Jíjiù xiānfāng 急救仙方
Immortal Prescriptions for Emergency Rescue by 闕名 (anonymous, SòngYuán)
About the work
A Sòng-Yuán-period anonymous emergency-medicine and external-medicine compendium in 6 juan, drawn from the Daoist Canon (Tàiyuán bù cè-zìhào) under the title Jíjiù xiānfāng — distinct from Jiāo Hóng’s Guóshǐ jīngjí zhì citation as Jiùjí xiānfāng 救急仙方 in 11 juan (which the SKQS editors diagnose as a transcription error for Jíjiù). The work specializes in four major surgical-medical conditions: bèichuāng 背瘡 (back-and-shoulder ulcers), dīngchuāng 疔瘡 (carbuncle / boil), ophthalmology (yǎnkē 眼科), and hemorrhoids (zhìzhèng 痔證). The treatment of bèichuāng is particularly detailed, with named subcategories — Liánzǐ 蓮子, Fēngkē 蜂窠, Sǎn 散, Zǒu 走, Liúzhù 流注, Shènyú zhū fā 腎俞諸發 — each carefully discriminated by symptom-form and aetiology. The work was preserved in the Daoist Canon and recovered by the SKQS editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn (with cross-reference to the Daoist Canon witness).
Tiyao
Jíjiù xiānfāng, 6 juan, no compiler’s name. The book is not recorded in the Sòng zhì or in the various house-bibliographies. Only Jiāo Hóng’s Guóshǐ jīngjí zhì lists Jiùjí xiānfāng in 11 juan with a note “found in the Daoist Canon”, without naming the author. Examining Bái Yúnjì’s Dàozàng mùlù: in the Tàiyuánbù cè-zìhào (惻字號) is recorded a Jíjiù xiānfāng — agreeing with the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. So Jiāo’s record reverses the title to Jiùjí.
The surgical specialty since the Zhōulǐ has been an independent discipline; but those who transmit its art often fail to penetrate the ancients’ meaning. The present compilation is especially detailed on bèichuāng (back-ulcer), dīngchuāng (boil), ophthalmology, and hemorrhoids — the author’s evident specialties. Among them, the bèichuāng discussion enumerates Liánzǐ, Fēngkē sǎn, Zǒu 走, Liúzhù 流注, Shènyú zhū fā, and other terms — many subcategories — and is able to discuss each in turn, detailing each presentation’s appearance, the cause of the disease, and the treatment, with strands separately laid out — beyond what surgical literature has previously achieved.
In the dīngchuāng gate, the Zhuīdīng duómìng tāng 追疔奪命湯 prescription provides full details of dose-adjustment by case. If the student can grasp the principle and extend it by analogy, the work serves the broad-relief-of-suffering. None but a master of the art could have written it. Although the miscellaneous-ulcer gates have some lacunae, the principal-and-essential is preserved; the work should not be faulted on completeness.
(Respectfully verified, 9th month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1100–1300, the broad SòngYuán period bracketed by the work’s likely composition — the Daoist-Canon attribution and the Daoist-medical content suggest a Sòng-or-later Daoist-physician composition, with Yuán-period transmission via the Daoist Canon. The catalog meta gives no dynasty, reflecting the SKQS editors’ inability to identify the author or precisely date the work.
The work’s significance:
(a) The Daoist Canon as a source for medical specialty literature: the SKQS editors’ identification of this work in the Daoist Canon (Tàiyuánbù cè-zìhào) is one of the better-documented cases of cross-textual recovery. The Daoist Canon preserves substantial medical specialty material (cf. KR5d for the Daoist-medical canon), and works like this one are a useful witness to the porous boundary between Daoist and medical-specialist textual transmission.
(b) The four-specialty surgical compendium: the work’s organization into bèichuāng, dīngchuāng, ophthalmology, and hemorrhoids represents an unusual specialist-organization decision, focusing on four high-mortality / high-suffering conditions where surgical-pharmacological intervention was both common and dangerous. The detailed discrimination of bèichuāng subtypes is particularly useful for the history of Chinese pyogenic-infection medicine.
(c) The Zhuīdīng duómìng tāng prescription: a celebrated SòngYuán surgical prescription preserved here with full case-adjustment details. Through this work the prescription entered later Chinese surgical medicine.
The catalog meta leaves the dynasty field blank, and the title’s first character is rendered 急 in the SKQS frontmatter (the meta has 急救仙方; this is correct, against Jiāo Hóng’s reversed Jiùjí xiānfāng).
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 Jí-jiù xiān-fāng and the Daoist-Canon cross-reference).
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Yīxué yǔ chuántǒng wénhuà 醫學與傳統文化, Tianjin: Bǎihuā Wényì, 2002 (chapter on Chinese surgical medicine).
Other points of interest
The Daoist-Canon location of this work — Tàiyuánbù cè-zìhào — is a useful pointer for cross-checking with the Daoist Canon’s pharmaceutical-and-medical jí 集. The work’s Daoist origin is emphasized by the title’s xiānfāng “Immortal Prescriptions” — but the content is essentially clinical-surgical, with the Daoist framing being part of the specialty-knowledge-as-divine-transmission framing standard in Sòng surgical medicine.
The SòngYuán Daoist-medical specialty literature, of which this is a representative work, is one of the major sources for the history of Chinese surgical practice. The integration of Daoist Tàiyuánbù pharmacological-medical material with mainstream surgical practice is a fruitful field for further research.