Bīnhú Pàozhì Fǎ 瀕湖炮炙法
Bīnhú’s [Lǐ Shízhēn’s] Methods of Drug Processing by 李時珍 (Lǐ Shízhēn, zì Dōngbì 東璧, hào Bīnhú 瀕湖, 1518–1593, 明)
About the work
The Bīnhú pàozhì fǎ is a compilation of the drug-processing notes (pàozhì fǎ 炮炙法) from Lǐ Shízhēn’s 李時珍 Běncǎo gāngmù KR3ec025 (printed 1596), extracted into a standalone volume. The Gāngmù records, for each of its 1,892 substance entries, a xiūzhì 修治 (“preparing and processing”) section drawing on the Léigōng pàozhì lùn KR3ec086 of Léi Xiào 雷斆, the Sòng catalogers, and Lǐ Shízhēn’s own observations. The Bīnhú pàozhì fǎ compiles only these xiūzhì sections, presenting them in a standalone usable form for clinical pharmaceutical preparation.
The title uses Lǐ’s hào “Bīnhú” (瀕湖, “Lakeside”) — the standard alternative literary attribution for Lǐ’s work. The compilation may have been made by Lǐ himself as a working pharmaceutical manual to accompany the much larger Gāngmù, or by his sons 李建元 Lǐ Jiànyuán and 李建木 Lǐ Jiànmù who oversaw the Gāngmù’s posthumous publication; the textual tradition is uncertain. The work belongs to the same Míng pharmaceutical-processing tradition as Miù Xīyōng 繆希雍’s Pàozhì dàfǎ KR3ec088 of c. 1622, with which it shares much material; both are sometimes printed together in Qīng anthological editions.
The work covers approximately 350 commonly-prepared substances. Each entry gives the standard processing protocol — washing, soaking, slicing, baking, steaming, calcining, frying with auxiliaries (wine, vinegar, ginger juice, honey, salt-water, child’s urine, etc.) — that the Gāngmù’s main entry calls for. Where the Gāngmù gives multiple alternative methods, the Pàozhì fǎ tabulates them clearly.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the substance body. The frontmatter file is present.
Abstract
Lǐ Shízhēn (李時珍, 1518–1593), the great late-Míng pharmacologist. See his person note. The Bīnhú pàozhì fǎ is one of several derivative compilations from the Gāngmù (alongside the Bīnhú mài xué 瀕湖脈學 KR3eb017 and the Bīnhú jí jiǎn fāng 瀕湖集簡方) that extract specific functional layers of the encyclopaedic original for clinical reference use.
The work’s significance is as the principal Míng-period operational pharmaceutical-processing manual. It transmits Léi Xiào’s foundational Pàozhì methodology, as it was filtered through the Sòng-catalog tradition and the Gāngmù, into a working clinical form. Together with Miù Xīyōng’s 繆希雍 Pàozhì dàfǎ KR3ec088 it is one of the two principal Míng pàozhì references and an immediate predecessor of the Qīng and Mínguó standardised processing literature.
Translations and research
- Zhèng Jīnshēng 鄭金生. 2007. Yào lín wài shǐ.
- Nappi, Carla. 2009. The Monkey and the Inkpot. HUP. — major treatment of Lǐ.
- No standalone Western-language treatment.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned (parent work Q1010030 Běncǎo gāngmù).
- 瀕湖炮炙法 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB