Fùkē mìshū 婦科秘書
The Secret Book of Gynecology by 陳起 (Chén Qǐ, Qīng dynasty)
About the work
A one-juǎn gynecology manual by the otherwise obscure Qīng physician Chén Qǐ 陳起. The work opens with a substantial màifǎ 脈法 (pulse-diagnosis) section addressing pregnancy-diagnosis pulses, fetal sex prediction from pulse, guǐtāi 鬼胎 (false pregnancy / molar pregnancy) discrimination, and the relationship between cùn 寸 and chǐ 尺 positions in female pathology. It then proceeds through tiáojīng 調經 (menstrual regulation), xíngjīng sānjì 行經三忌 (three prohibitions during menses), bēnglòu 崩漏, dàixià 帶下, zhǒngzǐ 種子, tāiqián 胎前, chǎnhòu 產後, with formula tables and dosage notes.
Prefaces
The KR hxwd _000.txt carries no separable preface; the text begins directly with the màifǎ heading. No internal author preface or imprint colophon is preserved in the hxwd recension.
Abstract
The catalog meta lists 陳起 (Chén Qǐ) as author and 清 (Qīng) as dynasty. No further biographical information is recorded in the catalog or in standard Chinese-medicine biographical reference works. The work belongs to the substantial corpus of minor-author Qīng gynecology manuals that proliferated in late-imperial provincial medical practice. Internal evidence: the work prescribes the Sìzhì xiāngfù 四制香附 (fourfold-prepared Cyperus, with wine, child-urine, salt, vinegar) as a principal qì-regulating agent — a preparation standardised in late-Míng / early-Qīng popular gynecology — and uses the Sìwù tāng 四物湯 plus Bāzhēn tāng 八珍湯 family as the core xuè-supplementing therapeutic framework. The work prescribes formulas in the post-1742 Yīzōng jīnjiàn synthesis without explicit citation; a defensible bracket is notBefore 1700 / notAfter 1850.
The work belongs to the popular-practitioner stratum of Qīng gynecology rather than the literati-scholar lineage: it is a portable handbook organised for clinical use, with mnemonic verses on pulse diagnosis and formula-tables for common conditions. It has no detectable institutional, court, or examination-curriculum affiliation.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 — for the genre.
- No dedicated study of the Fùkē mìshū located.
Links
- No verified Wikipedia or Wikidata entry located.
- 婦科秘書 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB