Běncǎo Qiúzhēn 本草求真
Searching for the Truth in the Materia Medica by 黃宮繡 (Huáng Gōngxiù, zì Jǐnfāng 錦芳, c. 1731 – c. 1818, 清)
About the work
The Běncǎo qiúzhēn is one of the principal mid-Qīng pharmacopoeias produced by the fǎngǔ 返古 (“return to antiquity”) current that dominated late-18th-century Chinese medicine. Huáng compiled it together with his pulse manual Mài lǐ qiúzhēn KR3eb024, and the two were printed together as a pair in 1769 (乾隆三十四年). Both bear the qiúzhēn 求真 (“searching for the truth”) rubric — a programmatic statement that the Sòng-Yuán-Míng theoretical accretions (“分派配合”, “屬金屬木入肺入肝”) had buried the substance of Sùwèn-Běnjīng doctrine, which Huáng aimed to recover.
The work in 10 juǎn is organised functionally rather than morphologically: substances are grouped by therapeutic action (補, 收澁, 散, 瀉, 血, 雜, 食物, 外治 etc.) so that the user reads the materia medica through the lens of clinical strategy rather than through the natural-history taxonomy of the Gāngmù. This is a deliberate inversion of Lǐ Shízhēn’s 李時珍 organisational principle and gives the work its distinctive practical character. Approximately 520 substances are treated, each with a brief but pointed exegesis of nature, channel-entry, indications, and incompatibilities. The book became one of the two or three most-used Qīng clinical pharmacopoeias alongside Wāng Áng’s Běncǎo bèiyào (KR3ec038) and Wú Yílò’s Běncǎo cóngxīn (KR3ec045).
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body (downward-edition fragment, xiàbiān 下編 only). Standard 1769 editions preserve Huáng’s own preface stating the qiúzhēn rationale, plus a preface by his contemporary Fáng Báo 方苞 in some imprints. The preface explains that Huáng compiled both the Běncǎo and the Mài lǐ in tandem because “藥不能離脈，脈不能離藥” — drugs and pulses are mutually inseparable, and a physician needs both manuals together.
Abstract
Huáng Gōngxiù (黃宮繡, c. 1731 – c. 1818, no confident CBDB id), native of Yìhuáng 宜黃 in Fǔzhōu 撫州 prefecture, Jiāngxī. He was a precocious xiùcái who turned to medicine after failing the jǔrén examinations. He spent most of his career in rural Jiāngxī as a clinical physician; both qiúzhēn works were the product of decades of practice (the preface explicitly states “三十年積思” — thirty years of accumulated reflection).
Doctrinally Huáng belongs to the High-Qīng critique of the Jīn-Yuán four masters’ speculative metabolic doctrine (Liú Wánsù 劉完素, Zhāng Cóngzhèng 張從正, Lǐ Gǎo 李杲, Zhū Zhènhēng 朱震亨). Like Xú Dàchūn 徐大椿 and Chén Niànzǔ 陳念祖, he argued that the Sòng-Yuán-Míng commentarial layer obscured the Běnjīng and Nèijīng originals. The Běncǎo qiúzhēn is the practical implementation of this view in the pharmacology genre. The book remained in print throughout the 19th century and was reprinted in Mínguó and the PRC.
Translations and research
- Unschuld, Paul U. 1986. Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics. UCP. — discusses Huáng in the late-Qīng pharmacopoeia context.
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群. 2003. Yīxué wǔshí jiā 醫學五十家.
- Běncǎo qiúzhēn jiào zhù 本草求真校注. 1987. Renmin weisheng.
- No Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 本草求真 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB