Yèshì Lùyàn Fāng 葉氏錄驗方
The Yè Family’s Recorded Tested Formulas by 葉大廉 (Yè Dàlián, fl. late 12th c., Southern Sòng; Yánpíng 延平 [Nánjiànzhōu, Fújiàn] → Lóngshū 龍舒 [Shūzhōu, Ānhuī])
About the work
A Southern-Sòng family-transmitted formulary in 3 juǎn (shàngzhōngxià — upper, middle, lower), preserving the medical recipes the Yè family of Yánpíng 延平 had accumulated and tested over generations. The compiler Yè Dàlián 葉大廉 explicitly distinguishes his project from the standard Sòng practice of secrecy: instead of keeping the recipe and dispensing the prepared medicine (the common merchant-medical strategy), he chooses to publish the recipes for wider transmission — anticipating the public-charity ethos that would later define SòngYuánMíng popular pharmacy.
Prefaces
Postface (bá) by Yè Dàlián himself, dated Chúnxī bǐngwǔ mèngdōng shuò 淳熙丙午孟冬朔 = first day of the 10th lunar month, 1186, signed at Yánpíng Yè Dàlián:
“The Yèshì lùyàn fāng is what was transmitted in our former generations and what they personally used in their daily lives. From my youth I loved to collect books, and especially attended to formulary writings. As I travelled in office in the four directions, each year I copied and accumulated [recipes] into volumes. Although the juànzhì (volumes-and-collections) I accumulated were very rich, those I had not yet seen used by men, or used but had not seen their effect, and those that I myself doubted and dared not lightly use — all those I have not dared to transmit to others.
“I have seen [in the world] that medical houses with the ability to cure people of their illness rarely consent to give up the recipes. — Each time I thought of this — that the dispensing of medicine to others is less than the recording of tested recipes, which causes them to be transmitted increasingly widely. I therefore slightly divide them by category, separating them into upper, middle, and lower three juǎn. The two medical scholars Liú Liángshū of Shòuchūn and Xǔ Yáochén of Sānshān have carefully made the collation, and I have commissioned the woodblock-cutting at the Lóngshū jùnzhāi 龍舒郡齋 (Lóngshū prefectural office).
“Chúnxī bǐngwǔ 1186 (10th-month-1st-day). — Yánpíng Yè Dàlián respectfully written.”
Second Postface for a 1204 reprint:
“The Yèshì lùyàn fāng — Tàishè recently in Lóngshū gave it to me in person, with detailed account of how this book was compiled without rashness. — I returned and tried it: of the jiějī tāng for Shānghán, the Bǔxīn qì qībǎo dān and similar drugs, all had marvellous effects. — Later when I served at Zhá and Wù, when there were sick prisoners in the two jails, or among the populace there were seasonal-ailments, I would always dispense the Jiějī tāng — sometimes by the dozens of catty — and those who took it all immediately recovered. The name Shénjié (Divinely-Swift) is truly not undeserved. People of the JiāngHuái region trust and use it greatly; in other places it has not yet been seen. I have therefore had it cut for woodblock at the Dōngyáng jùnzhāi 冬陽郡齋 (Dōngyáng prefectural office).
“Jiātài jiǎzǐ 9th-month-15th [= autumn 1204]. — Xún[-shǒu / colleague-administrator] [signed].”
Abstract
A precisely-dated Southern-Sòng family-transmitted formulary, first printed at the Lóngshū jùnzhāi in 1186 by Yè Dàlián himself, reprinted at the Dōngyáng jùnzhāi in 1204 by a colleague-administrator who had personally tested its formulas during his service at Zházhōu 霅州 and Wùzhōu 婺州. The work is one of the principal Southern-Sòng documentary witnesses to:
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The transformation of Sòng family-secret medicine into publicly-printed formulary: Yè Dàlián’s explicit choice to publish his family’s accumulated recipes rather than dispense them through clinic-practice alone was unusual at the time and is presented as a moral-ethical decision.
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The Sòng prefectural-office woodblock-publishing economy: both printings — at Lóngshū (Shūzhōu, Ānhuī) in 1186 and at Dōngyáng (a less-securely-identified prefectural office) in 1204 — were undertaken at the official woodblock-cutting facilities of the prefectural government’s jùnzhāi 郡齋. This is direct evidence of the Sòng practice of using prefectural-office resources for the printing of useful pharmacological literature.
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The clinical efficacy of the Jiějī tāng: the 1204 second postface preserves the testimony of a colleague-administrator who personally distributed the Jiějī tāng (Solution-Releasing Decoction) by the dozens of catties to seasonal-ailment patients and prisoners in his administrative jurisdictions, with universally positive results — a remarkable Sòng-era clinical Audit-trail.
The collators Liú Liángshū 劉良𦙀 of Shòuchūn 壽春 and Xǔ Yáochén 許堯臣 of Sānshān 三山 are mentioned by name in the original postface, providing further documentary anchoring of the work’s transmission chain. The text was preserved in the Sìkù quánshū and is one of the more substantial Southern-Sòng formularies to have survived.
Translations and research
- Yèshì lùyàn fāng, modern punctuated edition: in the Zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (multiple publishers, late 20th c.).
- Asaf Goldschmidt, The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty 960–1200 (Routledge, 2009) — for the Sòng medical-publishing context.
- T.J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Belknap, 2013) — for general Sòng background.
Other points of interest
The 1204 colleague’s testimony about the Jiějī tāng is one of the more interesting Sòng-era evidence-based documentation events: a prefectural administrator personally testing a formula across two prefectures over multiple years and reporting consistent positive results, then commissioning a fresh printing on the strength of the demonstrated efficacy. This represents an early example of what we would today call clinical-trial-and-replication reasoning.
Links
- See 葉大廉.
- See also 劉良𦙀 and 許堯臣 (collators, person notes not separately created — minor figures known only from this work).
- 葉氏錄驗方 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB