Ji Desheng

Ji Desheng or Jidesheng (Chinese: 季德胜; pinyin: Jì Déshèng) (October 6, 1898 – October 18, 1981) was a Chinese herbalist from Nantong, Jiangsu, China specializing in snakebite medicine and treatment.

Ji Desheng was born as an only child in Suqian, Jiangsu, China on the outskirts of a dilapidated temple. His father, Ji Mingyang (季明扬), made a living by selling traditional Chinese herbal remedy. Equipped with a unique skill but without any possessions, the family lived a life of extreme poverty and hardship.

When Ji Desheng was 6 years old, his mother died. He followed his father from morning to night; together they hiked hills to collect wild herbs, catch snakes, scorpions, centipedes and other insects to prepare snakebite medicine. When Ji Desheng turned 18 years old, Suqian County was hit by a drought so severe that the earth cracked and plague was epidemic. Ji Desheng fled the area with his father, relocating to Nanjing and the father-son duo continued to make a living by selling snakebite medicine. Ji Desheng continued to learn from his father's skills of catching snakes and treating snakebites with the medicine they made. Ji Desheng's knowledge of snakebite medicine grew with age and became an indispensable assistant to his father.

During the winter of 1923, Ji Desheng relocated with his father to the town of Chahe, Rudong County, Jiangsu. His father died the following year. The 25-year-old Ji Desheng was determined to follow in his father's footsteps and continue to produce the snakebite medicine which recipe he inherited. When passed into the hands of Ji Desheng, the snakebite medicine recipe was in its sixth generation. A forefather of the Ji family served as a snake medicine herbalist in the Qing dynasty imperial court and developed the medicine before 1795. Ji Desheng had heard from his father that every generation had made positive development on the recipe.

In order to make improvements himself, Ji Desheng tasted dozens of herbal ingredients commonly used for detoxification and pain reduction. Some of the ingredients have adverse effects when taken alone. When accidentally poisoned, Ji Desheng immediately took the antidotes taught by his father. With his intuition, experience, and repeated trials of ingredient tasting, he was able to determine the effectiveness and the performance of each herb he tried. He also courageously let snakes bite his shoulders, arms, and toes; when poisoned, he applied different medicines to the different types of wounds. Ji Desheng only applied the medicine onto his patients after testing out the medicine himself. After spending nearly 10 years of hard work, he finally achieved his long-cherished wish of producing a standardized product. The end product was produced by a crushing a variety of ingredients into powder then adding liquid to form a cake-shaped tablet 2.5 cm in diameter and 0.5 cm in thickness. The medicine also came in the shapes of pills. Each piece of the medicinal cake and pills were printed with a red Chinese character of "Ji" bearing the family name.

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