Mìfāng Jíyàn 秘方集驗
A Collection of Tested Secret Recipes by 王夢蘭 (Wáng Mènglán, fl. mid-Qing, 清)
About the work
The Mìfāng jíyàn is a 4-juǎn collection of “secret recipes proven by practice” compiled by the otherwise undocumented Qīng physician Wáng Mènglán 王夢蘭. The work covers internal medicine, women’s and children’s complaints, ulcers and external medicine, and a substantial zhū chóngshòu shāng 諸蟲獸傷 (“various worm-and-beast injuries”) section dealing with mad-dog bite, snake-bite, scorpion-sting, centipede, poisonous-insect, and human-bite injuries — a category that bulks unusually large in this work and gives it distinctive practical value for rural and travel use.
Prefaces
The source begins immediately with the zhū chóngshòu shāng section (mad-dog bite first) without a separate preface. No dated authorial preface is preserved in the visible portion.
Abstract
The work belongs to the substantial Qīng genre of practical formularies of mìfāng — “secret” recipes carefully sourced from family medical traditions and personal practice and then circulated under controlled conditions. Wáng’s mad-dog bite protocol is unusually detailed: the patient’s wound must be squeezed dry of “evil blood” in a windless place, then irrigated with urine or salt-water; the body of the antidote is bānmáo 斑蝥 (cantharides, the Chinese blister beetle) and fān mùbiē 番木鱉 (Strychnos nux-vomica, strychnine seeds) calcined with glutinous rice in a controlled three-stage procedure, with the rice carrier alone consumed by the patient (the bānmáo and mùbiē are removed). The antidote is to be followed by qīngdài 青靛 (indigo) and cold water if abdominal pain follows. Lifelong abstention from dog-meat and mutton is mandatory; for three months the patient must not hear gongs and drums lest the latent disease be “called forth.”
This post-exposure rabies protocol is the standard pre-Pasteurian Chinese practice and circulates with many minor variations across late-imperial formularies. Wáng’s version is a careful and pharmacologically informed exemplar of the genre.
The dating window: the work is not internally dated; stylistic evidence and the printing-history of the Qīng popular formulary genre place it broadly in the 18th century. The catalog meta places it under Qīng.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
Modern Chinese punctuated editions are included in popular formulary collectanea.
Other points of interest
The work’s careful rabies-bite protocol is a particularly clear documentary record of pre-modern Chinese practical-veterinary medical knowledge. The injunction against listening to gongs and drums for three months is a folk-aetiological expression of the well-attested rabies symptom of acoustic hypersensitivity in late-stage disease — the patient’s seizure response to loud sounds is interpreted as the disease “being called forth” and the prohibition is preventive in intent.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- 秘方集驗 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB