FARMÁCIAS E ERVANÁRIOS TRADICIONAIS CHINESES EM MACAU澳門的藥店與中國傳統草藥經營者
The article analyzes the organization and circulation of traditional Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge in Macao, with a specific focus on traditional pharmacies and herbal shops, distinguishing their business logics, therapeutic functions, and modes of mediation between masters and clients. The autho...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
April 2008
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40026/3661 |
| Summary: | The article analyzes the organization and circulation of traditional Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge in Macao, with a specific focus on traditional pharmacies and herbal shops, distinguishing their business logics, therapeutic functions, and modes of mediation between masters and clients. The author argues that the contemporary "independence" between pharmacy, herbal shop, and professional specialization resulted from a slow and historically situated process, in which the owner frequently accumulated the roles of healer, apothecary, and supplier of prescriptions ("mestres-chinas"). Methodologically, the text articulates historical reading and ethnographic analysis based on the description of observable commercial and therapeutic practices (shop typologies, ingredient circuits, and preparation methods), contextualizing the evolution of the market since the absence, until the mid-nineteenth century, of pharmacies registered as such.
The article concludes that the structural difference between herbal shops and pharmacies resided above all in the type of raw material and the degree of complexity of prescriptions: in herbal shops, fresh regional plants predominated and, only residually, minerals and ground substances; in pharmacies, by contrast, more elaborate prescriptions were associated with imported and pre-prepared ingredients, accessible to a distinct clientele and mediated by "old school" physicians. The article further highlights the social role of herbal shops as providers of popular access to the Macanese pharmacopeia and as spaces of listening and therapeutic guidance. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |