Shénnóng Běncǎo Jīng Dú 神農本草經讀
Reading the Shennong Materia Medica Classic by 陳念祖 (Chén Niànzǔ, zì Xiūyuán 修園, 1753–1823, 清)
About the work
The Shénnóng běncǎo jīng dú is the influential late-Qīng Běnjīng commentary by Chén Niànzǔ — one of the most prolific medical popularizers of the Qiánlóng-Jiāqìng era and the founder of the Xiūyuán publishing school of zhōngyī textbooks. The work in 4 juǎn (completed 1803, Jiāqìng 8) gives the Běnjīng core text substance by substance and provides clear, pedagogical exegesis with Chén’s own clinical comments. It is one of the principal early-19th-century pharmacologies and the immediate ancestor of much of the 20th-century zhōngyī curriculum.
Chén’s pharmacology is distinctively classicist: he privileges the Běnjīng text over later accretions, and explicitly criticises both Wāng Áng 汪昂’s Bèiyào tradition and the kǎojù-tradition of Sūn Xīngyǎn’s 孫星衍 Běnjīng reconstruction for their respective failures. His own approach grounds pharmacology in the Sùwèn-Língshū framework while reading the Běnjīng as canonical scripture.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves substance entries. Standard editions preserve Chén’s autograph preface (1803) explaining the project’s purpose.
Abstract
Chén Niànzǔ (陳念祖, 1753–1823, CBDB 81917), zì Xiūyuán 修園, native of Chánglè 長樂 (modern Fújiàn). He was a jǔrén who served briefly as Hébǎo zhīxiàn 河北知縣 before retiring to teach medicine at Fúzhōu. His pedagogical output is enormous — including the standard reading textbooks Yīxué shí zài yì 醫學實在易, Shānghán lùn qiǎn zhù 傷寒論淺注, Yī yī ǒu cuì 醫醫偶萃, Niǔ wàn lùn 女科要旨, Yīxué cóng zhòng lù 醫學從眾錄, and others — and his Xiūyuán quánshū 修園全書 served as the standard physician textbook for two centuries.
The Shénnóng běncǎo jīng dú is the principal element of Chén’s pharmacology. It established the model of reading the Běnjīng itself as a canonical text rather than the modern Gāngmù corpus — a methodological move that anticipated the 20th-century zhōngyī curriculum’s return to classical sources.
Translations and research
- Lǐ Lǐ 李力. 2002. Chén Xiūyuán yīxué quánshū 陳修園醫學全書. Renmin weisheng.
- Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge.
- No Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 神農本草經讀 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB