Jīngyàn Dānfāng Huìbiān 經驗丹方彙編
A Compendium of Tested Single-Drug Formulas by 錢峻 (Qián Jùn, zì Qīnglún 青掄, fl. late Kāngxī, Qīng; Wúxīng 吳興 [Húzhōu, Zhèjiāng])
About the work
A late Kāngxī era specialist dānfāng (single-drug or simple-prescription) compendium, focused on dānfāng (uncomplicated formulations, generally 1–3 ingredients) for use where the standard fùfāng (complex formulations) of the Júfāng and Sòng-Yuán-Míng compendia would be too cumbersome. The work assembles approximately 800 prescriptions accumulated by the compiler over a decade of personal clinical practice and pharmacological reading, arranged by clinical category.
Prefaces
Self-Preface (zìxù) by Qián Jùn, dated Kāngxī dīnghài 康熙丁亥 = 1707, summer, signed Wúxīng Qián Jùn Qīnglún 吳興錢峻青掄.
The preface is in the personal-affliction confessional mode characteristic of Qīng popular pharmacology:
“My late father, Tínglì gōng, all his life delighted in good works. He died untimely in middle age. As he was dying, he charged me, Jùn: ‘Our family for generations has planted dé (virtue / merit); you should respectfully continue this prior purpose.’ I wept and resolved not to forget. At that time of zhōngtiān bēitòng (the bottomless grief), I myself suddenly fell ill with blood-spitting and was nearly fatally afflicted; in over a year I recovered slightly. My mother instructed me: ‘You have suffered this disease; the thought of literati-career is finished. I see that since your boyhood you have loved to collect formula-books. Why not turn your attention to Qí-Huáng [medicine] — by which you may nourish your own life and save others’ lives, and so not betray your father’s good-loving charge.’ I therefore set my will on the medical profession, never slack from morning to evening. Whenever I heard of an extraordinary efficacious formula, I had necessarily to procure it with rich gifts; or, encountering an acute illness, I would test it immediately on the symptom. Those that worked, I selected and compiled. In this way, in over ten years I have accumulated some 800 formulas.”
The preface continues:
“In the spring of guǐwèi [1703] my old affliction returned, and now after three years the illness daily worsens. I have already considered that I shall not survive. — Wishing to make some good arrangement, and with my little son still in swaddling-clothes — I have heard that jīdé (accumulated merit) can be inherited and is good. In good books, shěyào shīfāng (giving medicines and distributing formulas) is the most urgent of all. — I had the good fortune to find a friend, the elder brother Xú Yún 徐芸, who has long held a good-and-virtuous heart; in past years he had printed [Xú’s own moral works] Yīnzhì zhùzhèng and Bìngwēi jīnduó for circulation in the world. — In the leisure of his examination-studies, he also dabbles in this minor art; with single heart we have together collected divine prescriptions and compiled them. This summer the manuscript is finally complete, but my old affliction has greatly worsened — my fate hangs by a thread. Still, this compilation is the result of ten years of toil, and my will is to make it public — how can I not see this work to its end? Therefore I press the woodblock-cutter to hasten and finish his work, and entrust to my paternal-elder Mr. Shěn Zǐ Wēng and my paternal-cousin Sui-gōng to distribute it widely on my behalf. — When I am in the Nine Springs, I may close my eyes.”
An appended second preface for the Dānfāng bǔyí 丹方補遺 (supplement to the dānfāng) gives the standard Fàn Zhòngyān (liángxiàng / liángyī) dictum on the moral equivalence of statesmanship and medicine.
Abstract
The work is precisely datable to summer 1707 by Qián Jùn’s self-preface — composed in haste as the compiler faced his own imminent death from a recurrent haemorrhagic illness (presumably tuberculosis or related condition). The work was therefore brought to print posthumously by Qián’s circle (the friend Xú Yún, the paternal-elder Shěn Zǐ Wēng, and Qián’s cousin Sui-gōng).
The work is sociologically interesting as a specimen of the moral economy of popular pharmacology in early-Qīng Jiāng Nán: Qián’s compilation is presented as a jīdé (merit-accumulation) act to redeem his impending death and to leave a moral inheritance for his orphaned infant son. The work’s full title — Jīngyàn dānfāng huìbiān — emphasises that every formula has been personally tested (jīngyàn) by the compiler, not merely transcribed from older formularies.
The work circulated widely in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the modern critical edition is by the Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè (Beijing, 1959).
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- Jīngyàn dānfāng huìbiān, modern punctuated edition: Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, 1959; later reprint as part of the Zhōngyī gǔjí míngzhù cóngshū series.
- Bian, He. Know Your Remedies (Princeton, 2020) — for the moral and commercial dimensions of Qīng dānfāng publishing.
Other points of interest
The preface is one of the most affecting Qīng medical self-prefaces — written by a man who knows he is dying and who is racing the publisher to see his decade of labour into print before he passes. It illustrates the personal stakes of late-Imperial popular pharmacology: the compiler’s mortal urgency to leave a useful legacy to his infant son, mediated through merit-accumulating publication.
Links
- See 錢峻 for biography.
- 經驗丹方彙編 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB