Chǎnyù bǎoqìng fāng 產育寶慶方
Bǎo-qìng-era Treasured Prescriptions for Pregnancy and Childbirth attributed to Lǐ Shīshèng 李師聖 (mid-11th c. compilation)
About the work
A Northern-Sòng obstetrical formulary, compiled originally by Lǐ Shīshèng 李師聖 (also written 郭李 in some recensions) in the mid-eleventh century. The title’s date-reference “Bǎoqìng” (1225–1227, Southern-Sòng reign of Lǐzōng) reflects either an editorial reissue in that period or a later renaming of the work; the underlying Chǎnyù jíyào fāng 產育集要方 collection itself dates to the 11th-c. Northern Sòng.
Abstract
The work is among the earliest surviving Chinese obstetrical-specialist works. The text proper has not been preserved in its original form — the Hǎiwài huíguī recension and the krp source-file both show only the org-mode header (the krp text file KR3ei076_001.txt contains only the header). However, the work’s substance is preserved within the KR3ei056 Wèishēng jiābǎo chǎnkē bèiyào (Zhū Duānzhāng, c. 1180), whose juǎn 4 is quán lù (entirely transcribed) from Lǐ Shīshèng’s Chǎnyù bǎoqìng jí together with 張世臣 Zhāng Shìchén’s Lěiyòng jīngxiào fāng 累用經效方 — see Lù Xīnyuán’s 1887 preface to KR3ei056.
Lǐ Shīshèng’s contributions to obstetrical pharmacology include the Hēishén sǎn 黑神散 (the eponymous Black-God Powder for post-partum xuèyùn and bēnglòu), and various formulas for cuīshēng (labour-induction) and xiàbāo (placental retention) that became canonical late-medieval obstetrical drugs.
Composition window: bracketed to 1075–1108 — the most-active period of Northern-Sòng medical-bibliographic compilation (the Tàipíng huìmín héjìjú fāng and the Shèngjì zǒnglù date to this period), and the period in which Lǐ Shīshèng’s obstetrical work is most-plausibly placed by reference to its citation in Zhū Duānzhāng’s Chǎnkē bèiyào (c. 1180). The catalog meta dynasty 宋 is correct.
The work is preserved bibliographically here as a record of its independent existence within the Hǎiwài huíguī source-series rather than reproduced in full. Substantive content is preserved in KR3ei056. The catalog meta records no person; the attribution to Lǐ Shīshèng is given here on the basis of the KR3ei056 preface evidence.
Translations and research
- Lù Xīn-yuán 陸心源, 1887 preface to KR3ei056 — primary documentary evidence for the work’s contents and transmission.
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women (2010) — for the Sòng obstetrical tradition.
- Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin (1999), chapter 3 — extensive treatment of Sòng obstetrics.
- No substantial separate study located.
Links
- 海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書 (Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū).
- 產育寶慶方 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB