Yáng Chéngbó xiānshēng yíliú xuédào mìshū 楊成博先生遺留穴道秘書
Master Yáng Chéngbó’s Bequeathed Secret Book of the Vital-Point Pathways by 楊成博 Yáng Chéngbó (撰)
About the work
A short Qīng-period one-juan martial-arts injury-medicine secret manual ascribed to a certain Yáng Chéngbó 楊成博, transmitted as a closely-held kǒujué 口訣 (“oral formula”) secret tradition rather than as a formal medical monograph. The text presents the xuédào diǎnmài 穴道點脈 (“vital-point-and-pulse-pathway”) tradition that intersects with wǔshù 武術 (Chinese martial arts) striking-and-rescue practice: it teaches the practitioner how to identify lethal points on the body, what time-of-day window each “blood-pathway” (血道) occupies, how to diagnose whether a struck patient is salvageable, and what herbal formula must be administered at each of the twelve double-hours to undo a strike-injury at the corresponding pathway. The opening (KR3ee051_000.txt) opens with the Sānjiān zhī fǎ 三尖之法 (“three-tip method”) — the tiger-tip (虎尖), palm-tip (掌尖), and shoulder-tip (肩尖) striking targets — and warns the disciple: “This book, if transmitted to a good person, can be used to treat people part by part; if a wicked person gets it, the harm will be no small thing — never transmit it carelessly” (此書若傳好人，固可按部醫人，如歹人得之則禍害不淺，切不可亂人矣). The work is registered in the Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū 海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書 — the modern series of “rare Chinese-medicine texts repatriated from overseas collections” — and survives in a single-juan manuscript transmission.
Abstract
Yáng Chéngbó is otherwise unknown to the standard bibliographies of Chinese medicine; he is not listed in the Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù’s author index, and no biographical entry survives. The work belongs to the underground manuscript tradition of diǎnxué 點穴 (“point-striking”) and jiēgǔ 接骨 (“bone-setting”) that circulated within martial-arts lineages in the Míng-Qīng period and was traditionally kept off the printed-canon record — hence its description as a “bequeathed secret book”. The text combines (1) point-anatomy under the categories bā dà xué 八大穴 (8 great points) / shíbā xué 十八穴 (18 points) / wǔshísì xiǎoxué 五十四小穴 (54 lesser points) = 72 total, with their lethality and treatment windows; (2) twelve hourly prescriptions, each named after the affected pathway (e.g. Xiāné 仙鵝 at zǐ hour, Pányuán 盤元 at chǒu hour, Dùjiǎo 肚角 at yín hour, etc.); (3) a “seven-fragrant diédǎ wán” (七香跌打丸) all-purpose injury pill with 38 ingredients; (4) a Huíshēng dān 回生丹 (Reviving-Life Elixir) for revival from unconsciousness; and (5) a Diédǎ diàoyū 跌打吊瘀 external wash. The dating window is conservatively bracketed to the Qīng (1644–1911) on grounds of vocabulary and the absence of any Republican-era loanwords; the catalog’s “Qīng” assignment is followed here.
The text is of considerable interest as documentation of the Míng-Qīng underground wǔshù injury-medicine tradition, in which time-of-day pathway theory (the zǐwǔ liúzhù doctrine of KR3ee045 / KR3ee048) was applied not to therapeutic acupuncture but to combat-strike calculation: at each double-hour, qì-and-blood are said to circulate through a specific pathway, and a strike at that pathway during its hour is held to be fatal within a specific later interval (e.g. “at zǐ hour, blood travels the left throat-pathway named Xiāné; one struck there dies in 72 days; the following formula completes the cure”). This is the same chronoacupuncture logic mirrored into a combat-and-rescue framework.
Translations and research
- Lin Boyuan 林伯原, Zhōngguó wǔshù shǐ 中國武術史 (1996) — surveys the diǎn-xué injury-medicine literature.
- Stanley E. Henning, “Chinese Boxing: The Internal Versus External Schools in the Light of History and Theory,” Journal of Asian Martial Arts 6.3 (1997), 10–19 — frames the underground manuscript tradition to which this text belongs.
Links
- Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū, the modern compilation series in which this manuscript surfaced.
- Kanseki DB
- 楊成博先生遺留穴道秘書 (jicheng.tw)