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喻選古方試驗

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Text ID
KR3ed057
Date
1838–1838
Dynasty
清

Yùxuǎn Gǔfāng Shìyàn 喻選古方試驗

Tested Ancient Formulas Selected by Yù [Jiāyán] selections by 喻昌 (Yù Chāng, zì Jiāyán 嘉言, c. 1585–c. 1664, early 清) edited and printed by 王兆杏 (Wáng Zhàoxìng, fl. 1830s, 清)

About the work

The work as transmitted is a derived double-author compilation: in form, it is a collection of formulas drawn from Lǐ Shízhēn’s Bencao gāngmù on which the early-Qīng master physician Yù Jiāyán 喻嘉言 had marked his approval, recovered from a manuscript by Wāng Zhúyǐn 汪竹隱 and supplemented by the editor Wáng Zhàoxìng 王兆杏 of Qiántáng with his own tested formulas, then printed in 1838. It is therefore Yù’s selections through Wáng’s editorial filter.

Prefaces

The principal preface is by Wáng Zhàoxìng 王兆杏 of Qiántáng 錢塘 (hào Dìhuā 第花), dated Dàoguāng 18, wùxū liángyuè = autumn 1838. Its key points:

  1. The history of formula-medicine. Beginning with the Bencao of Shénnóng, with Qí Bó devising recipes, then Cánggōng and Biǎnquè, all preserved in Shǐjì biographies; then Zhāng Zhòngjǐng as the “spirit” of formulae. Subsequent ages have all had masters.
  2. Lǐ Pínhú’s Bencao gāngmù and the Cài Wànfāng zhēnxiàn. Lǐ Shízhēn took 27 years to compile his work; the Yuè Cài clan’s Wànfāng zhēnxiàn (a now-rare formulary based on the Bencao) was a “meritorious official” to it.
  3. Wāng Zhúyǐn’s family manuscript. The previous spring (1837 or so), Wāng Zhúyǐn, a bureau official, told the editor that “the family preserves a manuscript of the Bencao gāngmù yīfāng with selections marked by Yù Jiāyán.” The editor borrowed it and read it with care, finding Yù’s annotations to be “things not lightly committed to brush without firm observation.”
  4. The editor’s additions. Where Wáng Zhàoxìng could expand from his own clinical experience, he marked his additions explicitly as shìyàn fāng 試驗方 (tested formulas) and appended them.
  5. Editorial principles. Recipes using human parts (天靈蓋, 紫河車, 紅鉛) are entirely excluded as ethically intolerable. Recipes using cattle, dog, and horse meat are mostly excluded for similar reasons (cattle and dogs are working partners of humankind; eating their flesh courts retribution).
  6. Audience. The work is intended for travellers and the rural poor unable to summon a physician.

Abstract

Two layers of authorship require disentanglement:

  1. The Yù Jiāyán layer. Yù Chāng (Jiāyán) was an early-Qīng physician of Nánchāng who, after the Míng fall, retreated from official examination and became a major clinical figure; he is the author of the Yīmén fǎlǜ 醫門法律 and Yùyì cǎo 寓意草. The Yùxuǎn gǔfāng shìyàn preserves what Wāng Zhàoxìng received as Yù’s annotated selection of formulas in the Bencao gāngmù — a Bencao gāngmù-derived selection from Yù’s working life c. 1640–1664, with no firm date.
  2. The Wáng Zhàoxìng layer. Wáng of Qiántáng (modern Hángzhōu) recovered the manuscript via Wāng Zhúyǐn (one of his bureaucratic colleagues) in c. 1837, edited it, supplemented it with his own shìyàn formulas, and printed it in autumn 1838 in 4 juǎn.

The received recension is therefore dated 1838, not the 17th century, and this is the responsible date for notBefore/notAfter. The Yù original of the underlying selection is, by genre and by Wáng’s testimony, an annotated Bencao gāngmù recension from Yù’s hand — but no autograph manuscript survives, only Wāng’s reception of it.

Translations and research

  • No substantial Western-language study located.
  • Modern Chinese punctuated editions: in collected reprints of Yù Jiāyán’s medical works, e.g. Yù Jiāyán yīxué quánshū 喻嘉言醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōngguó Zhōngyīyào chūbǎnshè, 1999), where the editorial introduction sets out the Wáng-Yù layered composition.

Other points of interest

The editor’s explicit exclusion of formulas using human body parts (天靈蓋 cranium, 紫河車 placenta, 紅鉛 menstrual blood) marks the work as one of the cleanest early-19th-century statements of a bencao-ethical position against the residual TángSòngMíng tradition of yīyào (human-tissue medicine). Wáng’s reasoning is partly ethical, partly empirical (he reports that the recipes “almost never work and may be toxic”), and partly drawn from popular religious belief (the Cuī Xínggōng xiǎoér fāng admonition that placenta must be deeply buried in a propitious quarter to ensure the child’s longevity).

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