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 SòngYuánMíng 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 QíHuáng [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 JiāngNán: 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
- 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