Qiánshì mìchuán chǎnkē fāngshū míng Shìyàn lù 錢氏秘傳產科方書名試驗錄
The Secretly Transmitted Obstetrical Formulary of the Qián Family, Titled “Record of Tested Effects” by the Qián family of 錢氏 (attributed; shìyī lineage, Shānyīn 山陰, Zhèjiāng)
About the work
A single-juǎn hereditary-physician (shìyī 世醫) obstetrical and gynaecological fāngshū 方書 ascribed to the Qián family of Shānyīn 山陰 (Shàoxīng 紹興, Zhèjiāng), one of the two great hereditary obstetrical lineages of MíngQīng eastern Zhèjiāng (paired with the Bamboo-Grove Monastery monks of Xiāoshān, see KR3ei046). The work covers the full range of women’s-medicine topics — pregnancy maintenance and foetal nourishment (bǎoyǎng shēngtāi); women’s exhaustion / depression / accumulation disorders (láoshāng 勞傷, piānyù 偏郁, yōusī 憂思, shíjī 食積); pulse-diagnosis for sex and parity; menstrual disorders and white discharge (báidài); bēnglòu (uterine flooding); foetal management; difficult labour and tāiyī bù xià (retained placenta); post-partum xuèyūn (fainting), high fever, persistent bleeding, dysuria, lactation; and abortifacient and cuīshēng (delivery-accelerating) prescriptions. The work follows the Shūhé (Wáng Shūhé 王叔和) pulse-doctrine and the Zhòngjǐng (Zhāng Jī 張機) prescription-tradition as the author explicitly states in the opening: “余之醫遵叔和之脈，述仲景之書，治百病之源.”
Prefaces
The KR hxwd recension KR3ei052_000.txt has no separable preface; the text opens directly with the Bǎoyǎng shēngtāi lùn and proceeds through topical chapters. The work’s name — Shìyàn lù 試驗錄 (“Record of Tested Effects”) — appears within the opening chapter as the author’s self-description: “苟得有效，即曰書名為《試驗錄》也” (“Whatever proves effective, that is what I write in this book named Shìyàn lù”).
Abstract
The Qián family of Shānyīn is documented in MíngQīng fāngzhì literature as a five-generation hereditary obstetrical lineage in Shàoxīng, parallel and rivalry to the Bamboo-Grove Monastery (Zhúlínsì) tradition of Xiāoshān. The two lineages are repeatedly paired in late-Qīng obstetrical prefaces — see for example the preface to KR3ei054 Tāichǎn mìshū by Hé Róng 何榮 (嘉慶十四年 = 1809): “吾鄉山陰錢氏及蕭山竹林寺僧獨擅其道，以行於世，遠近就醫如市。賴以生活者，不可勝計。第其方書秘而不露” (“The Qián family of Shānyīn and the Bamboo-Grove Monastery monks of Xiāoshān alone monopolised this art in our region; near and far, patients came to them as to a market. Untold numbers depended on them for their livelihood — but their formularies were jealously guarded secrets, never publicly released”). The Shìyàn lù is the Qián family’s secret manuscript surfaced in the late Míng or early Qīng, transmitted in manuscript and then in yīshū huìbiān anthologies under the title Qiánshì mìchuán chǎnkē fāngshū.
The catalog meta lists no author and no dynasty; the work’s collation of Shūhé pulse-theory with Dānxī (Zhū Zhènhēng 朱震亨) drug-formulary places it firmly in the post-Yuán fùkē tradition. The bracket notBefore 1500 / notAfter 1700 covers the plausible Míng-to-early-Qīng manuscript-circulation window; the absence of any Qīng-period drug-citations and the conservative Dānxī-style pharmacology argue for a Míng original recension. The work is thus best read as a MíngQīng hereditary-medical family manuscript transmitted under the family name (錢氏) rather than under any individual physician’s name — a common pattern for shìyī texts.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 — for the Shàoxīng-Xiāo-shān hereditary-obstetrical traditions.
- Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
- No dedicated study of this particular Qián-family manuscript located.
Other points of interest
The Qián family of Shānyīn and the Bamboo-Grove Monastery of Xiāoshān are sometimes called the “two great Zhèjiāng women’s-medicine schools.” Their formularies were treated as commercial secrets by their respective lineages, and the surfacing of either in print (as here in the Shìyàn lù) was treated as a significant event in the late-imperial popular medical market. The pairing of a shìyī family-physician lineage with a sēngyī (monk-physician) monastic lineage is a peculiar feature of the Shàoxīng region’s obstetrical sociology.
Links
- No verified Wikipedia or Wikidata entry located.
- 錢氏秘傳產科方書名試驗錄 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB