Jīnchuāng diēdǎ jiēgǔ yàoxìng mìshū 金瘡跌打接骨藥性秘書
Secret Treatise on Drug-Properties for Sword-Wounds, Fall-Blow Injuries, and Bone-Setting Anonymous (transmitted text).
About the work
A single-juǎn anonymous late-imperial jīnchuāng / diēdǎ / jiēgǔ treatise (ca. 28 kB), preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū 海外回流中醫善本古籍叢書 (漢學文典) collection. The text opens with an unusual Jīnchuāng fù 金瘡賦 — a rhetorical-essay (fù) on the Five-Phase pathology of sword-wounds — that frames jīnchuāng (literally “metal-wound”) as a Western/autumn/Metal-Phase pathology striking the lung-organ; the principle that follows is that jīnchuāng patients must avoid the antagonistic Phase (“wind belongs to the Wind / Sūn trigram / east-Wood, so if wind enters the wound, the lung-Metal reverse-clashes and produces pòshāng fēng 破傷風 [tetanus]”). This Five-Phase theoretical framework — applied to a clinically grounded traumatology manual — is the text’s most distinctive feature.
Prefaces
No preface or compiler-attribution is preserved. The closing sentence — cǐ shū bùkě qīnghū, yí zhēncáng zhī 此書不可輕忽，宜珍藏之 (“this book must not be treated lightly; treasure and store it well”) — is the only colophon.
Abstract
The work is anonymous and undated. Internal evidence puts it in the late-imperial period: it cites the Sòng-period military classic Hǔlíng jīng 虎鈴經 (KR3b0013, by 許洞 Xǔ Dòng of the Sòng) as an authority on wound-management diet (a casualty “thirsts violently from blood loss; do not give him water — feed dry food with the hair-whorl moisture, fatty food is fine, the goal is to relieve thirst; do not give congee in quantity, for the blood will boil out and the man will die”), and its pharmacopoeia depends on standard late-Míng / Qīng compound prescriptions (Fēilóng duómìng tāng 飛龍奪命湯, Tuìdú dìngdú sǎn 退毒定毒散, Dìngtòng bǔsuǐ tāng 定痛補髓湯). The date bracket 1600–1900 is conservative; the Five-Phase theoretical apparatus is more characteristic of the late-Míng “phase-and-organ” yījiā tradition than of the more practical Qīng shāngkē manuals.
Structurally:
- Jīnchuāng fù 金瘡賦 — the opening rhetorical-essay on Five-Phase pathology of sword-wounds: the nine fatal wound-sites (jiǔ sǐchǔ 九死處: head, tiāncāng 天倉, mid-arm pulse, large intestine, small intestine, the five viscera); four further untreatable conditions (brain-leak, brain-fracture with throat-bubble sound and staring-eye-rolling, “pain not at the wound site,” uncontrolled bleeding turning from red to black with cold-stiff necrosis); and the prognostic bā jì 八忌 (eight prohibitions on the patient: laughing, anger, loud talk, exertion, fantasy, hot broth, alcohol, salty-sour foods).
- Ànmài lùn 按脈論 — pulse-diagnosis for trauma victims, distinguishing internal-cold (left-hand pulse weak-fine-slow) from internal-heat (right-hand pulse), with prognostic predictions.
- Site-by-site treatment formulary — bones and skin, jīnchuāng, diēdǎ, pòshāng fēng (tetanus), human-bite, dog-bite, self-inflicted throat-cut.
- Compound-prescription appendix with detailed drug-property notes — the most clinically detailed yàoxìng 藥性 (drug-property) section in the KR3el sub-canon, and the textual feature that earned the work its title.
The text shares much of its formulary with KR3el008 Shàolín zhēnchuán shāngkē mìfāng (notably the Fēilóng duómìng tāng 飛龍奪命湯 and the standard sword-wound Hùfēng tuōlǐ sǎn 護風托裡散), suggesting a common Qīng martial-medicine source-stratum.
Translations and research
- No standalone Western-language translation or monographic study located.
- For the Five-Phase pathology framework adopted here see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007), on the late-Míng phase-and-organ medical tradition.
- Modern reprint: 《海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書》 (北京：人民衛生出版社).
Other points of interest
The opening Jīnchuāng fù 金瘡賦 is one of the few extant attempts to present traumatology as systematically theory-grounded — most surviving shāngkē texts present formulary first and theoretical justification only briefly or not at all. The author’s clinical interest is also unusually broad: a notable passage advises that those who attempt suicide by self-cutting at the throat should be examined for whether the cut is “level or not, curved or straight, deep or shallow”; a “two-stroke” cut is easier to treat than a single deep one. The recommended treatment — sew with oiled thread, dress with Shēngjī sǎn 生肌散, administer internal Hùfēng tuōlǐ sǎn — is essentially the same as a modern primary-suture protocol.