by Bob Flaws

Over the years it has become a convention in non-Chinese countries to identify Chinese medicinals by a combination of Chinese name in Pinyin romanization followed by Latin pharmacological nomenclature. If we all used the original Chinese characters for the Chinese name, we would not need the Latin. However, many Westerners do not know the Chinese, and, sometimes, even if you do, it's inconvenient or impossible to use. For instance, yesterday I tried to in-put Chinese characters into my blog on Luo Bu Ma and couldn't. My machine turned the Chinese characters into a string of code when I tried to up-load the blog. By using the Pinyin Chinese and the Latin pharmacological name, this makes the identification more certain. In Chinese, many Chinese medicinals have more than one name, and often these names are literally the same as or homonyms of other Chinese medicinals. So, using the Pinyin Chinese alone, one cannot always be 100% sure what medicinal is under discussion. Therefore, the combination of Pinyin Chinese and Latin pharmacological name is a good convention as a quality control (QC) check to minimize medical mistakes.

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The problem with this convention is that it has been almost 50 years since most educated Americans had a working knowledge of Latin. (I suppose I'm dating myself, but I was probably one of the last classes of American students to have studied five years of Latin in middle and high school.) Thus it is my experience as a teacher that, by and large, American practitioners of Chinese medicine do not understand these Latin pharmacological names. To make matters worse, Chinese herbal medicine in the U.S. is mostly taught by native Chinese who have even less knowledge of Latin. Further, in trying to make this Latin easier to understand, Chinese authors and teachers and many Western writers and translators following suit have inverted the normal Latin word order, thus making the whole thing even more confusing for the majority of students and practitioners. The good news is that the amount of Latin that one needs to know in order to understand these pharmacological names is minimal. Below I'd like to present what I believe that minimum to be.

However, before immediately launching into the Latin, I would first like to point out the difference between Linnaean biological nomenclature and pharmacological nomenclature. The great 18th century biological taxonomist, Carl Linnaeus, named species using what has come to be called binomial nomenclature. "Binomial" means "two words." Thus, according to this system of taxonomy, each species is identified by two Latin words, for instance Carthamus tinctorius for safflower. Linnaeus used Latin because that was the universal language of scholarship and science in his day. The first word in this two-part identification is the name of the genus to which the species belongs and the second word is the identifier of the particular species itself. Pharmacological nomenclature is derived from this system of binomial nomenclature but is not identical to it. Pharmacological nomenclature was developed by the apothecaries of 18th and 19th century Europe and the Americas. It was meant as a lingua franca for identifying the ingredients in medicinal prescriptions or formulas. In this case, knowing the species is not enough. One also needs to know the part or piece of the species being used.

So, there are two main elements to a Latin pharmacological identification. The first is the name of the part or piece of the species. This is given in the nominative (naming) case. The following is a list of the most common of these nouns used in Chinese medicine along with their English meaning.

Radix = root
Ramulus = twig or branch
Cortex = bark
Flos = flower
Folium = leaf
Herba = all the above-ground parts of the plant
Herba cum Radice = the entire plant, root and all
Tuber = tuber
Rhizoma = rhizome
Semen = seed
Fructus = fruit
Pollen = pollen
Caulis = stem or vine
Stamen = stamen of a flower
Stigma = stigma of a flower
Spica = spike
Spina = thorn
Medulla = inner pith

Pericarpium = the surrounding skin
Exocarpium = the outer skin
Lignum = wood
Pediculus = the pedicle of a fruit, the stem just before the fruit
Bulbus = bulb
Pseudobulbus = something that looks like a bulb but isn't really
Cacumen = the tip of a structure, the top or tip of a plant
Os = bone
Fossilia = fossil
Concha = shell (as in a mollusk shell)
Plastrum = the lower plate of a turtle or tortoise shell
Carapax = the upper dome of a turtle or tortoise shell
Cornu = horn
Nidus = nest
Faeces = feces
Urina = urine
Venenum = venom
Succus = juice
Sanguis = blood
Concretio = concretion, usually dried juice
Pulvis = powder

Most Chinese medicinals are plant in origin. So most of the time, the first word in a pharmacological identification is the name of the part of the plant. (Exceptions to this are discussed below.) The second word or words are the name of the plant in question. Since the Latin literally means "the root of such and such," this species name is given in the genitive or possessive case. Because, there are three genders in Latin (masculine, feminine, and neuter), the genitive inflection or word ending must match the gender of the species name. The following are the three main possessive inflections:

Words ending in -us (masculine) in the nominative case become -i
Words ending in -a (feminine) in the nominative case become -ae
Words ending in -um (neuter) in the nominative case become -i

There are several declensions in Latin and, thus, there are a few exceptions to the above, but let's not worry about them. The above three declensions cover the vast majority of Chinese medicinals. (A major exception is Radix Codonopsis where Codonopsis is both the nominative and genitive form.)

So Flos Carthami tinctorii means the flower of Carthamus tinctorius. However, the Chinese, in an effort to keep these identifications as simple as possible, have dropped the species name, in this case tinctorius/tinctorii, whenever only one species is used in practice. Thus Radix Platycodi grandiflori has become simply Radix Platycodi. But, when several different members of a genus are used in Chinese medicine, then the full genus and species name is used, both in the genitive or possessive case. Thus we have Radix Angelicae Sinensis and Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae. When the species name is used and not just the genus name, the species name should always be in the same case as the genus name, sinensis and miltiorrhizae both being genitive.

Also in an effort to make things easier for those not familiar with Latin, the Chinese have inverted the normal Latin word order. So now Radix Astragali has become Astragali Radix. Presumably, this makes it easier for the Latin-challenged to know that the medicinal in question is Astragalus. While I deeply disagree with this, it is important to know that, if you want to call this ingredient by a single Latin name, you need to say Astragalus and not Astragali since Astragalus is the nominative (name) case.

Things get even a little more complicated because, in Chinese medicine, we sometimes use two different forms of a single piece of a single species. In this case, the normal Latin word order is the following: Radix Alba Paeoniae. This means "the white root of the Peony" (as opposed to the red root). Since radix is feminine in Latin, the adjective "white" (albus, alba, album) needs to also be feminine in inflection. So Radix Alba (not albus or album). Again presumably to make things easier, the Chinese have put this adjective at the end like this: Paeoniae Radix alba. (I don't like this.) There is another adjective that is also commonly used when identifying Chinese medicinals. That word is praeparatus/praeparata/praeparatum, "prepared." In this case, we would say Radix Praeparata because radix is feminine, but we would say Semen Praeparatum because semen is neuter. (I keep a Latin dictionary on my desk to check things like this.) Thus Radix Lateralis Praeparata Aconiti means the prepared lateral root of Aconite. Lateralis and praeparata are both in the feminine nominative case. Concretio Silicea Bambusae means the silicate concretion of bamboo. In this case, concretio and silicea are both the genitive case since, together, they are the name of the substance, while bambusae is in the genitive case since it is where the substance comes from or what it is of. A little more complicated, Nodus Rhizomatis Nelumbinis means the node of the rhizome of the lotus (Nelumbo), while Succus Rhizomatis Zingiberis means the juice of the rhizome of ginger.

Above I said that there are some exceptions to the rule that the first word in a Latin pharmacological identification is the part or piece of the species being used. If the ingredient is a fungus, a mineral, or a whole animal (insect, fish, etc.), then only the name of the species or material may be given. Trying to make things easy, the Chinese have sometimes even shortened this to the single genus name in the case of animals and fungi. Thus Poria cocos has become simply Poria and Polyporus umbellatus has become simply Polyporus. Similarly, Minium just means lead, Sygnathus just means pipefish, Pheretima just means earthworm, and Olibanum just means frankincense. In all these cases, these simple names are given in the nominative case.

I hope this has clarified a little bit both Latin pharmacological nomenclature in general and Chinese use of this nomenclature in particular. Because of their lack of proficiency in Latin, some of the Latin identifications found in the Chinese pharmacopeia are incorrect. For instance, Caulis Bambusae in Taeniis should be Caulis Bambusae in Taeniam (where taeniam is the correct accusative inflection). Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of these pharmacological identifications are correct even if their word order has been inelegantly inverted. (To be fair, some say that, as long as the terminal inflections are correct, any word order in Latin is acceptable, although I know that would have old Mister Pearson, my Latin teacher, rolling in his grave.) Bottom line, I recommend you memorize the list of parts and pieces presented above and what they mean. That will make these Latin identification much more meaningful and intelligible.

Bona fortuna (Good luck)

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