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驗方新編

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Text ID
KR3ed108
Date
1846–1846
Dynasty
清

Yànfāng Xīn Biān 驗方新編

A New Compilation of Tested Formulas by 鮑相璈 (Bào Xiāngáo, zì Yúnsháo 云韶, Dàoguāng – Xiánfēng era; Shànhuà 善化 [Chángshā 長沙, Húnán])

About the work

One of the most-circulated popular formularies of late-Imperial China. Bào Xiāngáo compiled the original 8-juǎn work in 1846 while serving in office in Wǔxuān 武宣, Guǎngxī; the work was repeatedly expanded and re-issued in 16-, 18-, and 24-juǎn recensions through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the 1849 Guǎngzhōu Hǎishān xiānguǎn edition was the first major reprint). The work is structured by anatomical region (tóubù head, miànbù face, yǎnbù eyes, ěrbù ears, bíbù nose, kǒubù mouth, yānhóubù throat, xiōngbù chest, fùbù abdomen, yāobù lower back, zúbù feet, xiǎoér paediatrics, fùrén women, wàikē external medicine including surgery and dermatology, and jíjiù emergency rescue), with formulas drawn from the entire SòngMíngQīng pharmacopoeia and including substantial popular and folk material. The work contains over 6,000 prescriptions in 99 categories.

Prefaces

The KR source KR3ed108 carries an appended preface to the Yānhóu mìjí xù 咽喉秘集序 from the ZhāngWú throat-clinic specialty literature (the Zhāngshì, Wúshì Yānhóu mìjí), which is one of the embedded specialist texts that Bào incorporated. The preface develops the moral-economic argument that itinerant yānhóu (throat) specialists in late-Qīng cities cynically extorted desperate sufferers for “the price of a small spoonful of medicine” — and that the publication of the Yānhóu mìjí (and a fortiori the Yànfāng xīn biān that contains it) is intended to defeat this monopoly by giving every literate household access to the standard formulas:

“The thirteen branches [of medicine] each have throat-and-tooth specialty practitioners. Is it not because the yìyàn (epiglottic-cavity) is the pass through which the eleven channels’ carriage moves, where you eat and drink, where you breathe in and out — what is at stake here is grave indeed, not comparable to the wide-thigh and great-back regions? But those who command this specialty necessarily extort a fee for every cure — they give a 方寸匕 (square-inch-spoon) dose and take the value of a knife-and-shell. The patient with parched throat cannot swallow food; he gasps and groans at the urgency and cannot bear it for a moment longer. — When he hears of someone who can cure him, his greatest wish is to escape suffering — he overturns his granaries to pay, prostrates himself, and offers; he does not begrudge a single hair on his head. Yet [the throat-doctor] gives him only a slight effect to demonstrate his power, then drags the case out to keep him on hook, until he has fully filled his pit and ravine before he is satisfied. Alas! — to make of the people’s suffering a profit-pit, that is the heart of the shaman and craftsman.”

Abstract

Bào Xiāngáo’s Yànfāng xīn biān is the principal Qīng-Republican-era popular formulary, with by far the widest circulation of any work in this genre. It was reprinted in dozens of editions through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often expanded with additional regional or specialist formularies appended; the 1846 original 8-juǎn version that is the basis of the KR text is therefore a terminus a quo for a transmission-history that grew significantly through later hands.

Bào’s compilation method is encyclopedic but with a clear clinical-popular focus: he draws material from the Lǐ Shízhēn Běncǎo gāngmù, the Sòng Tàipíng huìmín héjì júfāng, Wàitái mìyào, Qiānjīn yàofāng, and from substantial late-Qīng shànshū (charity-book) formularies, with consistent preference for jiǎnyì (simple-and-easy) recipes that an unlettered village family could apply. The work’s category-organisation by body-region (rather than by traditional fāngzǔ category) is consistent with the popular-formulary tradition’s user-friendly anatomical orientation.

The work was widely circulated by charitable societies (shàntǎng 善堂) — Buddhist, Confucian, and inter-confessional — who funded reprintings as part of their merit-accruing publishing activities; this is why so many editions exist with so much variation.

Translations and research

  • Yànfāng xīn biān, modern annotated edition: Beijing: Zhōngyī gǔjí chūbǎnshè 中醫古籍出版社, 1992 and later reprints.
  • Catherine Despeux, “L’imprimerie et l’usage des livres de médecine,” in Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale.

Other points of interest

The appended ZhāngWú yānhóu mìjí 張、吳咽喉秘集 (“Zhāng’s and Wú’s Secret Compilation on Throat Disease”) preserved in the KR text is one of the principal late-Qīng records of the specialist throat-clinic as a distinctive medical sub-discipline of late-Imperial China — including the polemical-moral critique of throat-doctors’ extortive monopolistic practices.

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