Polyglot Asian Medicines: Foundational Resources and Digital Tools

The database is a multi-disciplinary collaborative research platform for the history, ecology and clinical use of Asian medicines. The term "polyglot" refers to the ways that Asian medicines traverse not just regions and time, but languages and different epistemologies and practice communities. Our website (https://www.polyglotasianmedicine.com/ ) provides resources and tools for researching this multi-lingual spectrum, and organizes them into three main clusters: 1) digitised, tagged, searchable manuscripts; 2) digitised historical maps of the Bencao materia medica traditions; 3) multi-lingual drug name synonymy. Taken together, these tools and resources can facilitate a new generation of historical and contemporary research on Asian medicines, including modern practice, and new drug discovery. The data platform is expandable, and open to collaboration.