Gǔfāng Fēnliàng Kǎo 古方分量考
An Investigation of the Doses of the Ancient Formulas (Japanese Kohō bunryōkō) by the Hirai house 平井庭石 (Hirai Teiseki, fl. mid-Edo); collated and printed in 1793 by 貞庵山人 (Tei’an Sanjin)
About the work
A short Edo-period dose-conversion handbook for the classical Zhāng Zhòngjǐng formulas, of the kind whose practical importance to Edo kohō clinical practice cannot be overstated: the canonical Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì formulas use Hàn-period weights and measures (liǎng, shēng, gě, cùn, bǐ) that no Edo physician could apply directly. Hirai investigates the conversion-ratio between Hàn measures and contemporary Japanese measures, formula-by-formula, and presents a compact table-of-conversions usable in the clinic. The work is in the lineage of Yoshimasu Tōdō’s (吉益為則) dose-conversion published in his Yakuchō 藥徵 and Hōki (KR3ed097) — and explicitly identifies the kohō school’s Hàn-measure-recovery project as its theoretical foundation.
Prefaces
Preface / fánlì (general principles) signed 寬政五年癸丑孟春 (= early spring 1793, Kansei 5, guǐchǒu cycle-year), Tei’an Sanjin 貞庵山人.
“Hirai’s Fēnliàng kǎo says: ‘Every substance has an ultimate-source. The dosage is the apex of a formula. Therefore Tōdōshì divided up the basic formulas, examined each one’s appropriate-and-settled zhū and liǎng (24 zhū = 1 liǎng), and recorded them in guóchèng (Japanese-domestic scales). With this Zhòngjǐngshì’s settled formulas can be put into practice in the present day, and the physician’s task is greatly eased. — Yet [Hirai] kept it as a treasure in the storehouse without distributing it. I worried that as time passed in transmission-copying it might be lost — therefore I collated it and finally cut woodblocks.‘”
The collator gives detailed dose-conversion notes:
- Yī qián zhǎn 一錢盞 = the Hàn one-shēng. Cites the Shī jīng / Xíng wěi (行葦) commentary on xǐ jué diàn jiǎ and Mǎ Róng’s note that “one shēng is called jué.”
- Yī fāngcùn bǐ 一方寸匕 (square-inch spoon) = a powder filled into a 1-square-cùn spoon, which forms 10 honey-pills the size of a wútóng seed.
- Yī qián bǐ 一錢匕 (cash-spoon) = a powder filled into the curve of a Hàn 1-qián coin, forming 5 honey-pills the size of a wútóng seed. The later chēng “yī qián bǐ” = present-day 1 qián.
- Cites Hirai’s Yī héng 醫衡 on the practical clinical convention that Dàwūtóu jiān, Wūtóu tāng, and Wūtóu Guìzhī tāng — all three lethal-toxicity formulas — must not be re-administered after the first dose, irrespective of standard practice.
The body of the work gives the Zhòngjǐng formulas in the Guìzhī tāng sequence with all weights converted to Japanese measure (fēn 分 and lí 釐).
Abstract
A precisely-dated Kansei 5 (= 1793) Edo dose-conversion manual produced by the Hirai 平井 medical family, which had specialised in this calibration since the early eighteenth century. The work is one of a number of similar kohō clinical handbooks of the period — alongside Yoshimasu Tōdō’s Yakuchō and the corresponding sections in Hōki (KR3ed097) — that together made the Shānghán and Jīnguì formulas directly clinically usable in Edo Japan.
The work’s significance is practical-clinical rather than philological: it does not, like the Tamba house’s collations, attempt to reconstruct the original textual readings; it focuses on the conversion that allows the formulas to be prescribed today. Hirai’s dose-table is one of the most-cited Edo references on the question.
The collator-publisher Tei’an Sanjin 貞庵山人 is not identified by personal name in the preface; the hào “Tei’an Sanjin” (“Mountain-man of the Chaste Hermitage”) is a literary pseudonym, possibly a member of the Hirai family or a close associate, who in 1793 brought the long-private manuscript out of family circulation and into print. The work does not appear in the principal Edo medical bibliographic catalogues, suggesting limited circulation.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is briefly catalogued in Mayanagi Makoto’s online checklist of Edo medical literature; a critical reprint has not been issued.
Links
- For the dose-conversion tradition see Tōdō’s KR3ed096 Ruijuhō and KR3ed097 Hōki.
- 古方分量考 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB