ABSTRACT

In the spring of 1653, Fedor Ivanov syn Krisovo, a Russian peasant from the Urals town of Verkhotur’e, petitioned Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich to reduce his tax burden. He explained that in the past year, he had spent so much time assisting state convoys in the search for and extraction of rhubarb that he could not farm his own land enough to meet his tax burdens. Dioscorides had credited rhubarb with acting ‘against laxity,’ and al-Baitur acknowledged that rhubarb could ‘strengthen the stomach’ and ‘softened the faeces’ but neither considered it foremost as a laxative or purgative. Lacking modern tools of preservation, representation, reproduction, and communication, even the matter of physical description was not trivial. As if visual recognition, species variation, preservation, and transport were not challenging enough, variations in potency among individual plants and during phases of growth, medical practices, and patient particulars left much wiggle room in determining definitively rhubarb’s efficacy.