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肘後備急方

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Text ID
KR3ed002
Date
320–343
Dynasty
東晉

Zhǒuhòu Bèijí Fāng 肘後備急方

Emergency Prescriptions to Keep up One’s Sleeve by 葛洪 (Gě Hóng, 283–343, 東晉), 撰; with 陶弘景 (Táo Hóngjǐng, 456–536, 梁) 補闕 Bǔquē and 楊用道 (Yáng Yòngdào, fl. 1144, 金) 附廣 Fùguǎng layers

About the work

The Zhǒuhòu bèijí fāng — literally Prescriptions Ready at the Elbow [i.e. in one’s sleeve] for Emergency Use — is the foundational Chinese emergency formulary. Gě Hóng’s autograph preface explains its design: faced with the bulk of Hàn-era recipe literature (Zhāng Zhòngjǐng, Huà Tuó, the Jīnguì lǜzhì, etc., “approaching a thousand juǎn”), and with the impossibility of getting a physician or rare ingredients in remote villages, he distilled a portable manual that uses cheap, locally available drugs (草石所在皆有), simple cautery instructions giving only depth and position rather than acupuncture point names, and recipes already tested in practice. The received text in 8 juǎn divides ailments into three sections — internal disorders, external lesions, and conditions caused by external agents (bites, poisons, traumas) — a tripartite scheme Táo Hóngjǐng made explicit in his Liáng-dynasty revision.

The text as transmitted is a layered compilation. The original Zhǒuhòu jiùzú fāng 肘後救卒方 was in 3 juǎn. Around 500 CE (太歲庚辰) Táo Hóngjǐng made his Bǔquē zhǒuhòu bǎiyī fāng 補闕肘後百一方 (101 entries, marked in red ink to distinguish them from Gě’s text — a typographic convention borrowed from Buddhist scribal practice and shared with the Shénnóng běncǎo tradition; see KR3ec001). In Huángtǒng 4 (1144), under the Jurchen Jīn, Yáng Yòngdào 楊用道 fùguǎng 附廣 the work by appending further prescriptions extracted from Táng Shènwēi’s 唐慎微 Zhènglèi běncǎo 證類本草 (KR3ec009); his redaction is what survives. A Yuán reprint preface by Duàn Chéngsì 段成巳 (dated 至元丙子 = 1276) further records the rediscovery of a sound exemplar after the late-Jīn collapse.

Prefaces

Five paratexts head the work in the hxwd transmission:

  1. Duàn Chéngsì 段成巳 序 (dated 至元丙子季秋 = autumn 1276) of Jìtíng 稷亭. A literary prologue that frames the work as a Confucian act of compassion (“the lord who cannot bear to see suffering also cannot bear to misgovern”). Duàn describes the text’s near-loss during the Mongol conquest: the regional commissioner Wūhóu 烏侯 recovered it from a Guō-family member in Píngxiāng 平鄉, who had in turn received it from the women’s palace at Biàn 汴 (Kāifēng) during the jìnghuá (catastrophe). Wūhóu ordered it cut for blocks.
  2. Bàopǔzǐ Gě Zhìchuān 自序 — Gě Hóng’s own preface. Surveys the medical literature he consulted (Zhòngjǐng, Yuánhuà, Jīnguì, etc., “near a thousand juan”), explains why he abridged it into a portable emergency manual, and rebukes the snobbish bias of guì yuǎn jiàn jìn (“prize the distant, despise what’s near”) that would lead readers to dismiss it for not being attributed to the Yellow Emperor, Cānggōng 倉公, Hé 和, Què 鵲, or Yúfū 逾跗.
  3. Huáyáng Yǐnjū Bǔquē Zhǒuhòu Bǎiyī Fāng 序 by Táo Hóngjǐng (dated 太歲庚辰 = 500 CE). Records that he has lived in retreat at Máoshān 茅山 for nearly ten years; explains his rationale for adding 101 prescriptions (bǎiyī punning on Yīng Qú 應璩’s Bǎiyī shī 百一詩 and on the Buddhist doctrine that the body’s four elements yield 101 diseases for each element); distinguishes his additions with red ink (朱書甄別); and describes his editorial reorganisation into 79 chapters with title-content matching restored, plus 22 supplementary chapters. A general pharmaceutical “house rules” section follows, codifying dosage units (錢匕, 方寸匕, 刀圭) and preparation methods for problem drugs (半夏, 附子, 烏頭, 巴豆, 麻黃, 阿膠, etc.). This is the standardising preface most often quoted in later pharmacological literature.
  4. Lùmíngshān Xùgǔ 鹿鳴山續古 序 — a brief later note (Yuán?) discussing how to adjust ancient dosages for the smaller modern body and how to read cautery point measurements from the patient’s own middle-finger middle joint.
  5. Yáng Yòngdào 楊用道, Fùguǎng Zhǒuhòu Fāng 序 (dated 皇統四年十月戊子 = autumn 1144 under the Jurchen Jīn, 儒林郎 Confucian-Erudite of the Biànjīng Imperial College). Records that the xíngshěng recovered a Qiántǒng (1101–1110) print of the Zhǒuhòu fāng, after which Yáng appended further prescriptions extracted from Táng Shènwēi’s Zhènglèi běncǎo, classified by ailment under each chapter. This is the layer that produced the received hxwd 8-juǎn recension.

Abstract

Gě Hóng (283–343), zì Zhìchuān 稚川, hào Bàopǔzǐ 抱朴子, was a Daoist alchemist and Eastern-Jìn polymath from Jùróng 句容 (Jiāngsū). His Bàopǔzǐ nèipiān is the principal source for early Chinese alchemy; the Zhǒuhòu fāng is his medical contribution and the practical complement to his alchemical writings. Internal evidence places the work’s composition in his later years (c. 320–343); the catalog meta date 東晉 stands. The work survived antiquity in Táo Hóngjǐng’s enlarged Liáng-dynasty redaction, then in Yáng Yòngdào’s further-expanded Jīn-dynasty redaction of 1144. Editorially, the received text is the Jīn 1144 recension; nonetheless catalogers preserve the original attribution because the textual core is genuinely Gě Hóng’s, and the layered additions are typographically and prefatorially flagged.

The work’s historical significance is multifold. It is (i) the earliest extant Chinese practical emergency manual; (ii) the first medical work to mention smallpox-like 虜瘡 (later identified as the early Chinese record of smallpox introduced via the northern frontier under the Eastern Hàn / Jin); (iii) the source of the first Chinese textual reference to a recipe using sweet wormwood (qīnghāo 青蒿, Artemisia annua) for intermittent fever, the recipe that inspired Tú Yōuyōu 屠呦呦 to isolate artemisinin and led to her 2015 Nobel Prize; (iv) an important witness to early Six-Dynasties pharmacological practice, particularly the use of plant-cold-water-extraction rather than decoction for qīnghāo. The text is therefore a continuous point of reference both for the history of Chinese medicine and for modern pharmaceutical history.

Translations and research

  • Sivin, Nathan. 1987. Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China: A Partial Translation of Revised Outline of Chinese Medicine (1972) and an Introductory Study. Center for Chinese Studies, U. of Michigan. — uses Zhǒuhòu fāng extensively.
  • Strickmann, Michel. 2002. Chinese Magical Medicine. Stanford UP. — discusses Táo Hóngjǐng’s enlargement; locates the Bǎiyī fāng in the context of Buddhist medical theory.
  • Lin Fu-shih 林富士. Multiple articles on Daoist medicine cite the Zhǒuhòu fāng.
  • Tu Youyou 屠呦呦. 2011. “The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine.” Nature Medicine 17: 1217–1220 — credits the Zhǒuhòu fāng recipe for the methodological insight.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.1 — bibliographic orientation.
  • Modern Chinese punctuated edition: Wáng Jūnmò 王均默 et al., 1956 ed. Rénmín wèishēng.

Other points of interest

The qīnghāo 青蒿 recipe (Gě Hóng, juǎn 3, jié nüè 截瘧): “青蒿一握，以水二升漬，絞取汁，盡服之。” The use of a cold-water maceration rather than decoction is critical — heat destroys artemisinin. This procedural detail, transmitted from the 4th century through to Tú Yōuyōu’s lab in 1972, is one of the most consequential lines in the history of Chinese medicine and a textbook example of how philological attention to traditional procedure can pay off pharmacologically.

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