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丁甘仁先生家傳珍方

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Text ID
KR3ed061
Date
1890–1926
Dynasty
民國

Dīng Gānrén Xiānshēng Jiāchuán Zhēnfāng 丁甘仁先生家傳珍方

Mr. Dīng Gānrén’s Family-Transmitted Treasured Formulas by 丁甘仁 (Dīng Gānrén, 1865–1926, founder of the modern Shanghai Mènghé 孟河 school)

About the work

The Dīng Gānrén xiānshēng jiāchuán zhēnfāng is a compact one-juǎn formulary preserving the working “treasured” prescriptions of the Mènghé physician Dīng Gānrén 丁甘仁, the founder of the Shanghai Chinese Medicine Professional School (上海中醫專門學校, 1916) and the most influential clinician of the late-Qīng/early-Republican transition. The work is arranged by preparation type — wán (pill), dān (elixir), gāo (plaster), sǎn (powder), shuǐjiān (decoction) — and gives for each formula a list of constituents with weights, the indication, and (in many cases) a brief commentary on the prescribing rationale.

Prefaces

The source begins directly with body text (item 1: Hǔpò dìngtòng wán 琥珀定痛丸) without a separate preface. The work circulates in late-Republican and post-1949 reprints, often appended to the Dīng Gānrén yīàn 丁甘仁醫案 (Dīng’s case-records).

Abstract

Dīng’s clinical synthesis is a careful integration of three Mènghé inheritances: (1) the warm-disease (wēnbìng) doctrine he received through Mǎ Péizhī’s 馬培之 lineage descending from Yè Tiānshì 葉桂; (2) the jīngfāng classical-formula discipline of Wú Qiān 吳謙 / Wáng Xùgāo 王旭高; and (3) the post-Sòng formulary practice of jiéyīnyǐnyáng (warming and supplementing the deep yīn while moving yáng) characteristic of Fèi Bóxióng’s 費伯雄 WújìnMènghé tradition. The “treasured” formulas of the present collection embody this synthesis: many are based on classical jīngfāng (Sìjūn, Sìwù, Bāzhèngsǎn) but with Mènghé adjustments (lighter doses, addition of moistening drugs, qīngbǔ “light supplementing” tendencies).

The composition window runs from Dīng’s clinical maturity (c. 1890) to his death (1926). Many of the formulas were dispensed at the Shànghǎi Zhōngyī xuéyuàn dispensary in the 1916–1925 period and entered the school’s pedagogical canon directly. The formulary thus stands at the institutional founding of modern Chinese-medicine pedagogy and is a primary source for the clinical orthodoxy that the modern Chinese-medicine profession inherited.

Translations and research

  • Dīng Gānrén yīxué quánshū 丁甘仁醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōngguó Zhōngyīyào chūbǎnshè, 1999). The standard modern collected edition, includes the family formulary, case-records, and pedagogical lectures.
  • Volker Scheid. Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007). Chapter 7 is devoted to the Mèng-hé school and Dīng Gānrén’s career.
  • Volker Scheid. Currents of Tradition: Essays on Chinese Medicine in Transition (Eastland Press, 2014), and Scheid’s earlier articles in Asian Medicine on Mèng-hé.
  • Yǔ Bóhǎi 余伯海 et al. Dīng Gānrén xiānshēng yī-shū jiǎng-yán shí-lù 丁甘仁先生醫書講演實錄 (modern reprints).

Other points of interest

The work is bibliographically interesting as a transitional text — Qīng in its formulary genre, Republican in its institutional context. Many of its formulas have entered the standardised Chinese-medicine pharmacopoeia (the post-1949 Zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó yàodiǎn 中華人民共和國藥典) under their MènghéDīng formulations, making the work a direct ancestor of modern TCM clinical practice.

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