Zhǒngfútáng Gōngxuǎn Liángfāng 種福堂公選良方
Publicly Selected Excellent Recipes from the Hall of Planting Blessings by 葉桂 (Yè Guì, 1666–1745, 清) — original cases and recipes edited by 華岫雲 (Huá Xiùyún, fl. 1750s–1773, 清) — compiler
About the work
The Zhǒngfútáng gōngxuǎn liángfāng is a posthumous compilation in 4 juǎn of “tested recipes” (jīngyàn qífāng 經驗奇方) gathered by Huá Xiùyún 華岫雲 from the case-archive of his teacher Yè Tiānshì 葉天士. Huá is the same disciple-editor who compiled the Línzhèng zhǐnán yīàn 臨證指南醫案 (KR3ep010) from roughly ten thousand of Yè’s cases. After completing the Línzhèng zhǐnán, Huá turned to a second project — a supplementary case-collection together with Yè’s Wēnrè lùn 溫熱論 (KR3eg001) and a body of formulas — but died (癸酉 guǐyǒu = 1773 according to the preface) before the printing was complete. His friend Yuè Tíngzhāng 岳廷璋 enlisted the HuīzhōuSū merchants Chéng and Yè to fund the completion of the printing, and the result is the present work. The hall-name “Zhǒngfútáng” (Hall of Planting Blessings) is Huá’s studio name.
Prefaces
The principal paratext is the preface by Dù Yùlín 杜玉林, jìnshì and provincial judge (àncháshǐ 按察使) of Sìchuān at the rank of three-grade extra-promotion, dated Qiánlóng 40 winter, small-spring month (= Qiánlóng 40 = 1775, eleventh month). Dù relates that Huá Xiùyún’s family and his own were marriage-related (世為姻婭). He recounts that Huá had compiled Yè’s case-records into the ten-juan Línzhèng zhǐnán — already widely circulating — and in rénshēn 壬申 (= 1752, but the preface seems to have a different chronology; perhaps rénshēn refers to Qiánlóng 17 = 1752 when Huá initially set the project in motion; or it may be a transcription slip for a later cycle) began assembling the supplementary case-volume, Wēnrè lùn, and a body of jīngyàn qífāng. Huá died in guǐ qiū 癸秋 (= guǐyǒu autumn = 1773) with only two or three tenths of the formulas printed. Yuè Tíngzhāng then prevailed upon merchant patrons Chéng and Yè to complete the printing. Dù confesses he knows no medicine and is busy with military and civil affairs, but on a single reading found the work indispensable. The volume serves, he says, especially households in remote villages distant from skilled physicians, who could match symptoms against formulas and “raise the dead, revive the dying.”
Abstract
The work occupies an unusual position within the Yè-school corpus. Where the Línzhèng zhǐnán yīàn (KR3ep010) is the canonical case-record and the Wēnrè lùn (KR3eg001) the canonical doctrinal treatise, the Zhǒngfútáng gōngxuǎn liángfāng is the canonical formulary side-collection — the body of compact, transmissible, “tested” prescriptions that Yè had accumulated during five decades of practice but had not himself published. It bundles recipes for internal medicine, external medicine, women’s and children’s complaints, and emergencies, and is therefore close in genre to the popular jīngyàn fāng tradition but with a strong Yè-school imprint visible in its drug pairings, preferred adjuvants, and emphasis on light, warm-disease-sensitive prescribing.
The composition window runs from Yè’s death (1745, terminus a quo for posthumous compilation) to the 1775 preface (terminus ad quem for printing). Huá’s own death in 1773 is the terminus ad quem for the editorial work proper. The 1775 publication date is the most defensible single date for the received recension. The work was widely reprinted in late-Qīng and Republican popular-medical anthologies.
Translations and research
- Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1990s reprints of the Zhǒngfútáng gōngxuǎn liángfāng in modern punctuated editions accompany the larger Yè Tiānshì yīxué quánshū 葉天士醫學全書.
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011). Surveys the Yè Tiānshì lineage and the role of disciple-editors such as Huá Xiùyún in shaping the received Yè corpus; the Zhǒngfútáng gōngxuǎn liángfāng is touched on as the formulary companion to the canonical case-record and warm-disease treatise.
- No major Western-language monograph dedicated specifically to this work.
Other points of interest
The work documents the editorial-merchant-patronage network through which mid-Qīng medical books actually reached print: Huá assembles the materials at his studio in Sūzhōu; he dies before completing the project; a friend (Yuè Tíngzhāng) mobilizes Huīzhōu merchants (Chéng of Hànchuān and Yè) for financial backing; a high provincial official (Dù Yùlín, àncháshǐ of Sìchuān) supplies the legitimating preface. This is the standard mid-Qīng mechanism for posthumous publication of a major medical œuvre, and the Zhǒngfútáng gōngxuǎn liángfāng preserves the details with unusual transparency.
Links
- Wikidata Q67154654 (Zhǒngfútáng gōngxuǎn liángfāng).
- 種福堂公選良方 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB