Fùrén dàquán liángfāng 婦人大全良方
The Complete Excellent Prescriptions for Women by 陳自明 (Chén Zìmíng, zì Liángfǔ, fl. 1237, of Línchuān, 南宋)
About the work
The most comprehensive Chinese pre-modern treatise on women’s medicine, in 24 juan / 8 categorical gates, completed in Jiāxī 1 (1237). The 8 gates are: Tiáo jīng 調經 (regulating menstruation), Zhòng jí 衆疾 (miscellaneous diseases), Qiú sì 求嗣 (seeking offspring), Tāi jiào 胎教 (pre-natal education), Rèn shēn 妊娠 (pregnancy), Zuò yuè 坐月 (the lying-in month), Chǎn nán 產難 (difficult births), Chǎn hòu 產後 (post-natal care) — covering over 260 separate disease-discussions in total. Chén Zìmíng synthesized the prior women’s-medicine tradition (Zǎn Yīn 昝殷’s Chǎnbǎo 產寶 of the Táng; Lǐ Shīshèng 李師聖’s Chǎnyù bǎoqìng jí 產育寶慶集 of the Sòng KR3e0039; Lù Zǐzhèng 陸子正’s Tāichǎn jīngyàn fāng 胎產經驗方; etc.) — most of which were briefly transmitted in only a few juan — into a comprehensive single reference. The work became the standard women’s-medicine reference of YuánMíngQīng China; the Míng Xuē Jǐ 薛己 (1487–1559) revised and supplemented Chén’s text, appending his own clinical-experience cases as a separate work. The SKQS-base print is from the Yuán Qínyǒu shūtáng 勤有書堂 imprint, which preserves Chén Zìmíng’s original text without Xuē Jǐ’s interpolations.
Tiyao
Fùrén dàquán liángfāng, 24 juan. Edition: 大學士英廉家藏本.
By Chén Zìmíng of the Sòng. Zìmíng, zì Liángfǔ, was a man of Línchuān. He held the office of Medical Professor at the Jiànfǔ Academy. The book is divided into 8 gates: first Tiáo jīng; next Zhòng jí; next Qiú sì; next Tāi jiào; next Rèn shēn; next Zuò yuè; next Chǎn nán; next Chǎn hòu. Each gate has dozens of conditions, totaling over 260 discussions. After each discussion is appended a prescription-cum-case-record.
The women’s-medicine specialty began with the Táng [Zǎn] Yīn’s Chǎn bǎo 產寶. Subsequently there are Lǐ Shīshèng’s Chǎnyù bǎoqìng jí and Lù Zǐzhèng’s Tāichǎn jīngyàn fāng — generally short in juan-count and rare in transmission. Zìmíng gathered the various authorities’ contributions and laid out the principle and the strands; on women’s-medicine therapy nothing is left undiscussed in detail. The Míng Xuē Jǐ’s Yīàn (medical case-records) once revised this work according to his own opinion and appended his own clinical-experience cases, becoming a separate book.
This recension is from the Qínyǒu shūtáng 勤有書堂 imprint and remains Zìmíng’s original text. At the head is Chén’s own preface dated Jiāxī 1 (1237), saying: “Three generations of my family have studied medicine; the family holds medical books to the number of [several] juan; further, traveling broadly in the Southeast, wherever I went I sought out prescription books to read.” His diligence is well-witnessed.
(Respectfully verified, [no specific month/day]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1237/1237, the date of Chén Zìmíng’s preface. The work was completed during Chén’s tenure as Medical Professor at the Jiànfǔ Academy.
The work’s significance:
(a) The foundational comprehensive Chinese women’s medicine treatise: at 24 juan / 8 gates / 260+ discussions, the Fùrén dàquán liángfāng is the most comprehensive Chinese women’s-medicine work of any pre-modern period, surpassing all earlier and most subsequent works. From the Yuán onward it is the standard reference.
(b) The 8-gate structural innovation: the systematic ordering — menstruation → miscellaneous diseases → conception → pre-natal education → pregnancy → confinement → labor → post-natal care — is the canonical Chinese sequence for women’s-medicine and reproductive-medicine pedagogy. Chén’s structural choice was followed by every later women’s-medicine work.
(c) The YuánMíngQīng reception: the work was reprinted continuously through the YuánMíngQīng. Xuē Jǐ’s Míng-period revision-and-supplement (1547) became the popular form of the work; the SKQS editors deliberately reverted to the Yuán Qínyǒu shūtáng print of Chén’s original, restoring the pre-Xuē-Jǐ form.
(d) The Tāi jiào chapter on pre-natal education: a Sòng-period systematic treatment of fetal-and-pre-natal-education theory, positing that the mother’s behaviour, environment, and emotions during pregnancy shape the developing fetus. Chén’s chapter is a major source for the Chinese tradition of tāi jiào and an interesting parallel to similar pre-modern theories elsewhere.
(e) The methodological emphasis on field-collection: Chén’s preface — describing his travels in search of prescription books — is one of the more candid Sòng-period statements of empirical medical-textual methodology. The combination of family-tradition, academic-position, and field-collection is the model of the Southern-Sòng professional-medical scholar.
Translations and research
- Furth, Charlotte. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. The standard English-language work on Chinese women’s-medicine history; Chén Zìmíng’s Fù-rén dà-quán liáng-fāng is the principal Sòng witness.
- Furth, Charlotte (ed.) and Ping-chen Hsiung. Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007 (treats the case-records).
- Wilms, Sabine, Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Fang — Volume 2 to 4: Gynecology, Whitfield: Happy Goat Productions, 2007. On Sūn Sīmiǎo’s earlier women’s-medicine, of which Chén Zìmíng is the synthesis.
- Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 (treats Chén Zìmíng’s Tāi jiào doctrine in the broader Sòng-Míng gender-and-technology context).
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (entry on the Fù-rén dà-quán liáng-fāng).
Other points of interest
The Qínyǒu shūtáng 勤有書堂 imprint is one of the more historically significant commercial-print houses of the late Sòng / early Yuán, and the SKQS editors’ reversion to the Qínyǒu print over Xuē Jǐ’s Míng revision is a useful piece of editorial honesty: they preferred the original Sòng text to the popular but interpolated Míng recension.
The work’s Tāi jiào chapter has become an important source in modern reception for both Chinese feminist-historical work (Furth 1999, Bray 1997) and for cross-cultural pre-modern reproductive-medicine studies. The doctrinal claim that maternal emotional and environmental conditions during pregnancy shape the fetus is widely paralleled across pre-modern medical traditions but rarely as systematically articulated as in Chén Zìmíng.