Shēngshēng bǎolù 生生寶錄
Treasured Record of Life-Engendering by 袁于江 (Yuán Yújiāng, fl. early 19th c.)
About the work
A three-juǎn obstetrical and fùkē manual organised around the principle of shēngshēng “life-engendering” — the Yìjīng phrase “the great virtue of Heaven and Earth is engendering” (天地之大德曰生) is the work’s metaphysical-cosmological framework. The work’s distinctive therapeutic stance, stated in Húshì’s 1825 postface, is its avoidance of attacking-and-purging drugs (gōngfá zhī pǐn bù rù) and reliance on the tiáoyǎng yíngwèi (regulating-and-nourishing-the-yíngwèi) axis — placing Yuán Yújiāng in the Jǐngyuè warm-supplementing tradition descending from Zhāng Jièbīn.
Abstract
The work has come down with two important appendices: (i) a Shēngshēng wàilù 生生外錄 (“Outer Record of Life-Engendering”) supplied by the editor 高雪清 Gāo Xuěqīng with neonatal-care and external-medicine prescriptions (mostly drawn from the editor’s own family practice and from a Master Lǐ of Tàizǔshī temple); (ii) a Bǎochì biān 保赤編 on neonatal qífēng tetanus, treating from the same compilatory base as the KR3ei055 Dáshēng biān appendix. Húshì 胡氏 of Shāncūn 山村 signs the postface in Dàoguāng 5 (1825) — establishing the latest possible date for completion of the work as we have it.
Yuán Yújiāng (catalog meta: 清, 袁于江) is otherwise unattested in standard biographical literature. Húshì’s postface speaks of him as “Yuánjūn” — a respectful third-person reference — and the work circulates as an independent text rather than as part of any family-medical corpus, suggesting Yuán was a working physician rather than a literati-physician of the rúyī type. The composition window is bracketed to 1800–1825 (the second decade of the 19th century being the most-likely composition period), with the 1825 Húshì postface as the terminus ante quem.
The work’s distinctive features in the obstetrical genre:
- Strong rejection of blood-breaking drugs (pòxuè zhī pǐn) — Yuán refuses to use 蘇木 sūmù, 牛膝 niúxī, 三稜 sānléng, 莪朮 ézhú in post-partum, citing observed mortality.
- Emphasis on yíngwèi tiáohé as the cure for all post-partum disorders, with characteristic prescriptions repeating dāngguī, huángqí, báizhú, zhūyào, gāncǎo with progressive jiājiǎn.
- Inclusion of an external-medicine appendix treating dīngdú 疔毒, yōngjū 癰疽, rǔyán 乳岩 (breast cancer / abscess), and pregnancy-period boils — unusual for an obstetrical work and reflecting the editorial extension by Húshì 胡氏 and 高雪清 Gāo Xuěqīng.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 — for the place of warm-supplementing obstetrics in the late-Qīng landscape.
- No standalone English translation located.
Links
- 海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書 (Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū).
- 生生寶錄 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB