Wèijì bǎoshū 衛濟寶書
Treasured Book for Defending the Constitution by 東軒居士 (Dōngxuān Jūshì, lit. “the Recluse of the East Studio,” a Sòng-period pseudonym whose real identity has not been recovered); compiled and reorganised by 徐文禮 (Xú Wénlǐ, fl. Qiándào period, 1165–1173).
About the work
A Southern-Sòng specialist treatise on yōngjū 癰疽 (purulent abscesses), originally in 1 juǎn and lost in the Yuán–Míng transition; reconstructed in 2 juǎn by the Sìkù compilers from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 recovery. The work is celebrated as the earliest extant Chinese medical text to use the graph 癌 as the name of a discrete disease category (the first of the yōngjū wǔ fā 癰疽五發 “Five Emanations of yōngjū”) — predating later usage by several centuries. The Sìkù tíyào (and the standard modern PRC histories) credit it for “incisive analysis, deeply consonant with the subtle” (剖析精微，深中奧妙).
Abstract
The transmitted text carries only one paratext, a short hòuxù 後序 by the editor Xú Wénlǐ, who explains that he was invited by an unnamed prefect (tàishǒu) to debate the treatment of bèizhèng 背證 with the Xīn’ān imperial-attendant Wáng tàijiān 新安王太監; on the strength of that discussion Xú was charged with collating the manuscript and gave it its present title. The work is catalogued in 1 juǎn in Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題 and the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì 宋史·藝文志, confirming its mid-Sòng currency. The author’s pseudonym Dōngxuān Jūshì is a late-Sòng literary-recluse style; his identity has not been recovered. The Sòngshǐ dating ranges the composition before the early 13th century, with the Qiándào preface (1165–1173) of Dǒng Lián 董璉 — preserved in derivative quotations — pushing the latest date for the original to the early Southern Sòng. The bracket 1100–1170 adopted here reflects the Sòngshǐ and Qiándào evidence.
The upper juǎn sets out the etiology of yōngjū; identifies the Five Emanations — 癌 ái (malignant tumour), 瘭 biāo, 疽 jū, 痼 gù, 癰 yōng — each accompanied by a diagnostic figure; covers internal and external treatment; gives the qí zhúmǎ jiǔ 騎竹馬灸 (riding-the-bamboo-horse moxa) and jiǔ è chuāng fǎ 灸惡瘡法 techniques; and catalogues surgical instruments. The lower juǎn contains some forty-odd pill, powder, ointment, and plaster formulae, appending rǔyōng 乳癰 (breast abscess) and ruǎnjié 軟癤 (soft boils). Prognostically the work is striking for its survival statistics — e.g. “of breast cancer in women over forty, four or five in ten will be cured; in cases with rot and fistula, death within three years” (乳癌四十歲以上十癒四五，若腐漏者三年死) — figures that have been quoted as the earliest Chinese clinical mortality data for breast carcinoma.
Translations and research
- 人民衛生出版社, 1956 (影印) and modern punctuated editions.
- Included in the late-Qīng Dāng-guī cǎo-táng yī-xué cóng-shū 當歸草堂醫學叢書 (1878), the standard collector’s edition.
- Chén Yùnrú 陳韻如, “The medical publishing of Sòng local literati and the Wèi-jì bǎo-shū”, Academia Sinica Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 92.3 (2021) — addresses the social context of the work’s transmission.
- No standalone Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
The use of the graph 癌 as a disease-name term — applied here specifically to non-healing, hardening, ulcerated masses — antedates by several centuries the term’s modern semantic specialisation. Historians of oncology routinely cite this text as the terminus ante quem for the lexical history of 癌 in Chinese medicine.