The use of urine as medicine has along history in many cultures but the extraction of substances from urine, specifically hormones, at this early date is unique to the Chinese. The Chinese considered urine to be a part of blood and as such contained properties of the blood. Thus, they concluded its value in treatment of disease. The types of urine used are specified: male or female, age and diet were all of concern. Early references to chhiu shih appear in print from 125 BC, the time of Liu-An, reputed father of autumn mineral, Prince of Huai Nan. Here is an excerpt from the writings of LiShih-Chen speaking of the origins of the term chhiu shih (autumn mineral):
The term was really first used by the Prince of Huai-Nan. (Liu-An) named one of his tan (elixirs) chhiu shih, to express its white color and its solidity. Recently people have purified the urinary precipitates (jen chungpai) to a white substance which is also called chhiu shih, to indicate that like the urine itself it is derived from the excess of the nutrient essentialsof the vital forces (ching chhi). The iatro-chemists repeat the process of sublimation (sheng ta), and the best product is called chhiu ping. The idea(of the initial concentration) was derived from the evaporation of sea-water in the production of salt. Indeed there are adepts who place (certain)salts in a reaction-vessel and apply heat to obtain a substitute product. It is important to know the difference between the real product and the false one.1
There are quite a number of recipes for the Autumn mineral included in this volume.They describe in detail a variety of techniques, however there are two main differentiations, one using heat to sublimate, called yang lien and one using coolness or room temperature to precipitate, called yin lien. In their words, they were extracting the yin within yang and the yang within yin. By using specific temperatures the steroids remained stable and other inactive materials separated from them. Another recipe mentions the use of saponins to precipitate solids, a technique not utilized in Europe until the 1900’s. The end result of the two different processes: they were able to extract two separate substances, gonadotropin or anterior pituitary hormones, and sex hormones,androgens and estrogens. Needham’s knowledge as a microbiologist comes though in his analysis of these recipes and he explains in terms of modern chemistry what they were achieving in these concoctions. Recipes for autumn mineral appear in print from +1025and on. They are fascinating to read, revealing the theories of yin and yang and fiveelements on which they are clearly based. The oldest written one (+1025) follows:
Collect ten tan (over150 gallons) of male urine and set up a largeevaporating pan in an empty room. Fix on top of it a deep earthenwarestill, luting the edges together with paper-pulp and lime so that when it has
dried no steam can escape. Fill the evaporating basin 70 to 80 percent fullwith urine, and heat strongly from below, setting a man to watch it. If itfroths over, add small amounts of cold urine. It must not be allowed tooverflow. The dry residue is jen chung pai. Put some of this, finelypowdered, into a good earthenware jar and proceed according to themethod of sealing and subliming by placing the whole in a stove andheating with charcoal. About two or three ounces (of sublimate) will beobtained. Grind this to a powder, and mix with date-flesh to make pills thesize of a mung bean. For each dose take five to seven pills with warmwine or soup before breakfast.
The autumn mineral was used for treating a wide range of conditions, much as we use bht today: hypogonadism, impotence, sex reversals (where males spontaneously turned into females or vice versa, a phenomenon well known in ancient China), hermaphroditism, spermatorrhea, dysmenorrhea, leucorrhea,sexual debility, and even apparently stimulating the growth of the beard(since the Chinese knew that men grew beards as a result of having testicles and ceased to do so when castrated).3