Gǔfāng Huìjīng 古方彙精
A Distilled Conspectus of Ancient Formulas by 愛虛老人 (Àixū Lǎorén, fl. early 19th c., 清)
About the work
The Gǔfāng huìjīng is a 5-juǎn practical formulary by the otherwise unidentified Qīng compiler styling himself Àixū Lǎorén 愛虛老人. The work distils what he considers the “essence” (jīng 精) of the ancient formularies into a single accessible compendium, arranged in five divisions: internal medicine 內科, external medicine 外科, gynaecology 婦科, paediatrics 兒科, and an appended emergency 奇急 section. The work was printed in 1804 (Jiāqìng 9, jiǎzǐ) by the Zūnréntáng 尊仁堂 publishing house at Jīngjiāng 京江 (Zhènjiāng 鎮江) for charitable distribution (kānsòng 刊送).
Prefaces
The author’s own preface (biànyán 弁言), unsigned but presumably by the editor, develops the work’s editorial rationale:
- The “spirit” and “sage” diagnostic ideal is unrecoverable. The Nánjīng says: “to know a disease by sight is to be a spirit; to know by hearing is to be a sage.” This jīngyì of the spirit-and-sage ideal can no longer be transmitted.
- What can be transmitted is the yīnyáng and qìhuà of method, made visible in formularies. The classics — the Língshū, Sùwèn — are too easy to read superficially and miss the marrow.
- Three classes of drug per the Bencao: upper drugs nourish life, middle drugs nourish nature, lower drugs treat disease. To treat without understanding the upper two is to fail at the third.
- What this work distils: by examining many formularies and seeking the best textual witnesses, the editor combines the jīng of each into a single jīng. Hence the title huìjīng 彙精 — “distilled conspectus.”
- Antecedents: the editor explicitly invokes Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Qiānjīn yìfāng and Táo Hóngjǐng’s Jíyàn fāng (5 juǎn) as the closest generic ancestors.
A colophon dates the printing to Jiāqìng 9, jiǎzǐ, third month (= spring 1804) at Jīngjiāng Zūnréntáng.
Abstract
The work belongs to the substantial body of charitable-print Qīng formularies issued by family halls (-táng 堂) or merchant philanthropies for free distribution. The Zūnréntáng of Jīngjiāng is one of several similar imprints active in the lower Yangtze in the JiāqìngDàoguāng decades. The genre is generally anti-doctrinal: rather than expounding theory, the editor selects tested formulas, lists their indications, and emphasises fixed recipes over flexible prescribing. Àixū Lǎorén explicitly warns against amateur dosage modification — “users must not arbitrarily increase or decrease the doses.” The work’s classification into internal/external/gynaecological/paediatric/emergency follows the standard late-Míng arrangement of, e.g., the Pǔjì fāng KR3ed036 but in an order of magnitude more compact form.
The 1804 date is firm from the colophon. The author’s identity, however, is genuinely unknown — Àixū Lǎorén is plainly a literatus’s hào but no biographical thread has been traced.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work appears in modern facsimile reprints and is included in some collectanea of Qīng practical formularies; it has not received a Western-language study.
Other points of interest
The work is a particularly clean example of the charitable-print pharmacology genre: a literatus compiler, a merchant-funded hall, a deliberately compact and authoritative work, an explicit aim of charitable distribution. The editor’s emphasis that the work is “useful for those in remote village settings far from competent physicians, or travellers on boats and carts” is the conventional rhetoric of the genre and indexes the very real distribution-problem of qualified physicians in late-imperial China.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- 古方彙精 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB