Zēngdìng Wěiyào Tiáobiàn 增訂偽藥條辨
Revised and Expanded Discrimination of Fraudulent Drugs originally by 鄭肖岩 (Zhèng Xiāoyán, zì Yánfǔ 巖甫, hào Yǐnjǐng Shānrén 飲井山人, 1856–1934, 清); revised and expanded by 曹炳章 (Cáo Bǐngzhāng, zì Chìdiàn 赤電, 1878–1956, 民國)
About the work
The Zēngdìng wěiyào tiáobiàn is the principal early-20th-century Chinese monograph on the detection of fraudulent drugs — substances sold under a recognised pharmacological name that are in fact substitutions, adulterations, or outright counterfeits of the genuine article. The work has two textual layers. The original Wěiyào tiáobiàn 偽藥條辨 was compiled by the late-Qīng Fújiàn physician Zhèng Xiāoyán 鄭肖岩 (1856–1934) over seventeen years and printed in 1901; it identified about 110 drugs commonly counterfeited in the late-Qīng market, with detailed organoleptic criteria (taste, smell, colour, texture, microscopic appearance under a hand-lens) for distinguishing genuine from fake. The 1917 postface (中華民國六年荔夏天貺節, written when Zhèng was 69) records that Zhèng later read Cáo Bǐngzhāng’s Guī dìng yào pǐn zhī shāng què 規定藥品之商榷 (“Discussion on the Standardisation of Drugs”) and sent his own Tiáobiàn manuscript to Cáo for collaborative expansion. Cáo published the expanded Zēngdìng edition in 1928 (with various reprintings into the 1930s), adding new counterfeits, photographic and woodcut illustrations of genuine versus fake specimens, and pharmacognostic detail.
The work in 4 juǎn covers approximately 200 drugs. For each, the typical entry gives: the canonical drug name and source-species, the genuine drug’s organoleptic characters, a list of the substances commonly substituted (with their identifying features), and a clinical caveat about the consequences of using the substitution. The work is the principal pre-modern Chinese ancestor of the modern pharmacognostic literature and was one of the documentary inputs to the early-PRC standardisation of zhōng yào 中藥 (Chinese-medicinal substance) quality criteria.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The frontmatter retains:
- Zhèng Xiāoyán’s postface dated 中華民國六年荔夏天貺節 (1917, when he was 69), explaining how he came to send his manuscript to Cáo for expansion. The postface is signed 飲井山人肖岩甫謹跋.
- Cáo Bǐngzhāng’s editor’s preface (undated but conventionally 1928), explaining the revision method.
- A series of fán lì explaining the apparatus.
Abstract
Zhèng Xiāoyán (鄭肖岩, 1856–1934, no confident CBDB id), zì Yánfǔ 巖甫, hào Yǐnjǐng Shānrén 飲井山人. Native of Fújiàn (Fúníng prefecture). Late-Qīng provincial physician who spent his career in private practice on the southern Fújiàn coast and developed his interest in drug fraud through pharmacognostic observation of the substances arriving at coastal Fújiàn pharmacies through the maritime trade. (The catalog meta is silent on Zhèng — he is named on the textual evidence of the postface.)
Cáo Bǐngzhāng (曹炳章, 1878–1956), the Shàoxīng physician and bibliophile-editor. See his person note.
The work’s significance is twofold. First, it is the principal Chinese pharmacognostic treatise of the early 20th century — the principal native counterpart to the contemporaneous Western pharmacognosy that was making rapid progress through the introduction of microscopy and chemistry to drug identification. Second, it is a key document in the early-Republican Chinese-medicine modernisation movement: both Zhèng’s preface and Cáo’s expansion are programmatic statements that the survival of Chinese pharmacology depends on driving out drug-fraud and matching the rigour of Western pharmacognosy.
Translations and research
- Bian, He. 2020. Know Your Remedies. PUP. — discusses pharmacognosy and fraud in late-imperial China.
- Andrews, Bridie. 2014. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. UBC Press.
- Zēng-dìng wěi yào tiáo biàn (multiple modern editions; standard reference Renmin weisheng 2007).
- No Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 增訂偽藥條辨 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB