Jīngyàn Liángfāng Quánjí 經驗良方全集
Complete Compilation of Tested Good Formulas by 姚俊 (Yáo Jùn, fl. late Kāngxī / early Qiánlóng era, Qīng)
About the work
A mid-Qīng popular-clinical formulary in 4 juǎn, divided into internal-medicine and external-medicine sections with an additional section on 痘疹 (smallpox-and-rash-eruptions). The work was compiled by Yáo Jùn under the moral discipline of Chéng Yí’s dictum that “one who serves his parents cannot but know medicine” (事親者不可不知醫), and following the precedent of Lù Xuāngōng (Lù Zhì 陸贄, 754–805, the Táng statesman who compiled medical recipes for charity). The compilation is based on twenty-plus years of personal collection of jīngyàn prescriptions, but its present form was decisively shaped by Yáo’s experience during a plague-refuge in Shǔ (Sìchuān) in the rénxū year — when he was forced to engage intensively with the local medical-practitioner community during a regional epidemic.
Prefaces
Self-Preface by Yáo Jùn:
“Man is endowed with the qì of yīnyáng for life. — There is fundamentally only security and no danger. And yet often one cannot but rely on drugs. Indeed, since [body] is yīnyáng, it cannot but have pure-and-mixed, true-and-pathogenic elements; having pure-mixed-true-pathogenic, there cannot but be disease. — Once there is disease, then one must rely on the yīnyáng of the drug-substances to regulate it, and afterwards the secure remain secure, and the endangered are not in danger. The drug’s contribution to the world — how could it be small or scarce?
“But drugs cannot make their effect by themselves: they must rely on a formula. The formula cannot make its effect by itself: it must issue from a physician. With a good physician, there are good formulas; with good formulas, there are good drugs; and turning danger into security is not difficult.
“But this is so only for the wealthy houses and the great clans of the connected great cities. As for the poor villages and remote countryside — when one is in this cānghuáng wúliáo (urgent and helpless) moment, medicine-and-drugs are difficult to obtain; that one does not have one’s hands tied while awaiting death is rare indeed. — I have deeply pitied this!
“I had recently read Master Chéng’s teaching that one who serves his parents cannot but know medicine — and so I set my heart on medical learning; further, I once imitated Lù Xuāngōng’s idea of transcribing and collecting formulary books — wishing to save the people; but feared that without real testing, I would still err and harm them. — In the rénxū year, in refuge in Shǔzhōng (Sìchuān), when seasonal epidemic-qì was widespread, I therefore with the various practitioners of that capital consulted up and down — and so the more deeply obtained the miàoyì (subtle meaning) of the ancients’ formula-establishment. Each test had its effect — truly the wondrous merit of life-saving. Not daring to begrudge the labour of fair-copying, in long time it grew into a fascicle, divided into internal-and-external categories with an additional smallpox-and-rash section, compiled into four juǎn, given to the woodblock-cutter — that those who obtain this book may match the syndrome and consult the formula, simple-and-easy, sparing-and-convenient.”
Abstract
A mid-Qīng popular formulary, with the precise dating partly anchored to a rénxū year (壬戌). The candidate rénxū years in question are 1682 (Kāngxī 21), 1742 (Qiánlóng 7), and 1802 (Jiāqìng 7); the early Qīng plagues fit 1682 (the Wú Sānguì rebellion’s aftermath) and 1742 (no specific major epidemic identified). The work’s reference to Lù Xuāngōng and the Chéngzǐ dictum, and the absence of Wēnbìng terminology characteristic of post-1813 works, places it most plausibly in the 1682 or 1742 range. The catalog dynasty Qīng is consistent with both readings.
The work is a representative example of the mid-Qīng provincial popular-formulary publishing activity, with the distinctive feature of being explicitly motivated by personal refuge-experience during a regional epidemic in Sìchuān. This makes it an interesting case-study in the lay-clinical-pharmacology trajectory of the period: a moderately-educated layman driven by personal trauma to systematise his medical learning.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is briefly catalogued in the Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù (2007).