Gě Kějiǔ shíyào shénshū gējué 葛可久十藥神書歌訣
Versified Mnemonic to Gě Kějiǔ’s Divine Book of Ten Prescriptions anonymous (probably by 林壽萱 Lín Shòuxuān or contemporary)
About the work
A complete versified mnemonic recasting of 葛乾孫 Gě Qiánsūn’s Shíyào shénshū 十藥神書 (KR3eh041, with which this work pairs). Each of Gě’s ten prescriptions is given as: zhǔzhì 主治 (principal indications) + yàowù zǔchéng 藥物組成 (composition) + yòngfǎ 用法 (administration) + gējué 歌訣 (rhymed seven-character mnemonic), facilitating memorisation by apprentice physicians. The zǒngjué 總訣 opens with “xuèzhèng chéng láo zuì nán zhì, Shíyào shénshū chuán Gěshì” 血證成癆最難治，十藥神書傳葛氏 (“blood-syndromes turning into consumption are the hardest to treat; the Divine Book of Ten Prescriptions has transmitted Mr Gě’s [teaching]”).
Abstract
The work is anonymous but clearly post-1857, since it presupposes 林壽萱 Lín Shòuxuān’s expanded edition of the Shíyào shénshū (see KR3eh041). The gējué closely match Lín’s own postface remarks (“亟謀付梓 … 並作湯方俚歌”), so the most likely attribution is Lín himself or a near-contemporary popular adapter. The dating bracket of 1857–1911 here reflects this.
The work is a derivative pedagogical companion rather than an independent text and should be catalogued as a paratext to KR3eh041 (frontmatter commentedTextid: KR3eh041).
The mnemonic-versification of medical prescriptions is one of the most pedagogically significant late-imperial Chinese medical sub-genres, treated systematically in Bridie Andrews’s The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine; it is the principal mechanism by which prescription knowledge was transmitted in the apprentice-physician training of the Míng-Qīng eras.
Translations and research
- See parallel KR3eh041 entry for the field background.
- Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014 — late-Qīng pedagogical compendia.
- No standalone English translation located.