Bójì fāng 博濟方
Prescriptions for the Broad Relief of Suffering by 王袞 (Wáng Gǔn, 1037–1078, of Tàiyuán 太原, 宋)
About the work
A Northern-Sòng personal-experience clinical formulary in five juan, containing approximately 350 prescriptions in 35 thematic categories — recovered by the SKQS editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, since the work had no independent transmission. By Wáng Gǔn’s own preface (preserved at the head of the WYG print), the work was selected from over seven thousand prescriptions he had collected during a twenty-year period of clinical practice. Wáng’s preface dates the composition broadly to his Qìnglì period (1041–1048) field-experience after his father’s posting at Huátái 滑臺 — where Wáng witnessed and was alarmed by an episode of medical malpractice — and the work’s compilation appears to have continued through the Jiāyòu period (1056–1063). The SKQS editors selected the work as one of the few well-attested Northern-Sòng personal formularies preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, and reorganized the recovered material along the lines of Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì into five juan with thirty-five thematic categories.
Tiyao
Bójì fāng, five juan, by Wáng Gǔn of the Sòng. Gǔn was a man of Tàiyuán; his career details are unclear. Only Láng Jiǎn 郎簡’s original preface notes that he once served as Wine Inspector at Qiántáng. The book is recorded in every bibliographic compilation, but the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì and Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí both give it as three juan; only Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì gives five juan — a small variation, probably a transmissional error of “三” / “五” by their similar shape.
Cháo also says that during the Qìnglì period, when Wáng was officiating at Huátái, he took a leisure day to extract from the seventy-some prescriptions in his family’s keeping the best for this work; the medical men say that the prescriptions are infallibly effective, with the Cǎohuán dān 草還丹 treating great-wind (lèijí 癘疾) and the Tàiyǐ dān 太乙丹 treating ghost-pregnancy (鬼胎) being especially marvellous. Examining Gǔn’s own preface, however, he says: “Long ago I attended my honored father at his post at Huátái; on the road I fell ill, and a quack physician administered decoctions in error; the illness was not cured.” So the man who served at Huátái was Gǔn’s father, not Gǔn — Cháo Gōngwǔ’s identification is a serious philological error. Gǔn further says: “Over twenty years of broad collection of secret formulae I had gathered seven thousand-odd prescriptions and discussions; from these I have selected the most refined and essential, comprising five hundred-odd entries.” Cháo’s “seventy-odd in family keeping” is also a transmissional error.
The original book has long been without independent transmission; only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves its text. Gathering and re-ordering, we obtain over three hundred and fifty prescriptions — about seven-tenths of the five hundred Gǔn’s preface mentions. We have respectfully arranged them under thirty-five categories, dividing them into five juan after the Dúshū zhì’s entry. The prescriptions and pharmaceutical compositions cover much that other books do not; though they cannot all be applied today, they did in their time exhibit notable efficacy, and serve as a help for medical readers in extending their reach.
But the work has a fondness for the marvellous, and is often interlarded with fāngshù 方術 (technical-arts) talk. For example, on apricot-kernel ingestion, it says: “Péng Zǔ 彭祖, Xià Jī 夏姬, the Four Recluses of Mt. Shāng, all refined apricot-kernel into elixirs; Wáng Zǐjìn 王子晉 took it for forty years and ascended to heaven; Dīng Lìngwēi 丁令威 took it for twenty years and his body flew.” This sort of thing is excessive falsehood and not credible. We have therefore detached the various ingestion-methods and appended them at the end, the better to expose their errors and let the reader know what to take and what to leave.
(Respectfully verified, 9th month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1041–1056, the period bracketed by Wáng Gǔn’s father’s Huátái posting (his clinical baptism, per his preface) and his maturity as Qiántáng wine-inspector (when the work would have reached its compiled form). Wáng died in 1078 by CBDB record, but the work appears to have been completed and circulated already in the 1050s.
The work is structured around clinical experience rather than theoretical principle: 350 prescriptions in 35 categorical gates, with each prescription accompanied by an indication and a brief therapeutic rationale, drawing on Wáng’s twenty-year personal collection from the lay and specialist transmissions of the Sòng medical world. The SKQS editors observe that the formulary contains many materials not preserved elsewhere, but flag with disapproval the work’s fāngshù (technical-arts / quasi-Daoist alchemical) elements — particularly the apricot-kernel ingestion section’s reference to Péng Zǔ, Xià Jī, the Four Recluses of Mt. Shāng, Wáng Zǐjìn, and Dīng Lìngwēi as proofs of efficacy. The editors detach those passages and append them at the end of the recovered text as exemplars of the work’s lapses into pseudo-Daoist falsehood.
The Bójì fāng is an unusual witness for Northern-Sòng vernacular and lay-practitioner medical practice — distinct in tone from the imperially-commissioned compendia (the Tàipíng shènghuì fāng 太平聖惠方 KR3e0021 etc.) and from the Sòng校正醫書局 collation of the medical canon. Its 350-prescription core remains a useful textual witness for Sòng-era Chinese pharmacology in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn-preserved form.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western secondary literature on this specific work.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (entry on the Bó-jì fāng and the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery).
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009 (broader Sòng medical-formulary context).
Other points of interest
The Cháo Gōngwǔ misidentifications corrected by the SKQS tíyào — Wáng Gǔn vs. his father at Huátái, “seventy” vs. “seven thousand” — are a textbook illustration of mid-Qīng Yǒnglè recovery philology. The editors trust Wáng’s own preface against the Sòng-period bibliography because the preface is a primary witness; Cháo’s Dúshū zhì offers a secondary witness with two transcriptional errors. This methodological clarity is one of the SKQS editors’ more important contributions to medical-historical method.
The SKQS editors’ detachment of the apricot-kernel-and-immortality passages from the main body of the work is a rare instance of the editors actually re-organizing a text on doctrinal grounds, not merely on textual ones. The detachment is documented in the tíyào and the appended sequence is preserved in a separate section at the end of the WYG print.