Zhòngxìng Xiānfāng 種杏仙方
Sown-Apricot Immortal Formulas by 龔廷賢 (Gōng Tíngxián, zì Zǐcái 子才, hào Yúnlín shānrén 雲林山人, 1522–1619; Jīnxī 金溪, Jiāngxī)
About the work
A late-Míng popular-clinical formulary by the celebrated Gōng Tíngxián 龔廷賢 (1522–1619), the senior Tàiyīyuàn imperial physician of the Wànlì era and one of the most prolific clinical authors of the late Míng. The title Zhòngxìng xiānfāng invokes the famous xìnglín 杏林 (“Apricot Grove”) metaphor of the third-century physician Dǒng Fèng 董奉 (the xiān of the title is xiān “immortal”, from the Daoist-immortal tradition) — who treated patients in exchange for apricot-trees planted around his clinic. Gōng’s framing is that his recipes will sow additional apricot-trees throughout the rural countryside by making the standard clinical formulas easily applicable in places where no physician is available.
Prefaces
Self-Preface by Gōng Tíngxián, dated Wànlì 9 xīnsì mid-autumn auspicious day = autumn 1581, signed Jīnxī Yúnlín shānrén Gōng Tíngxián at the Yǒuhéngtáng 有恆堂.
The preface develops a sustained methodological-philosophical argument on the relation of wángdào (kingly way / proper-rule) and bàdào (hegemonic way) in medicine:
“Medicine is called wángbà shū (kingly-and-hegemonic, different) — tracing back to antiquity to distinguish them. Like fish-eye and night-light (魚目夜光 / inferior gem and luminous pearl) or false-and-real jade (碔砆連城 / counterfeit and authentic precious stone) — yet they are not without distinction.
“Now bà (hegemonic medicine)‘s efficacy is in the guǐbó (cunning-and-startling) appropriate; while wáng (kingly medicine) — what people call yìjiǎn (simple-and-easy) — why is this so? Surely medicine does not like this category!
“I, from boyhood I followed my father’s jīqiú (basket-and-pelisse) profession. From my father’s medical clinic, my father would suppress bà methods. Later as I travelled in the capital’s medical shops, gradually [I observed] in the various great-formula [practices], like Jiǎng Dìngxī, Gāo Shǐxiàng, Liú Qiūtáng and the various seniors — I aspired to be [a practitioner] of the wángdào medicine, and the seniors took my interest in mouth. — I privately self-trusted [in this orientation], so I took the formulary-books that my father had transmitted, and continued them, completing the Yījiàn (Medical Mirror) in one fascicle, cutting woodblocks for the world’s use.
“But the formulas mostly assemble multiple ingredients — and the poor man in remote places cannot easily purchase them; truly it is a yíchūn (left-behind spring) of the apricot-grove. So I again secretly continued my father’s purpose: I sought common-language (lǐyán) — suitable to the disease-condition — selected formulas, chose ingredients, of the kind-with-one-or-two easily-obtained substances — to be applied for jùkē (great-affliction) treatment. Those who saw it found it marvellous, and named it Zhòngxìng xiānfāng. — May the household-easily-procure and the people-easily-understand, and the xiázōu xūmí (the most-distant-remote-places) all-find-themselves in the xìngyīn (apricot-shade).”
Abstract
A precisely-dated 1581 popular-clinical formulary by Gōng Tíngxián, the senior late-Míng imperial physician. Gōng was the most prolific of the late-Míng yījiā — his major works include the Wànbìng huíchūn 萬病回春 (1587, his most-cited work), the Gǔjīn yījiàn 古今醫鑑 (1576, with father Gōng Xìn 龔信), the Shòushì bǎoyuán 壽世保元 (1615), and the Zhòngxìng xiānfāng of 1581. The Zhòngxìng belongs to his early-middle career publication output.
The wángdào / bàdào methodological distinction that the preface develops is one of Gōng’s recurring doctrinal themes. He positions himself in the wángdào tradition — simple-and-easy (yìjiǎn) formulas of broad applicability — against the contemporaneous late-Míng tendency toward bàdào (heroic, dramatic) prescribing with rare and expensive substances. The work is therefore both a clinical-pharmacological compilation and a doctrinal-methodological statement in favour of accessible popular medicine.
Translations and research
- Gōng Tíngxián yīxué quánshū 龔廷賢醫學全書, Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào chūbǎnshè, 1999.
- Wànbìng huíchūn in modern annotated editions; abundant scholarly literature in Chinese.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011).
Links
- See 龔廷賢 for biography and other works.
- 種杏仙方 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB