Reassessing Michel Boym’s Transmission of Traditional Chinese Medicine to Europe: New Evidence from the Jagiellonian Library

The contribution of the Dutch Jesuit Michel Boym (1612–1659) to the transmission of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to Europe has long attracted scholarly attention. However, owing to the limited availability of primary sources, many aspects of his medical activities and the textual foundations of his knowledge have remained insufficiently understood. Drawing on Boym’s Chinese medical manuscripts preserved in the Jagiellonian Library in Poland, this study presents a systematic examination of these original materials and reassesses the textual sources and transmission of his medical knowledge. Through codicological investigation and textual comparison, the study identifies several editions of Ben Cao Gang Mu (《本草纲目》 The Grand Compendium of Materia Medica ) consulted by Boym, including the Jiangxi edition, the Daguan Ben Cao Gang Mu Complete Work, and the Jinling edition, thereby providing new evidence for the textual sources of his knowledge of Chinese materia medica. It further analyzes the Single Ingredient Medicines manuscript through collation with its translation and an investigation of its textual origins, revealing Boym’s selection, translation, and reconstruction of knowledge concerning individual medicinal substances for a European readership. In addition, a comparative study of Boym’s manuscript of Wang Shuhe’s Verse of Pulses with Attached Formulas and the 1682 Specimen Medicinæ Sinicæ clarifies the textual relationship between his original Chinese medical manuscripts and his published European medical work. These newly examined manuscripts not only deepen our understanding of Boym’s study and transmission of Chinese medicine but also provide new documentary evidence for reassessing the textual foundations, transmission pathways, and cross-cultural reconstruction of TCM in early modern Europe.