Běncǎo Shù Gōuyuán 本草述鉤元
Hooking the Essentials of the Discourse on Materia Medica by 楊時泰 (Yáng Shítài, zì Mùrú 穆如, c. 1786 – c. 1839, 清)
About the work
The Běncǎo shù gōuyuán is a Dàoguāng-era critical condensation of the late-Míng physician 劉若金 Liú Ruòjīn (hào Yúnmì 雲密, 1584–1665)‘s vast 本草述 Běncǎo shù (30 juan, 1664). Liú’s Shù had attempted to integrate the qìwèishēngjiàng (氣味升降) doctrine of the JīnYuán four masters with the Běnjīng substance corpus, but its prose was famously verbose (“文辭蔓衍，讀者幾莫測其所歸”) and the work circulated only patchily. Yáng Shítài, working from a copy gifted to him in Běijīng in 1826 (道光六年丙戌) by his friend 瞿麗江 Qū Lìjiāng, recognised its theoretical importance and devoted seven years (1826–1833) to reducing it: he “cut the prolix by four-tenths and made the substantive ten-tenths” (汰其冗者十之四，達其理者十之六), restructured the substance entries, and made the implicit pharmacological logic explicit.
The work in 32 juǎn preserves Liú’s original substance selection and core doctrine but in usable form. Yáng died before printing; his disciple 伍仲常 Wǔ Zhòngcháng raised the funds, and Zōu Shù 鄒澍 — Yáng’s close friend and the leading Jiāngnán pharmacologist of the day — wrote the published preface in 道光壬寅 (1842, the year of printing). The book became an important reference for the late-Qīng jīngfāng 經方 revival that culminated in Zōu’s own Běnjīng shū zhèng (KR3ec066).
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The frontmatter retains:
- Yáng Shítài’s own preface (道光癸巳, 1833), describing the compilation history.
- Zōu Shù’s preface (道光壬寅 = 1842), placing the work in relation to the Běnjīng-Zhāng Zhòngjǐng tradition and praising Yáng’s “去繁就簡” approach.
- 陸以湉 Lù Yǐtián’s preface to the original Liú Ruòjīn Běncǎo shù, retained for context.
Abstract
Yáng Shítài (楊時泰, c. 1786 – c. 1839, no confident CBDB id), zì Mùrú 穆如, native of Jīntán 金壇 (Jiāngsū). He served briefly as a magistrate in Shāndōng. He combined administrative duty with clinical practice and was praised by Zōu Shù as “a good official who is at the same time a good physician” (以良吏而兼良醫).
The Gōuyuán’s significance is twofold. First, it rescued Liú Ruòjīn’s Běncǎo shù from oblivion — a work that had attempted, almost uniquely in late-Míng pharmacology, to integrate the JīnYuán theoretical apparatus with substance-by-substance pharmacology. Second, it transmitted the qìwèishēngjiàng approach into the early-Dàoguāng pharmacology that would shortly produce Zōu Shù’s 鄒澍 Běnjīng shū zhèng and Zhōu Yán 周巖’s Běncǎo sī biàn lù (KR3ec053). The Chángzhōu / Jīntán pharmacological circle of the 1820s–40s, of which Yáng was a central figure, is the principal late-Qīng theoretical pharmacology tradition.
Translations and research
- Zhèng Jīnshēng 鄭金生. 2007. Yào lín wài shǐ 藥林外史. Sanlian. — extensive discussion of the Jīntán-Cháng-zhōu circle.
- Bian, He. 2020. Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China. PUP.
- Běncǎo shù gōuyuán jiào zhù 本草述鉤元校注. 2007. Renmin weisheng.
- No Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 本草述鉤元 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB