Běncǎo Jiǎnyào Fāng 本草簡要方
A Concise Formulary Based on the Materia Medica by 張宗祥 (Zhāng Zōngxiáng, 1882–1965; Hǎiníng 海寧, Zhèjiāng)
About the work
A wartime-Republican-era simplified formulary by Zhāng Zōngxiáng 張宗祥 (1882–1965), the prominent late-Qīng / Republican bibliographer, calligrapher, and librarian (founder-director of the Zhèjiāng Provincial Library), compiled while in refuge in Guìlín 桂林 and afterwards while serving in the Chinese Farmers’ Bank (Zhōngguó nóngmín yínháng 中國農民銀行) during the late stages of the Sino-Japanese War. The work is organised by substance (rather than by syndrome): the formulas are indexed under each principal běncǎo (substance) — zǐshēn, báizhú, huángqí, etc. — with the indications and clinical conditions for which that substance is the principal agent listed beneath. This is a deliberately inverted organisational scheme relative to the standard fāngzǔ (formula-category) compilations.
Prefaces
Self-Preface (zìxù) by Zhāng Zōngxiáng:
“After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident [July 1937], I had been lodging in Hànkǒu. In autumn of [民國] 27 [= 1938] I entered Guìlín. The barbarian-disaster grew daily deeper, and Wǔhàn also fell; the European war had not yet broken out; the steps of the nation were more precarious than piled-up eggs. — Several of my disciples passed through Guìlín; knowing my life was hard, they asked what was to be my future course of action. I said: ‘If the nation has the misfortune to perish, [Gù] Tínglín [Gù Yánwǔ] and [Wáng] Chuánshān — I dare not study them. Should I, perhaps, take Mr. Qīngzhǔ [= Fù Shān, 1607–1684, the late-Míng / early-Qīng polymath, Ming loyalist, and physician of Tàiyuán] as my model?’ Now in truth my calligraphy-and-painting have no rule, my medicine-and-medicaments have no school; — these words were also merely to make a show to the world.
“In autumn of [民國] 32 [= 1943], affairs of the world began daily to improve. I had earlier taken refuge in the Chinese Farmers’ Bank, my food-and-clothing barely sufficient; and in the leisure from official duties I therefore compiled this book. — Chinese medicine traditionally is not specifically expert at identifying disease but is specifically heavy on applying drugs. The Shānghán lùn covers a great number of diseases, all summarily called Shānghán; but when it comes to drug-administration, each is distinct. Paediatric jīngfēng: many diseases, all summarily called jí / màn jīngfēng; but each gets a different drug. Examples like this are uncountable. — One can see: even where the identification of the disease is not exact, the use of drugs is not therefore wrong. — Thus Chinese drugs and Chinese drug-experience are both worth taking. To seek Chinese medical theory by setting aside the gōngyòng (functional applications) of the drugs and the experience of their use, and merely to discourse vaguely on the abstract principles of wǔxíng generation-and-conquest — is it any wonder that Chinese medicine declines day by day?
“My compilation of this book is therefore specifically devoted [to the substances and their tested-clinical-applications]…”
Abstract
A wartime / postwar Republican formulary by a major non-medical literatus, completed in 1943 at the height of the Sino-Japanese war while Zhāng Zōngxiáng was in refuge in Guìlín. Zhāng (1882–1965) was a multi-disciplinary scholar of the Tàizhōu xuépài 太州學派 calligraphic-philological tradition, a founder of the modern Zhèjiāng Provincial Library, an editor and bibliographer of the SòngYuánMíngQīng literature, and a calligrapher whose work is still highly valued. His turn to běncǎo-based clinical practice in the war years was occasional rather than vocational, but the Běncǎo jiǎnyào fāng is the substantive result.
The work’s methodological innovation is the explicit thesis that Chinese clinical efficacy depends not on accurate disease-identification but on accumulated empirical knowledge of drug-effects on syndrome-clusters. Zhāng argues that Chinese medicine’s pharmacological corpus is its strongest contribution, and that the yīnyáng / wǔxíng speculative apparatus is largely epiphenomenal to clinical efficacy. This is a recognisably modern-Republican reformist position on traditional Chinese medicine — preserving the pharmacological-clinical empirical corpus while bracketing the cosmological-speculative scaffolding.
The work circulated in Guìlín wartime printings and was reprinted in the early PRC; the modern annotated edition is in the Zhōngyī gǔjí míngzhù cóngshū.
Translations and research
- Zhāng Zōngxiáng 張宗祥 biographies and bibliographies (multiple): the major one is in the Hǎiníng wénshǐ zīliào 海寧文史資料 (1980s).
- For Zhāng’s broader scholarly legacy: he is best known for editorial work on Sòng and Míng sources and the founding of the Zhèjiāng Provincial Library.
Other points of interest
The preface’s invocation of 傅山 (Fù Shān, 1607–1684) as a model for the loyalist scholar-physician (Zhāng explicitly contrasts Fù Shān with Gù Tínglín and Wáng Chuánshān as a survivable model under foreign occupation) is one of the more striking Republican-era reuses of late-Míng loyalist exemplars. Zhāng’s choice of Fù Shān places him in a specific lineage: Fù Shān had refused Qīng official appointment in 1679 and turned to medical practice in Tàiyuán; Zhāng, similarly, refused Japanese-collaboration politics and turned to clinical writing in Guìlín / Chóngqìng exile.
Links
- See 張宗祥 for full biography.
- See 傅山 for the late-Míng / early-Qīng model invoked.
- 本草簡要方 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB