Běncǎo Xīn Biān 本草新編
A New Compilation of Materia Medica by 陳士鐸 (Chén Shìduó, zì Jìngzhī 敬之, hào Yuǎngōng 遠公 / Zhū Huā zǐ 朱華子, c. 1627 – c. 1707, 清)
About the work
The Běncǎo xīn biān is a distinctively idiosyncratic late-17th-century pharmacology by the prolific Sūzhōu / Shānyīn physician Chén Shìduó. Chén’s medical career was unconventional: he claimed that his medical works were dictated to him by the immortals (most famously Lǚ Dòngbīn 呂洞賓 and Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景), a self-presentation that linked his medicine to xiānshù (immortality arts) and located it in the late-Míng / early-Qīng Daoist medical-occult tradition. The Běncǎo xīn biān in 5 juǎn gives substance entries with extensive clinical comments grounded in Chén’s distinctive theoretical doctrine — the Qíxí 棄習 system — which emphasises the rejection of conventional pharmacology in favour of “true” drug action revealed through immortal teaching.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The preface and clinical narrative material in the standard editions includes Chén’s self-presentation of the immortals’ transmission.
Abstract
Chén Shìduó (陳士鐸, c. 1627 – c. 1707, CBDB 572125), native of Shānyīn 山陰 (Shàoxīng, Zhèjiāng). He was a private scholar-physician with an unusual xiānshù / shamanic self-presentation. His prolific output (allegedly comprising over 100 juǎn) includes:
- Biàn zhèng lù 辨證錄 (1687) — the principal clinical-pattern manual;
- Shí shì mì lù 石室秘錄 (1687);
- Dòng tiān ào zhǐ 洞天奧旨 (1694) — on external medicine;
- Běncǎo xīn biān 本草新編 (this work);
- Mài jué chàn wù 脈訣闡微 — on pulse.
His works circulated widely in late-17th-century Jiāngnán and were influential in popular medical practice. Modern scholarship is divided on the question of authentic versus pseudepigraphic attribution within Chén’s corpus; some works ascribed to him may be by his disciples writing in his name.
Translations and research
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群. 2007. Yī fá liáo zhì jiào 醫法療治教 — discusses Chén Shìduó as a representative of late-Míng / early-Qīng xiān-shù-influenced medicine.
- Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics. Routledge.
- No Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 本草新編 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB