Jíyàn bèijū fāng 集驗背疽方
Tested Prescriptions for Back Carbuncles by 李迅 (Lǐ Xùn, zì Sìlì 嗣立, fl. late Southern Sòng)
About the work
A short, intensely practical Southern-Sòng specialist monograph on dorsal carbuncles (bèijū 背疽) in 1 juǎn, with 53 entries each pairing theoretical discussion with prescription. The work is one of the earliest extant Chinese specialist monographs devoted to a single class of surgical lesion, and praised in the Sìkù tíyào as “a fine book in the ulcer-medicine class” (yángkē zhōng shàn běn 瘍科中善本). Composition is dated to the late twelfth century; the preserved Guō Yīngxiáng 郭應祥 preface dates the work’s circulation to Qìngyuán 2 (1196). The transmitted text was reconstructed by the Sìkù compilers from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 recovery, with missing formulae patched in from Sū Shěn liángfāng 蘇沈良方, Délé fāng 得效方, Héjì jú fāng 和劑局方, and Shèngjì zǒnglù 聖濟總錄.
Abstract
The opening Guō Yīngxiáng preface — Guō signed in his role as a Quánzhōu prefectural official — records that on arrival in Quánzhōu he found local medicine wanting; that Lǐ Xùn (zì Sìlì), a fellow literatus and amateur physician, kept a stock of fāng 方 and herbs and gave them away freely; that a Daoist priest Liú Dàoyuān 劉道淵 of the Tàixiāo guān 太霄觀, struck by back-carbuncle disease, was cured following Lǐ’s protocol; and that this prompted Lǐ to print his collection. Lǐ’s own short preface, the Bèijū fāng zǒnglùn 背疽方總論, follows. He limits himself to formulae he has personally tested; classifies bèijū into five etiologies (tiānxíng 天行 / epidemic, shòuruò qìzhì 瘦弱氣滯 / emaciation-and-qi-stasis, nù qì 怒氣 / anger, shènqì xū 腎氣虛 / kidney-qi deficiency, yǐn lěng jiǔ / shí zhìbó / fú yào rèdú 飲冷酒 / 食炙煿 / 服藥熱毒 / cold-wine / scorched-food / drug-induced heat-poison); and crucially distinguishes nèi fā 內發 (internal-origin, uniformly fatal) from wài fā 外發 (external, treatable) presentations.
The signature formulae of the work include wǔxiāng liánqiào tāng 五香連翹湯, Hóngshì páinóng nèibǔ sǎn 洪氏排膿內補散 (i.e. shí xuān sǎn 十宣散), Màifàn shí gāo 麥飯石膏 (here partly reconstructed from Sū Shěn liángfāng), shényì gāo 神異膏, jiājiǎn bāwèi wán 加減八味丸 (a liùwèi + guì + Wǔwèizǐ formulation Lǐ advocates against contemporary use of shēngjīn herbs for xiāokě 消渴 / diabetes-with-carbuncle complications), jiāliào shíquán dàbǔ tāng 加料十全大補湯, and hùxīn sǎn 護心散. The MíngQīng editorial layer (Sìkù tíyào) explicitly notes the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn reconstruction history.
Lǐ Xùn was a literatus of Quánzhōu 泉州 (Fújiàn), holding the office of Dàlǐ píngshì 大理評事 (Court Examiner). The Mǎ Duānlín Wénxiàn tōngkǎo erroneously gives the author’s personal name as 逸 (“Yì”) rather than the correct 迅 (“Xùn”); the Sìkù editors note this and correct on the basis of Guō Yīngxiáng’s preface preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery. Not in CBDB (the three Lǐ Xùn homonyms there carry no dates).
Translations and research
- 十萬卷樓叢書 (Qīng) — early printed collection.
- 三三醫書 series.
- 1930 上海國醫書局 鉛印 edition.
- 1991 上海古籍出版社 reprint of the Wén-yuān-gé Sìkù edition.
- Fu, H. T. et al. “Surgical history of ancient China: Part 1.” ANZ Journal of Surgery 80 (2010): 28–31 (PMID 20002988) — brief reference in Western literature.
- No dedicated Western-language monograph located.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the earliest Chinese texts to argue that diabetic carbuncles (xiāokě + bèijū 消渴 + 背疽) require bǔ shèn shuǐ 補腎水 (kidney-water tonification) rather than thirst-quenching herbs — a doctrine subsequently absorbed into the XuēJǐ wēnbǔ synthesis (cf. KR3ek022, KR3ek024). Chén Zìmíng’s KR3ek012 Wàikē jīngyào (1263) draws heavily on this earlier specialist treatise.
Links
- 集驗背疽方 (中醫世家)
- “Surgical history of ancient China: Part 1” (PubMed): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20002988/
- Kanseki DB
- 集驗背疽方