晚明的“农业炼丹术”——以徐光启著述中“粪丹”为中心

Agricultural Alchemy in Late Ming Dynasty:An Investigation Oriented on Fendan in XU Guangqi's Writings

明代后期,伴随着人口激增与农业发展,对肥料的需求日益增加,肥料成为一种稀缺性资源。以徐光启为代表的士人综合炼丹术、"粪药说"等古老学说,研制出一种新型浓缩肥料"粪丹",试图来缓解肥料供应的危机。本文详细梳理了晚明文献中关于粪丹的史料,分析粪丹的制造技术与理论来源,并讨论促使其出现的社会背景,对它为什么没有被成功应用在农业实践中进行初步解读。

In Late Ming dynasty, with the development of agriculture and the increasing population, the demand of fertilizer was increasing and fertilizer was becoming a scarce resource in the society. In order to ease the crisis of fertilizer supply, scholars, with XU Guangqi as a representative, used ancient theories like alchemy and the theory of using dung as medicine to develop a new type of concentrated fertilizer Fendan. This paper reviews the historical materials about Fendan in the literature, and analyses the manufacturing technology and theoretical sources of Fendan, trying to explain the social background of its appearance. The paper also makes a tentative interpretation about why Fendan wasn＇t been used in agricultural practice at that time.