旅舍備要方

Lǚshě Bèiyào Fāng 旅舍備要方

Formulas Prepared for the Lodging-House by 董汲 (Dǒng Jí, zì Jízhī 及之, fl. Yuánfēng / Yuányòu, ca. 1078–1094, Northern Sòng; Dōngpíng 東平, Shāndōng)

About the work

A Northern-Sòng single-fascicle emergency-and-travel formulary of approximately 100 prescriptions, the third of Dǒng Jí’s three known medical works (alongside the Jiǎoqì zhìfǎ zǒngyào on beriberi, KR3e0022, and the Xiǎoér bānzhěn bèijí fānglùn on paediatric eruptive fevers, KR3e0023). The work is specifically conceived for the traveller on the road — a Sòng-period gentleman serving in officialdom and obliged to journey between postings — confronting acute conditions in lodging-houses without access to a regular physician. Each prescription gives a brief syndrome-description, ingredients with doses, and decoction or pill directions; the categories cover the standard zúbìng (sudden-disease) repertoire: epidemic-fever, zúzhòng (sudden stroke), hébì (qì-obstruction), shǔluàn (sunstroke and cholera), fābān (rash-eruptions), bíniù (nose-bleed), yāntòng (throat-pain), bēngzhōng (gynaecological haemorrhage), and so on.

Prefaces

The KR source carries two prefatory pieces:

1. Preface by Mèng Zhèn 孟震 (a contemporary of Dǒng Jí, probably a colleague in officialdom or a senior medical scholar of the Northern-Sòng):

   “Medicine and medicaments originate from the books of the Shénnóng and Huángdì. Their breadth and subtlety, the principles of yīnyáng wǔxíng xiāozhǎng (the waxing and waning of yin-yang and the five phases), the way of jūnchén xiāngyǔ (the mutual relations of sovereign and minister) — these are not what the vulgar can fathom. The sages’ deepest concern was juānkē jǐshì (relieving illness and saving the world), aiming to bring all living beings into the realm of long life. Mr. Dǒng Jí practised Confucian learning from his youth and loved to read the medical classics; he penetrated to those briefest and most-applicable formulas, around a hundred and more in number, that can be prepared for emergencies in the lodging-house; he compiled them into a single fascicle, calling it the Lǚshě bèiyào fāng, and is about to commission woodblocks for its wide circulation. Mr. Dǒng can be said to have penetrated the sages’ true intent — most praiseworthy indeed! Therefore I have set down this little introduction for him.”

2. Self-Preface (zìxù) by Dǒng Jí:

   “From my youth I was much-afflicted, and so studied medicine and medicaments. I always thought of how the people of the world, blunted by glory and shame, raised to wanton joy and anger, careless in food and drink, irregular in their rising and dwelling, — how sūhū (suddenly), in a moment, illness arises unforeseen, and in the cāngzú (haste of the emergency) there is no leisure for medication. How sorrowful! Especially the official traveller, north and south, the guest on the road, encountering many adverse circumstances — xiéqì (pathogenic qì) enters easily, and the preparing of fāngyào (formula-medicines) for emergency is what one must especially attend to. Examples like touching cold and the heart pains (chù hán xīntòng), braving heat and one gets sun-stricken (mào rè zhòng shǔ), the wind cuts and the saliva surges (jué fēng xián cháo), summer-heat hides and cholera comes (fúshǔ huòluàn) — only if treatment comes quickly can one stay safe. Pursuing the type-analogy, [the dangers] cannot all be enumerated. Since I began practising medicine, I have collected proven extraordinary formulas — around a hundred and more in number — with detailed syndrome-descriptions and brief methods, so that the reader may understand them and use them clearly. I name it the Lǚshě bèiyào fāng in one fascicle. — In hope that for road-and-route illness, treatment may have a place to rest. I do not dare to keep them private; below are recorded in full.”

Abstract

The work is firmly Northern-Sòng by both Mèng Zhèn’s preface and Dǒng’s self-preface, both of which speak in the present tense to a publishing project of the late 1080s or early 1090s. Dǒng’s known active period (1078–1094) by Qián Yǐ’s preface to the Bānzhěn lùn anchors the chronology: the Lǚshě bèiyào fāng is plausibly contemporaneous, ca. 1086–1094.

The work is an early and substantively important specimen of the Sòng zúbìng / cāngzú bèiyòng genre — emergency-and-travel formularies designed for use without the attendance of a physician. The genre’s most famous later representative is the KR3ed002 Zhǒuhòu bèijí fāng 肘後備急方 of Gě Hóng (with the Liáng Táo Hóngjǐng supplements), which Dǒng must have known directly, and the implicit comparison is part of the work’s self-presentation. The Lǚshě bèiyào fāng is more strictly limited to travel-medicine than the Zhǒuhòu; its emphasis on the Sòng official’s predicament when caught sick in a lodging-house gives it a distinctive social-historical interest.

The text is preserved in the Sìkù quánshū and was widely reprinted in modern times (Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, 1959).

Translations and research

• Lǚshě bèiyào fāng, punctuated modern edition: Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, 1959.
• See also Wilkinson §31.5 on Sòng medical literature.

Links

• See 董汲 for biography and Dǒng’s other works (KR3e0022, KR3e0023).
• See 孟震 (preface).
• 旅舍備要方 (jicheng.tw)
• Kanseki DB