Shānghán yòng yào yán jiū 傷寒用藥研究
Researches on the Use of Medicinals in Cold Damage by 川越正淑 (Kawagoe Masayoshi / Chuānyuè Zhèngshū, fl. late eighteenth century, 江戶)
About the work
A late-Edo three-juan study of Shānghán prescription-pharmacology by the southern-Japanese (南越) physician 川越正淑 Kawagoe Masayoshi, working in the kohō-ha 古方派 (ancient-formula school) tradition. The work examines the canonical Shānghán prescription corpus with a focus on the yòng yào 用藥 (drug-application) logic — i.e., the principles by which Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s prescriptions select and combine their component medicinals.
Abstract
The postface — dated 丁巳春三月 = third lunar month of Kansei 9 = spring 1797, by “南越醫員妻木直” (妻木直 Tsumaki Naoki, medical officer of Nan’etsu) — quotes the Shī jīng 詩經 line “有物有則” (where there is substance, there is principle) to frame Kawagoe’s editorial program: the Shānghán prescription corpus reflects a unity of tǐ 體 (substance / drug-property) and yòng 用 (function / clinical use), a unity that had been obscured by post-Tang commentators. Composition window 1790–1797 is bracketed by Kawagoe’s productive period and the postface date.
The work is characteristic of the late-Edo kohō program — defending classical Shānghán–Jīnguì clinical practice against both later Chinese eclecticism and contemporary Edo eclecticism (Gotō Konzan and the later kohō divergences) — by close pharmacological analysis. Kawagoe’s emphasis is on the biànzhèng 辨證 logic that links drug-property to syndrome-presentation, rendering each Shānghán prescription a transparently rational therapeutic choice rather than an opaque canonical inheritance.
Translations and research
- No substantial European-language treatment located.
- The work survives in late-Edo block-print editions and was not transmitted to China; modern reprintings are confined to specialist kanpō studies.
Other points of interest
The postface by 妻木直 Tsumaki Naoki — itself an elegant short literary text quoting Shī jīng and Yì jīng — is one of the few biographical witnesses to Kawagoe’s medical activity in southern Japan.
Links
- See KR3ef073 (Kawagoe’s parallel Shānghán mài zhèng shì).
- See KR3ef001 (parent Shānghán lùn).
- 傷寒用藥研究 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB