Huīhòu Fāng 虺後方
Formulas Following [the Master’s Cure of] the Viper-Bite by 喻政 (Yù Zhèng, fl. late Wànlì era, Míng), Prefect
About the work
A late-Míng prefectural-administrative jíjiù (emergency-rescue) formulary published by Yù Zhèng 喻政 during his service as a Jùnbó (Prefect) of an unnamed prefecture. The title — Huīhòu fāng (literally “Formulas-After-the-Viper”) — alludes to a personal-experience narrative: the compiler’s father had once been seriously bitten by a viper (huī 虺), and an yìrén (extraordinary-person) had transmitted to him the family the rescue formula by which the father’s life was saved. The compiler’s collection grew from this experiential foundation into a broader emergency-formulary published as a public-charity act of his prefectural administration.
Prefaces
Preface for the Huīhòu fāng by an unnamed associate of Yù Zhèng:
“Jùnbó Mr. Yùgōng, on taking up his administrative carriage, inquired into the people’s afflictions and sufferings; in defining and settling the jíshì (gathering-and-resettling), within not a month his name-and-praise pángpò (resounded). Yet he still deeply concerned himself with the qìnghè yándòng zhī sǒu (the elders of the bamboo-gully and rocky-cave), the kǔnbì kuǎnqǐ zhī mín (the sincere-but-ungainly people) — how few can come directly to his hall [to seek redress]? For one in a thousand, the kēkùn zhī shēnyín (illness-and-distress moaning) — is no less than the [silent] cries of injustice uncomplained-of. The tossing-on-the-couch is no less than the [stationary] jail-cell never traversed.
“Therefore he brought out the Huīhòu fāng and entrusted it to the woodblock-cutters for wide circulation. Like the Shèlìzǐ relics-of-the-Buddha ‘removing all suffering-distress, truly without false’ — the poor can forthwith ready it in an instant; the foolish can carefully verify its true-character against syndrome-pattern — so its merit is especially great.
“[Compared to the alternatives:] at the central-roads making sacrificial zūn (vessel), those who pass each take according to their share, some-more-or-some-less, adjustably — it is not enough to compare to its [the work’s] universality. In mid-stream encountering a sudden need, a single jug worth a thousand cash — it is not enough to compare to its [the work’s] simplicity-and-essential-nature.
“The Shǐjūn (Lord Envoy)‘s administration is dànggòu tīhuì (cleansing-the-grime and scraping-out-the-filth); his gōngpíng lèyì (public-fair and joyful-easy) is roughly all of this character.
“Of old, Yīn Zhōngjūn (殷中軍 = 殷浩 Yīn Hào, the Jìn statesman) was a miàojiě (subtle-understanding) master of channel-meridian; in middle age he fully retired. Later when he cured a person of a hundred-year-old mother who immediately recovered, he immediately burned all the canonical formulae — the source and shallow-broadness was thus indeed. — But this is not worth mentioning.
“Even Dí Liánggōng [狄仁傑 Dí Rénjié], with one acupuncture-needle immediately raised the rich man’s hair-knotted son and jìzhǎi, declined a thousand-gold without giving it heed — this is truly a xiāngdù (mutual-gauging) of judgement-of-character. However, formulary books are not gathered to be lightly viewed.
“The sword-seller has no [private] knowing. — One does not know how Liánggōng could explain himself. Only 孫思邈 Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Hù Kūnmíng dìzǐ requirement of taking the Lónggōng fāng (Dragon-Palace formula) into circulation in the world — the old gentleman’s heart was urgent indeed!
“Even less so: as for the gentleman’s [Yù Zhèng’s] circulated-formulas — coming from his attending on his honoured father’s illness, refined-thought and far-searching, suddenly encountering an extraordinary-person and afterwards obtaining it — the extraordinary-person is heaven’s vouchsafing. Just earlier [the yìrén] had raised up his honoured-father from the near-death, and again [Yù Zhèng] does not secret it in the bed-curtain. The Shī says: ‘The filial son is not exhausted; he eternally bequeaths to his kind’ — this is what is meant by the gentleman.”
Abstract
A precisely-undated but late-Míng (late Wànlì era) prefectural-administrative emergency-formulary by Yù Zhèng 喻政, who served as a Jùnbó (Prefect) in an unnamed prefecture and brought out the Huīhòu fāng as part of his administrative service. The work’s title and the preface narrative — the family’s near-fatal viper-bite cured by an yìrén’s transmission — give it an unusually concrete and dramatic origin story; it is one of the better-documented late-Imperial cases of personal-experiential medical authorship.
The preface’s yìrén (extraordinary-person) transmission-narrative is part of the standard late-Imperial revelatory-authorisation apparatus for popular pharmacology; it parallels the fújī (planchette) tradition of KR3ed110 and KR3ed120 but in a personal-encounter rather than spirit-writing mode.
The preface’s invocation of the filial-son trope from the Shījīng — that Yù Zhèng’s publishing of the family’s life-saving formula is the xiàozǐ bùkuì, yǒngxī ěrlèi (the filial son’s inexhaustible bequest) — frames the work as an act of filial-piety transmuted into public charity. This is a characteristically late-Míng Confucian-classical apparatus for popular medical publication.
The work is preserved in late-Míng and early-Qīng woodblock editions; a modern critical edition is in the Zhōngyī gǔjí míngzhù cóngshū.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is briefly catalogued in the Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù 中國中醫古籍總目 (2007). For late-Míng prefectural-administrative charity-publishing see Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (UC Press, 2009).
Links
- See 喻政.
- 虺後方 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB