Chángshā Yàojiě 長沙藥解
Exegesis of the Drugs of Chángshā [i.e. Zhāng Zhòngjǐng] by 黃元御 (Huáng Yuányù, zì Yuányù 元御, hào Yùqiū 玉楸 — variant 玉璐, the form in the catalog meta — 1705–1758, 清)
About the work
The Chángshā yàojiě is the pharmacological component of Huáng Yuányù’s “Four Sages” (四聖) commentarial programme — the systematic re-exposition of the Sùwèn, Língshū, Nán jīng, and Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s ShānghánJīnguì corpus. “Chángshā” 長沙 is the standard medical-tradition epithet for Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (Zhāng held office in Chángshā prefecture in the late Hàn). The work is a substance-by-substance exegesis of every drug that appears in the Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì yàolüè formulae, grounded in Huáng’s own qìwèishēngjiàng pharmacological doctrine.
Huáng’s preface (癸酉仲春之初, the second lunar month of 1753, corresponding to early March of that year) explains the rationale in vehement terms: the prevailing pharmacopoeias have buried Zhòngjǐng’s actual drug usage under centuries of speculative accretion, and Lǐ Shízhēn’s Gāngmù — although vast — has accumulated more error than truth. The only way to recover the original meaning of each drug is to read it against Zhòngjǐng’s actual formula usage. Hence the Yàojiě: a pharmacology indexed not to the natural-history taxonomy but to the jīngfāng corpus. The work covers approximately 170 substances in 4 juǎn. It is one of the founding documents of the Qīng jīngfāng pharmacological revival.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The frontmatter retains Huáng’s own preface dated 乾隆十八年歲在癸酉二月 (= 1753, second lunar month), the Chāngyì preface signed 昌邑黃元御, and 張琦 Zhāng Qí (陽湖)‘s 後序 (postface) preserved from the standard edition, the latter dated implicitly to the late 18th century and explaining the Běnjīng / Shānghán relationship that motivates the work.
Abstract
Huáng Yuányù (黃元御, 1705–1758, CBDB 438039), zì Yuányù 元御, hào Yùqiū 玉楸. The dominant Shāndōng physician of the mid-Qīng. See his person note for full biographical detail. The catalog meta gives the hào in its variant form 玉璐 — see the person note for the explanation of this orthographic variation, which Huáng himself used.
The Yàojiě’s significance is twofold. First, it is the first systematic Qīng jīngfāng pharmacology — pharmacology indexed to the ShānghánJīnguì corpus rather than to the Běnjīng substance order. This methodological move was decisive for the subsequent late-Qīng jīngfāng revival (Zōu Shù 鄒澍 Běnjīng shū zhèng KR3ec066, Zhōu Yán 周巖 Běncǎo sī biàn lù KR3ec053 both presuppose Huáng’s framework). Second, it embodies Huáng’s distinctive qìwèishēngjiàng theoretical doctrine — the systematic application of the four-vector framework of ascending / descending / floating / sinking drug action — which is one of the principal mid-Qīng theoretical contributions to pharmacology.
The companion work Yùqiū yàojiě KR3ec065 (1754) extends the same method to drugs not used by Zhòngjǐng. Together the two works form a complete Huáng-school pharmacology.
Translations and research
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群. 2003. Yīxué wǔshí jiā. — chapter on Huáng.
- Huáng Yuán-yù yīxué quánshū 黃元御醫學全書. 1996. Zhongguo zhongyiyao. — collected works with the Yàojiě.
- Sūn Wéijuān 孫偉娟 et al. 2003. Huáng Yuán-yù.
- No complete Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 長沙藥解 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB