Jīngyàn Qífāng 經驗奇方
Tested Extraordinary Formulas by 周子薌 (Zhōu Zǐxiāng, fl. 1898; Shānyīn 山陰 / Shàoxīng), with preface by 林賢慶 (Lín Xiánqìng) of Hǎitán 海壇 (Fujian)
About the work
A late-Qīng popular-clinical formulary in 2 juǎn, compiled by Zhōu Zǐxiāng of Shānyīn 山陰 (Shàoxīng) while in service in the Tóngān 同安 (Fujian) prefectural office under the magistrate Lǐ Lánshēng. The work assembles personally-tested jīngyàn prescriptions in the late-Qīng popular-pharmacy mode, with strong representation of single-formula remedies (dānfāng) for both internal-medicine and external-clinical applications. The book is organised in two halves: juǎn 1 Nèikē (internal medicine — including life-saving emergency formulas, línwēi jiùhuó zhī liángfāng), juǎn 2 Wàizhèng (external complaints — pills, powders, ointments, and elixir formulations).
Prefaces
Preface by Lín Xiánqìng 林賢慶 of Hǎitán 海壇 (modern Píngtán 平潭, Fujian coast), Guāngxù 24 wùxū mid-winter = winter 1898.
“Formulary writings ancient and modern are abundant. Some are deep and abstruse in their philological exposition; some are quarrelsome in argumentation. Read together, they more-than-cover their beauty; read separately, each fascicle has only its own particular strength. The man who knows medicine — discerning the pulse and distinguishing the symptom — should certainly gather them widely. The man who does not know medicine — with the volume so vast — has no leisure to trace its principles. What is sought is the simplest, plainest, and closest-to-the-people — none is like the dānfāng (single-formula) genre. But dānfāng are difficult to obtain: people in the world habitually keep them secret and do not transmit them. — This I had long lamented.
“This spring I undertook commission to the Tóngān cānzhèn Chén Zǐmíng dūdū 同安參鎮陳子明都督 [Brigade-Commander of Tóngān]; and at the same time Mr. Zhōu Zǐxiāng of Shānyīn had also taken up office in the secretariat of Yìhóu Lǐ Lánshēng sīmǎ 邑侯李蘭生司馬 [the prefectural magistrate Lǐ Lánshēng]. We shared one banner of service and would meet frequently and exchange [observations]. In his ordinary life he is unwearied in good works and holds bāoyǔ wéi huái (universal-fraternity in his bosom); in the leisure of his official duties he also takes part in medical principles, and investigates them with great precision.
“One day he showed me his collected Jīngyàn qíběn (a work of tested extraordinary prescriptions), divided into two juǎn — about to be put on the pear-and-jujube woodblocks — and asked me to view it. I examined it from start to finish. The formulas it transmits are every line a tested prescription, every kind a numinous-and-strange [recipe]. For internal medicine there are the good prescriptions for near-death rescue; for the external syndromes there are the secret instructions for pills, powders, ointments, and elixirs. Nothing is missing, no excellence not perfected. Concise yet detailed — opening the fascicle, it is as clear as looking at one’s palm. What I had long lamented as not transmitted — now it is fulfilled at last.”
Abstract
A precisely-dated 1898 popular formulary by Zhōu Zǐxiāng 周子薌, Shàoxīng-prefecture literatus-magistrate-secretary who worked in the Fujian prefectural administration in the late 1890s. The work was compiled during his service in Tóngān 同安 and printed there in winter 1898; the preface-writer Lín Xiánqìng of Hǎitán 海壇 (the Fujian coastal island, modern Píngtán) provides the principal source for the work’s provenance and dating.
The work is a representative example of the late-Qīng provincial-administrative gentleman-physician genre: an official with no medical-degree training but with the literacy and the moral self-conception to compile a serious clinical formulary, and the official network to bring it to publication through his colleagues. Zhōu’s compilation method, as described in Lín’s preface, prioritises jīngyàn (personally-tested) prescriptions and the jiǎnyì (simple-and-easy) administration that the popular-pharmacy tradition required. The formulary is distinctive for the integration of internal-medicine jīngyàn with external-clinical pīnfāng / gāodān (pills/powders/ointments/elixirs) in a single 2-juǎn compass — a structural pairing that became standard in late-Qīng provincial popular pharmacology.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work survives in the 1898 Tóngān woodblock printing and a few later Republican-era reprints; a modern critical edition has not been issued.
Links
- See 周子薌 and 林賢慶.
- 經驗奇方 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB