Wèishēng Yìjiǎn Fāng 衛生易簡方
Easy and Simple Recipes for Hygiene by 胡濙 (Hú Yíng, 1375–1463, zì Yuánjié 源潔, hào Jiéān 潔庵, 明) — early-Ming Lǐbù shàngshū 禮部尚書, served under five emperors
About the work
The Wèishēng yìjiǎn fāng in 12 juǎn is an early-Ming simple-recipe practical formulary compiled by the senior Ming official Hú Yíng 胡濙. The work is organised around the principle of yìjiǎn 易簡 (“easy and simple”) — using cheap, locally available substances and short, easily compounded recipes — and is intended for households without ready access to physicians or pharmacies. The recipes draw from the Bencao and Júfāng traditions, but Hú’s editorial filter retains only those recipes that use commonly-available drugs and that can be prepared by a layperson.
The book opens (per the surviving hxwd front matter) with an appended drug-taboo / dietary-restriction section — codifying which foods, drugs, and behaviours are incompatible with each common medicinal substance (e.g. “do not eat peach, plum, sparrow flesh, coriander, garlic, raw fish, malt sugar, or mutton when taking báizhú 白朮”). This is one of the most systematic Ming-era statements of pharmaceutical-dietary incompatibility. The work also contains an unusual veterinary section for the six domestic animals (cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, dogs, chickens), reflecting its rural / agricultural target audience.
Prefaces
The hxwd transmission opens with the drug-taboo / dietary section and then proceeds directly into the medical recipes; no extended literary preface block is preserved.
Abstract
Hú Yíng 胡濙 (1375–1463, CBDB 17268), zì Yuánjié 源潔, hào Jiéān 潔庵, of Wǔjìn 武進 (modern Chángzhōu, Jiāngsū). One of the most senior officials of the early Ming — jìnshì 1400, served as personal envoy of the Yǒnglè emperor (charged with the famous decades-long secret mission, 1407–1419, to seek out the deposed Jiànwén emperor; the Yǒnglè mission is among the most-studied episodes of early Ming political history), then Lǐbù shàngshū 禮部尚書 (Minister of Rites) for over 30 years across the reigns of Yǒnglè, Hóngxī, Xuāndé, Zhèngtǒng, and Jǐngtài.
Hú’s medical engagement was a relatively minor part of his career but the Wèishēng yìjiǎn fāng’s impact was substantial. The work was widely reprinted in the mid-Ming and Qīng popular-medical anthologies and was a standard reference in late-imperial rural medical practice. The work’s yìjiǎn “easy and simple” framing positions it explicitly as a counterpart to the technical clinical formularies (the Júfāng, Yīzōng jīnjiàn) — a practical-medical text for the laity rather than for professional physicians.
The 1410 date for completion is the conventional date in the secondary literature; primary-source evidence for precise dating is thin. The bracket 1410 reflects the early Yǒnglè years of Hú’s senior official career, before his decades-long Lǐbù shàngshū tenure.
Translations and research
- Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1989. Wèishēng yìjiǎn fāng 衛生易簡方 (punctuated edition).
- For Hú Yíng’s career: Míng shǐ 明史 j. 169; Hok-lam Chan, “The Rise of Ming T’ai-tsu” entries.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2.
Other points of interest
The work’s veterinary section — preserving early-Ming recipes for treating horse, cattle, and pig diseases (acute disease of livestock, jièlài mange, hoof and tooth conditions, postpartum recovery in dairy animals) — is one of the few pre-modern Chinese medical witnesses to integrated human-and-animal pharmacology. The recipes draw on the same pharmacopoeia as the human-medical sections but with adjusted dosing.
Links
- Wikidata Q11079389 (衛生易簡方).
- Wikipedia (zh): 衛生易簡方; 胡濙.
- Míng shǐ 明史 j. 169 for Hú Yíng’s biography.
- 衛生易簡方 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB