Zhōngguó Yàowùxué Dàgāng 中國藥物學大綱 / Chūgoku Yakubutsugaku Taikō
Outline of Chinese Pharmacology by 伊豫平住 (Iyo Heijū 伊豫平住, fl. mid-18th c., 江戶)
About the work
The Chūgoku yakubutsugaku taikō is an Edo-period Japanese-language survey of the Chinese pharmacopoeia in the honzōgaku 本草学 tradition. The work treats each substance with a standard apparatus: shìmíng 釋名 (name etymology), gè fāng jìshù 各方記述 (citations from the pharmacopoeia tradition), biàn bié dào dì 辨別道地 (identification and provincial origins — the principal practical concern in Japanese pharmacology, where Chinese-supplied substances had to be authenticated and matched against Japanese-produced or substituted local materials), xiū zhì 修治 (preparation and processing), qìwèi 氣味 (nature and taste), and gōngyòng 功用 (clinical uses).
The opening substance entry — on gāncǎo 甘草 (licorice) — illustrates the method: Iyo gives the standard name elucidations from the Gāngmù and earlier sources; cites the pharmacopoeia descriptions; discusses the Chinese provincial origins (Shānxī Fénzhōu prefecture, Jiāngsū Lúzhōu, Fúzhōu) and the Japanese supply situation (the Engi-shiki records that Hitachi, Mutsu, and Dewa provinces submitted licorice to the Heian court as tribute; the contemporary 18th-c. supply included Kai-province domestic licorice and imported “Hollander” and “Korean” varieties — the latter, Iyo notes, “all unfit for use”); then runs through the four commercial grades stocked at Edo-period Japanese pharmacies (shù biān, zhōng biān, qiē rù, liáng jiāng yàng, gǎo gāncǎo), citing 李時珍 Lǐ Shízhēn’s grading criteria. Processing, qìwèi, and clinical uses follow. The level of pharmacognostic detail is characteristic of mature Edo honzōgaku.
The work is in the same broad tradition as the better-known honzōgaku works of 貝原益軒 Kaibara Ekiken (Yamato honzō 大和本草, 1709) and 稻生宣義 Inō Jakusui 稻生若水 — Edo Japanese pharmacological surveys that combined fidelity to the Chinese textual tradition with serious attention to the Japanese pharmaceutical supply situation. The catalog gives Iyo as a 江戶-period author; the work’s content suggests mid- to late-Edo dating (c. 1750–1850).
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The frontmatter file is present.
Abstract
Iyo Heijū (伊豫平住, fl. 18th c.). See his person note (sparse biographical detail). The work’s significance is as one of many Edo honzōgaku surveys that mediated between the Chinese pharmacopoeia tradition and Japanese clinical / commercial practice. Such surveys — the standard genre of Edo pharmacology before the rise of Western pharmacognosy in the Meiji period — are an important source for the 18th- and 19th-century Japanese drug-market history.
The catalog meta gives the dynasty as 民國, almost certainly an error — the work is mid-Edo, not Republican-era.
Translations and research
- Marcon, Federico. 2015. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. UCP. — comprehensive treatment of Edo honzōgaku.
- Yabuuchi Kiyoshi 藪內清, ed. 1970. Nihon no honzōgaku 日本の本草學.
- No modern critical edition or Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 中國藥物學大綱 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB