to the body. It states that the passionate emotions aroused during intercourse when a child is conceived result in Toxic Heat being implanted into the foetus and remaining with the child until they are vented in the form of various childhood skin diseases such as measles, chickenpox and especially smallpox (天花 Tianhua, lit. Heavenly Flowers). This explained why almost all children have to go through this period in their lives. This led to the development of variolation (種豆, Zhongdou, lit. planting beans) encouraging deliberate dispersal of the Foetal Toxin by innoculating children with the scabs or pustule matter from smallpox sufferers, most commonly by sprinkling cotton wool with dried scabs and inserting them up the nose which would then be plugged for 12-24 hours. This route was chosen because the Lungs were considered the best route to get external materials into the five Zang Organs (Leung, 1996). It was better to trigger this release through a sympathetic connection to the toxic matter from another sufferer while healthy than to wait for the natural course whereby the Foetal Toxins would release only when the body was already weakened to a point of being unable to contain them any more. Even so, it came with risks as a percentage would develop full-blown smallpox and die. Despite the errors in theory, this would become the earliest example of vaccination/innoculation which may have been what inspired Edward Jenner's research into cowpox (Chang, 2013).

• Chang, C.F. (2010). Dispersing the Foetal Toxin of the Body: Conceptions of Smallpox Aetiology in Pre-modern China, in Contagion: Perspectives from Pre-Modern Societies, edited by Conrad and Wujastyk.
• Chang, C.F. (2013). Variolation, in Chinese Medicine and Healing, edited by Heinrichs and Barnes.
• Hanson, M. (). Late Imperial Epidemiology, Part 2: New material and conceptual methods, 1980s to 2010s. Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203740262-20
• Hwang, K. (2024). Development of variolation and its introduction to Joseon-era Korea. Journal of Trauma and Injury, 37(4):247-249. https://doi.org/10.20408/jti.2022.0044
• Leung, A.K.C. (1996). "Variolation" and vaccination in late imperial China, ca 1570-1911, in Vaccinia, Vaccination and Vaccinology: Jenner, Pasteur and their Successors. Elsevier, Paris.