Yìshì Jīngyàn Liángfāng 益世經驗良方
World-Benefitting Tested Good Formulas by 盛景雲 (Shèng Jǐngyún, fl. mid-to-late Qīng)
About the work
A Qīng popular-clinical formulary in 1 juǎn by Shèng Jǐngyún, drawing primarily on the Lǐ Shízhēn Běncǎo gāngmù (1593, indicated explicitly in the prefatory note as Lǐshì gāngmù) for the bulk of its recipe-material, supplemented by other guǎyàn (rarely-tested) extraordinary formulas the compiler had personally collected. The work is in the standard popular-formulary mode: arranged by mén (clinical category), each entry giving formula-name, ingredients-and-doses, indications, and administration directions in concise form.
Prefaces
Original Preface (Yìshì lù xù) by a family member of Shèng Jǐngyún:
“The formulas for treating the various diseases of the ancients fill cart-loads sweating buffaloes (汗牛充棟). What they have to say of jìjì shēnglíng (rescuing-and-helping living souls), of yíwù hòushì (errors-bequeathed-to-later-ages), is truly comprehensive. — But one must call in the physician, take the pulse, examine the yīnyáng, distinguish the cold-and-hot, scrutinise the xū-and-shí, the depth-and-surface, the source from which the disease was contracted — and only then administer the prescription. One cannot rashly just try things.
“Yet I have observed that in the yuǎnxiāng pìrǎng (distant villages and remote countryside), there are always patients whose illnesses cling and recur (chánmián fǎnfù) for tens of days and accumulated months on end. When I have asked them about yàoèr (medicine), they shake their hands and knit their brows: ‘We people in this remote land — where shall we find drugs and physicians?’ I am ashamed not to know QíHuáng [medicine], and have often wished to give a hand — but always with regret that my will failed of its reach.
“Now my kinsman Shèng Jǐngyún has shown me his collected Jīngyàn liángfāng in one juǎn. On reading it, I find that what he has drawn from Lǐshì gāngmù makes up the majority; in addition, he has gathered the famous-recorded prescriptions of the ancients, searched out the repeatedly-tested marvellous formulas, and assembled them into one fascicle. By category and class, finely woven and divided — no syndrome unmasterful, no formula unequipped. And further, simplest of the simple and most convenient of the convenient — one need not seek out famous physicians at a distance, nor labour to part with great sums of cash from one’s purse; the relief is here. Taking it from one chamber and possessing the equipment, settling it in one moment and being amply supplied — is this not a good prescription for emergency rescue, a fine art for saving the world?
“Moreover, the substances called for in the formulas are half of them the common food-and-drink of living people: take them and one is cured — that is the joy of not-needing-medicine; or take them and one is not promptly cured — yet there is no fear of accidental ingestion-injury. Holding to this for benefit-of-the-world…”
Abstract
A Qīng popular-clinical formulary by Shèng Jǐngyún (the preface gives little personal detail, and the compiler is identified only as the preface-writer’s zú 族 — i.e. a member of the same lineage). The work is best characterised as a systematic abstract of clinical formulas from the Běncǎo gāngmù, supplemented by independently-collected tested-formulas. Its principal value is to serve as a single-volume entry-point into the formulary content of Lǐ Shízhēn’s vast pharmacological compendium — which the average rural-village user would not have at hand.
The preface is one of the better Qīng documentary witnesses to the mismatch between scholarly medicine and rural access: the preface-writer’s reported encounter with patients in remote villages who “shake their hands and knit their brows” at the suggestion of seeking professional medical help is a vivid documentary glimpse of the period’s medical-access geography.
The dating is uncertain in the absence of specific year-references in the surviving preface; the work is conventionally dated to the mid-to-late Qīng on the basis of its catalog placement and its dependence on the Běncǎo gāngmù tradition.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- See 盛景雲.
- Cited principal source: Lǐ Shízhēn Běncǎo gāngmù (1593).
- 益世經驗良方 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB