明目至寶

Míngmù zhìbǎo 明目至寶

Treasured Compendium for Brightening the Eyes Anonymous Míng-period ophthalmology compendium, partly attributed pseudepigraphically to 孫思邈 Sūn Sīmiǎo (Sūn Zhēnrén 孫真人); modern collated edition (整理) by Yáng Xīluò 楊希洛 and Xià Wéiqín 夏惟勤, transmitted here via the jicheng.tw 漢學文典 digital corpus.

About the work

A four-juǎn anonymous Míng-period ophthalmological compendium, transmitted under the partial-attribution conceit of “Sūn Zhēnrén discoursing on eye disease” (孫真人諭眼論, 孫真人還睛表). Structurally the work belongs to the Lóngmù lùn 龍木論 family — it is organised around the wǔlún bākuò 五輪八廓 (five-wheel / eight-quadrant) symbolic schema and uses the seventy-two-question (七十二問) problem-and-answer format (later expanded to seventy-three problems with a closing list of fourteen incurable conditions) that defines the Lóngmù lùn tradition (cf. KR3em003). The four juǎn cover (1) the doctrinal framework — Míngmù fù 明目賦 (“Eye-Brightening Rhapsody”), Yǎnkē lùn 眼科論, Tàixuán zhēnrén discussions of the five wheels and eight quadrants, and the seventy-two pathophysiological Q&A; (2)–(3) typological catalogues of symptomatic syndromes (青風內障, 綠風內障, 烏風內障, 黑風內障, 雀目, 偷針, etc.) with diagnostic verses and matched prescriptions; and (4) a vast formulary of ca. 250 named compound prescriptions, internal decoctions, dressings, eye-drops, and acupuncture / cautery instructions covering pre-modern Chinese ophthalmology in its full breadth — from couching for cataract through paediatric quèmù 雀目 (night-blindness) and women’s xuèfēng yǎn 血風眼 (post-partum / catamenial ophthalmia). The present digital text (jicheng.tw / 漢學文典) reflects the standard modern-collated edition by Yáng Xīluò 楊希洛 and Xià Wéiqín 夏惟勤 from the surviving overseas-preserved Míng witness.

Prefaces

The recension transmitted via jicheng.tw does not preserve a separate front-matter preface; the work begins in medias res with the Míngmù fù and supporting doctrinal essays in juǎn 1. The two principal internally-paratextual frames are the pseudepigraphic Sūn Zhēnrén yù yǎn lùn 孫真人諭眼論 (“Discourse on the eye by the True Person Sūn”) — a brief homily on the five wheels, the five excesses (sexual indulgence, alcohol, hot foods, exposure to wind/sand, prolonged close-work) and the principle that “the eye though belonging to the orifices is governed by the kidney, not by another organ” — and the Sūn Zhēnrén huánjīng biǎo 孫真人還睛表 (“Memorial of the True Person Sūn on Restoring Sight”), a dated fictional memorial purporting to have been submitted to Táng Tàizōng on the twenty-eighth day of the second month of Zhēnguān 19 (645 CE) from Sūménshān 蘇門山. The fictional Táng date is the principal piece of in-text rhetoric supporting the Sūn Sīmiǎo attribution. Neither preface is original to Sūn (whose authentic ophthalmological materials are in KR3f0004 Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng and KR3f0006 Qiānjīn yìfāng); both are late-imperial frame-narratives.

Abstract

The work is anonymous and pseudepigraphic. The Sūn Sīmiǎo attribution is structurally identical to that of KR3em011 Yínhǎi jīngwēi 銀海精微 — both are late-imperial Chinese ophthalmologies that borrow Sūn’s prestige to authorise material drawn from the Lóngmù lùn 龍木論 tradition. No mainland-Chinese transmission of Míngmù zhìbǎo survives in the standard imperial bibliographies (《明史·藝文志》, 《千頃堂書目》); the witness underlying the present text is preserved in a Japanese Edo-period reprint of a late-Míng (晚明) Wú-region edition, which the modern collators (Yáng Xīluò, Xià Wéiqín) re-collated and re-published. The dating bracket adopted here (1368–1644) corresponds to the Míng dynasty as a whole, since the work’s quotations from Lǐ Dōngyuán, Zhū Dānxī and Liú Wánsù establish a terminus a quo in the late Yuán and its Wǔlúnbākuò + 72-problem structure was largely fixed by the mid-Míng; precise narrowing is not currently defensible without further textual-philological work.

Structurally, juǎn 1 opens with the Míngmù fù — a parallel-prose rhapsody on the eye as “the supreme jewel of the body, like the two luminaries of heaven” — followed by the wǔlún 五輪 / bākuò 八廓 doctrine in five-character verse, then the Tàixuán zhēnrén (太玄真人) Q&A on the five wheels’ diseases, then the Míngtáng wèndá 明堂問答 seventy-two problems (each in wèn 問 / dá 答 form, with a matched prescription identifier) covering the principal symptomatic taxonomy of red-eye, white-eye, photophobia, lacrimation, internal cataract, external membrane, pterygium, trichiasis, paediatric eye disease, women’s eye disease, and traumatic injury. Juǎn 2–3 (here truncated in the transmitted recension) expand the diagnostic taxonomy and recipe-pairing. Juǎn 4 — the longest in the present witness — is a free-standing formulary preserving more than 250 compound prescriptions (湯, 散, 丸, 膏, 點藥, 搐鼻散, 洗眼方, 針灸法), including the jīnyín huā / júhuā / mìménghuā class of cool-clearing decoctions, Xiéshēn yǎnggān 肝-nourishing pills, yánggānwán 羊肝丸 sheep-liver pills (the classic Indo-Buddhist-derived prescription for night-blindness), and operative auxiliaries (Méidāo 眉刀 small-blade procedures for pterygium and trichiasis, zhēnjīu 針灸 acupuncture-moxa instructions). The work is a major repository of Míng popular-physician ophthalmological knowledge.

Translations and research

• No Western-language translation or monograph is located.
• Modern critical edition: 《明目至寶》, included as one of the principal eye-disease titles in 鄭金生 (Zhèng Jīn-shēng) (ed.), 《海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書》, vol. 4 (北京：人民衛生出版社, 2003 ff.). The Yáng / Xià collation reads the surviving Edo-Japanese witness against the partial Míng quotations preserved in KR3em010 《審視瑤函》 and other late-imperial ophthalmologies of the Lóng-mù lùn family.
• For the broader pseudo-Sūn ophthalmological corpus see Hinrichs and Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard, 2013), p. 78 (Indian / Buddhist medical influence; cataract-couching) and p. 196 (the long-standing Chinese reception of the South-Asian cataract-needling procedure).

Other points of interest

The work is a key witness to the survival of the Lóngmù lùn seventy-two-disease scheme as a popular-physician framework in the Míng — even while literate-physician ophthalmology had moved on to the aetiological model of KR3em001 Yuánjī qǐwēi. The frame-narrative attributing a 645 CE memorial to Sūn Sīmiǎo (who was certainly alive but at 100+ years and not at the Táng court in 645) is a late-imperial commonplace, paralleled in KR3em004 Yǎnkē mìjué (whose preface also routes itself through Sūn Zhēnrén via the imaginary Dàpiáo qīméi xiānshēng 大瓢七眉先生).

Links

• 明目至寶 (jicheng.tw 漢學文典)
• Kanseki DB
• Hinrichs and Barnes, Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard 2013), pp. 78, 196.