Boiling it Down Chinese Tea in the First Dutch Medical Journal, 1680-1688

This article, by analysing the first medical journal published in the Dutch Republic and its discussion of tea, will consider the role of print and the importance of intermedia adaptation and editorial intervention in the early modern circulation of Chinese medical knowledge in Europe. To that end, I will analyse Steven Blankaart’s Collectanea medico-physica (1680-1688) and address three key questions in the historiographical debate on early modern science and the dissemination of knowledge from Asia in Europe. The present study assesses, firstly, how this early medical journal illuminates the role of the editor in shaping early modern European discourses on Chinese medicine; secondly, how the materiality of this printed work influenced its possible reading; and thirdly, how the paratext affected the presentation of the materia medica it discussed.