Nèijīng yàoyuè 內經藥瀹
Pharmacopoeial Nourishment from the Inner Classic by 張驥 (Zhāng Jì, 1859–1924, 民國) — author
About the work
The Nèijīng yàoyuè in ten juan is the late-Qīng / early-Republican (民國) Nèijīng-based pharmacopoeia of Zhāng Jì 張驥 (zì Yǐnlíng 隱陵, hào Zhìjì 治紀), a Republican-era Chéngdū physician active in the medical-publishing milieu of Sìchuān. The work systematically extracts every Nèijīng passage that mentions a drug, a flavour (酸辛苦鹹甘淡), or a thermic property (寒熱溫涼), arranges them under the standard qìwèi 氣味 system of materia medica, and produces a “Nèijīng pharmacopoeia” — anchored in the principle, stated in the author’s preface, that Nèijīng speaks not of drugs as such but of climatic-thermic-flavour categories that constitute the doctrinal foundation for all subsequent materia medica.
Prefaces
The author’s preface (KR3ea042_000.txt) addresses an objection: the Nèijīng, unlike the Shénnóng běncǎo jīng, does not enumerate drugs by species and is therefore (it is said) “not in the same category” (不與本經同類) as a pharmacopoeia. Zhāng’s answer: the Nèijīng names the qì and wèi of every substance the body encounters (“天食人以五氣，地食人以五味”), and these categories are themselves the pharmacopoeia in its theoretical foundation. The Shénnóng běncǎo details the yàomíng 藥名 (drug names) while the Nèijīng furnishes the fán 凡 (general principles) and the lì 例 (typical cases). The title 藥瀹 is glossed from the Zǐhuázǐ yīdàopiān 子華子醫道篇: yào zhě, yuè yě; yuè zhě, yǎng yě 藥者，瀹也；瀹者，養也 (“drug is yuè; yuè is nourishment”).
Abstract
Zhāng Jì was a major Chéngdū bibliophile-physician active in the early Republican era. He collected and reprinted a substantial corpus of HànSòng medical texts in his Sānsānyī jí 三三醫籍 cluster (the same series that printed 胡澍 Hú Shù’s Sùwèn jiàoyì). His original works include the present Nèijīng yàoyuè (1924), a companion Nèijīng fāng 內經方 (extracted prescriptions from the Nèijīng), the Nèijīng yùnqì zhìyào 內經運氣治要, and the Léigōngzhāng 雷公章 commentary. He died in 1924, the year of this work’s first print. The jicheng.tw catalog dynasty 清 should strictly be 民國 (early Republic); the discrepancy is noted in the frontmatter.
The work is the most systematic late-traditional attempt to read the Nèijīng as a complete pharmacopoeia and has become a primary reference for the modern PRC Nèijīng pharmacopoeia studies (e.g. Zhāng Cānjiǎ 張燦玾’s Nèijīng yàowù tōngjiě 內經藥物通解, 1985).
Translations and research
- Zhāng Cānjiǎ 張燦玾, Nèijīng yàowù tōngjiě 內經藥物通解 (Shàndōng Kēxué Jìshù, 1985) — explicitly builds on Zhāng Jì’s framework.
- Zhāng Jì yīshū 張驥醫書, modern reprint (Chéngdū: Sìchuān Kēxué Jìshù, 1986).