Lèizhèng pǔjì běnshì fāng 類證普濟本事方
Original-Case Prescriptions for the Universal Relief of Categorically-Sorted Symptoms by 許叔微 (Xǔ Shūwēi, zì Zhīkě, ca. 1080–1154, of Zhēnzhōu, 南宋)
About the work
A pioneering Southern-Sòng clinical formulary in 10 juan in which Xǔ Shūwēi accompanied each prescription with an yī àn 醫案 (case-record) recording his personal clinical experience treating the corresponding condition — the title’s běnshì 本事 (“original case”) is a deliberate echo of the Tang Běnshì shī 本事詩 (a poem-anthology in which each poem is accompanied by an anecdote of its composition). The work is the textual ancestor of the YuánMíngQīng yī àn tradition (Lǐ Gǎo’s, Zhū Zhènhēng’s, Yú Tuán’s, Zhāng Jièbīn’s, Yè Tiānshì’s case-records), and the most coherently structured Sòng-period implementation of the case-with-prescription pedagogy. The work was substantially printed under Xǔ’s own supervision in Shàoxīng 3 (1133) — the date of his preface — and survives in a Sòng print line from which the SKQS recension is descended.
Tiyao
Lèizhèng pǔjì běnshì fāng, ten juan, by Xǔ Shūwēi of the Sòng. Shūwēi, zì Zhīkě — some sources say a man of Yángzhōu, some of Pílíng. Only Zēng Mǐnxíng’s Dúxǐng zázhì — being his contemporary — gives Zhēnzhōu, which should not be in error. He sat for the Shàoxīng 2 (1132) examination under [examiner] Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s bǎng (announcement) and ranked sixth among the jìnshì. The medical-literary tradition calls him “Scholar Xǔ” (Xǔ Xuéshì); since the Sòng convention uses xuéshì as a generic honorific for literary officials, we cannot tell what specific office he held.
The book records prescriptions from his own clinical experience together with the case-record of each — hence the title Běnshì. Zhū Guózhēn’s Yǒng chuáng xiǎo pǐn records: “Shūwēi once obtained a xiāngjiàn (district-recommendation) but failed at the Chūnwéi (spring exam) and went home; passing through Píngwàng on his boat, he dreamt of a man in white robes urging him to study medicine; thereupon he attained the marvellous skill of [Biǎn] Què and Lú [yī]; he treated patients without taking fees, and in his later years he gathered the prescriptions that had succeeded for him in his lifetime, recording the case-events and titling the collection Běnshì fāng — taking the Běnshì shī 本事詩 as the model for the title.” Zhū’s reference is presumably to this very work. But Zēng Mǐnxíng’s Dúxǐng zázhì records that although Shūwēi did have a yù shénrén (encounter-with-divinity) experience, his medical study antedated it; we do not know what the source of Zhū Guózhēn’s report was.
Shūwēi’s diagnostic-clinical art is of the most refined order. His celebrated dictum — “the medical art is like spreading a wide net across the wilderness in hope of catching even one [bird]” (廣絡原野以冀一獲) — is an especially pointed and feeling correction of the prevailing tendency of his day. The work’s style is concisely-elegant, not aimed at popular reception; for this reason it was not widely circulated under the Míng. The present base copy is from a Sòng print, and within it every “wán” 丸 character is written as “yuán” 圓 — preserving still the old practice of the Hàn Zhāng Jī’s Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì yàoluè.
Zhū Guózhēn further records that Shūwēi composed Nǐ Shānghán gē 擬傷寒歌 in 3 juan and 100 pieces; Zhì fǎ in 81 篇; Zhòngjǐng màifǎ sānshíliù tú; Yì Shānghán lùn in 2 篇; and Biàn lèi in 5 juan. None of these are now in transmission; presumably they are lost.
(Respectfully verified, 6th month of Qiánlóng 44 [1779]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1133/1133, the date of Xǔ Shūwēi’s preface. The Sòng print is the immediate textual ancestor of the SKQS recension; the wán / yuán archaism is preserved in the SKQS print, indicating direct copy from a Sòng-edition base.
The work’s significance:
(a) The Sòng-period invention of the yī àn genre: Xǔ’s deliberate pairing of each prescription with a case-record marks the beginning of Chinese case-writing as a coherent medical genre. The literary model — the Běnshì shī — is illuminating: just as the Tang anthology presented poems-with-anecdotes to give the poems a narrative context, Xǔ presents prescriptions-with-cases to give the prescriptions a clinical context. This methodological choice is explicitly didactic: the reader is meant to learn not just the prescription but the case-recognition that justifies it.
(b) The “spread the net wide” critique: Xǔ’s dictum — that medicine cannot be a casting of a wide net across the wilderness in hope of one bird — is a sharp Sòng-period criticism of the prevailing prescriptive tendency to try multiple medications in succession, hoping one will work. The dictum and its diagnostic-precision implication remained influential through the SòngYuán medical revolution.
(c) The Sòng Shānghán commentary lineage: Xǔ’s lost Nǐ Shānghán gē, Zhì fǎ, Zhòngjǐng màifǎ tú, Yì Shānghán lùn, and Biàn lèi were Sòng Shānghán-line works that placed him in the same scholarly current as Páng Ānshí (KR3e0026), 韓祗和 Hán Zhīhé (KR3e0025), and Chéng Wúyǐ (KR3e0008). The loss of these works limits our reading of Xǔ’s Shānghán doctrine, but the Běnshì fāng’s case-and-prescription pairings preserve substantial Shānghán-related material.
The Zhū Guózhēn Yǒng chuáng xiǎo pǐn “white-robed-deity dream” story is folkloric pseudo-biography of the kind common in Míng bǐjì; Zēng Mǐnxíng’s Dúxǐng zázhì is the safer Sòng-contemporary witness, on which the SKQS editors rely.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western secondary translation of this work.
- Furth, Charlotte, Judith T. Zeitlin, and Ping-chen Hsiung (eds.), Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. Treats the yī àn genre and its origins.
- Cullen, Christopher. “Yi an 醫案 (Case Statements): The Origin of a Genre of Chinese Medical Literature.” In Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 297–323. Treats Xǔ Shūwēi as the principal Sòng-period founder of the genre.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009 (treats Xǔ in the broader Sòng Shānghán and case-writing context).
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (entry on the Běn-shì fāng).
Other points of interest
The “spread the net wide” 廣絡原野以冀一獲 dictum is one of the more memorable phrases of Sòng medical reflection on clinical reasoning. It became a standard reference for later writers attacking the indiscriminate-prescription tendency, including Lǐ Gǎo and Zhū Zhènhēng in the JīnYuán medical revolution.
The wán / yuán 丸 / 圓 archaism in the Sòng print is a small but significant philological detail: the Hàn-period orthographic distinction (taboo-avoidance: 丸 was the personal name of a Hàn imperial relative, hence written 圓 in Hàn-period medical texts) was preserved in the Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì yàoluè witnesses, and Xǔ Shūwēi’s Sòng print preserves the same archaism — confirming the work’s textual-philological precision and its careful imitation of Hàn-period Zhāng Jī style.