Yìnchǎn quánshū 胤產全書
Complete Book on Procreation and Childbirth by 王肯堂 (Wáng Kěntáng, 1549–1613)
About the work
A four-juǎn obstetrical and fùkē treatise attributed to Wáng Kěntáng 王肯堂 (1549–1613), the late-Míng author of the great medical encyclopedia Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng 證治準繩 (which includes a Nǚkē zhǔnshéng 女科準繩 of 1607). The Yìnchǎn quánshū — usually classified as a separate work from the Nǚkē zhǔnshéng, addressing more specifically the yìnzǐ (procreation) and chǎnyù (childbirth) topics — opens with a systematic discussion of the gynecological pulse-diagnosis (fùrén màifǎ), drawing extensively on Wáng Shūhé’s Mài jīng and the Mài jué; the surviving recension preserves only the first juǎn of the original four (the remaining juǎn are evidently lost or, more probably, were absorbed into the Nǚkē zhǔnshéng).
Abstract
Wáng Kěntáng (1549–1613) of Jīntán 金壇 (Jiāngsū) was the foremost Míng-period clinical-medical encyclopedist; his Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng in 120 juǎn was completed in stages between 1597 and 1607. The Yìnchǎn quánshū is one of several smaller obstetrical-gynaecological works attributed to him; its status as an independent work or as a draft / extract of the Nǚkē zhǔnshéng is unclear in the Míng bibliographic record. The hxwd recension preserves a single juǎn of pulse-diagnosis material together with several short clinical-aphorism sections.
Composition window: bracketed to 1600–1613, the productive late period of Wáng’s career (post-Wànlì 28) and ending with his death in 1613. The work’s pulse-diagnosis chapter is largely a synthesis of received doctrine — the yángbó yīnbié aphorism of the Sù wèn for pregnancy detection, the qiányuǎn / hòujìn pulse-types for sex-prediction, the líjīng labour-pulse — rendered in clearer expository form than the corresponding sections of the Nǚkē zhǔnshéng. The work is not collected into the Sìkù quánshū and was unknown to the Yānyuán family of late-Qīng bibliographers; its rediscovery in the Hǎiwài huíguī series is one of the contributions of the Chinese-Japanese medical-text repatriation programme.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women (2010), discusses Wáng Kěn-táng’s gynecological œuvre.
- 馬繼興 Mǎ Jì-xìng, Zhōng-yī wén-xiàn xué — for Wáng’s medical corpus.
- No standalone English translation located.
Links
- 海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書 (Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū).
- 胤產全書 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB