Yīcǎotíng mùkē quánshū 一草亭目科全書
The Complete Ophthalmology Book of the One-Grass Pavilion by 鄧苑 Dèng Yuàn (zì Bówàng 博望, fl. late Míng – early Qīng), of Qīngjiāng 清江 (modern Zhāngshù 樟樹, Jiāngxī).
About the work
A single-juan ophthalmological monograph in nine sections: 目論 (theory of the eye), 目議 (discussion of the eye), 外障 (external obstructions), 外障治法 (treatment of external obstructions), 內障 (internal obstructions), 內障治法 (treatment of internal obstructions), 小兒痘毒眼治法 (treatment of post-smallpox pediatric eye disorders), 小兒疳積眼治法 (treatment of pediatric gānjī malnutrition-related eye disorders), 治小兒雀目法 (treatment of pediatric night-blindness), and a final appendix of “selected prescriptions from Mr. Xuē” (附刻薛氏選方) drawing on the KR3l0151 Xuēshì yīàn 薛氏醫案 corpus of 薛己 Xuē Jǐ. The work’s central doctrinal claim is that “though eye diseases display countless permutations, they reduce in the end to nothing more than the two categories of nèizhàng 內障 (internal obstructions) and wàizhàng 外障 (external obstructions)” — Dèng enumerates forty-six external and twenty-four internal conditions, summing to the canonical 72 zhèng 症 of the late-imperial ophthalmological tradition.
Prefaces
The text transmits a substantial preface-cluster reflecting the staged transmission history of the book. The earliest is by 年希堯 Nián Xīyáo (zì Ǒuzhāi 偶齋), dated Kāngxī 56, dīngyǒu 丁酉 (1717), praising Dèng Yuàn as a filial Confucian who turned to medicine on the strength of the Sòng-Confucian dictum “a filial son cannot be ignorant of medicine” (為人子者不可不知醫) and 范仲淹 Fàn Zhòngyān’s “if not a good minister, then a good physician” (不為良相即為良醫). Nián records that he had long held a defective old printing of the Yīcǎotíng and now reissued it from his Jīnlíng 金陵 office. Three further nineteenth-century prefaces — 曹晉墀 Cáo Jìnchí (1882), 胡崧 Hú Sōng (zì Zhīqiáo 芝樵, 1882), 張壽六 Zhāng Shòuliù (1882), and 姚寶炘 Yáo Bǎoxīn (1901) — record the combined reissue of Dèng’s text together with the anonymous Yìshòu yǎnkē 異授眼科 (KR3em013) as the Qǐméng zhēndì 啟蒙真諦. Hú’s 1882 preface relates that he cured his own son’s blinding yúnyì with prescriptions from these two books after a friend showed him an old manuscript copy, and decided to reprint them in continuation of Nián Xīyáo’s earlier Kāngxī work.
Abstract
The work’s date and authorship are jointly established from the prefaces and from external biographical evidence. Dèng Yuàn 鄧苑 (zì Bówàng 博望) was a Confucian scholar of Qīngjiāng 清江 (Jiāngxī), who passed the jǔrén examination in Shùnzhì 8 (1651) and served as magistrate of Lùxī 陸西 county in Yúnnán. He lived across the Míng–Qīng transition; modern reference works (e.g. Zhōngguó yījí dàcídiǎn 中國醫籍大辭典) classify him sometimes as late Míng, sometimes as early Qīng. The Kanripo meta gives 明, which is followed here for the dynasty field; the composition itself is conventionally dated c. 1644 (the year of the Míng collapse, on the strength of internal evidence). The work was poorly transmitted in the seventeenth century, with the original blocks degraded, and was rescued through Nián Xīyáo’s Kāngxī 56 (1717) reprint at Jīnlíng. The work-window adopted here — 1644 to 1717 — is the bracket between the conventional composition date and Nián’s printing, the first complete edition demonstrably to survive.
Doctrinally Dèng combines the canonical wǔlún 五輪 organ-correspondence of the eye (bone/kidney = pupil; sinew/liver = black; blood/heart = inner canthus blood-vessels; qì/lung = white; flesh/spleen = lids) with the doctrine that all eye disorders ultimately devolve to a single binary contrast of wàizhàng / nèizhàng. His clinical preference is for the herbal-decoction Jīnyè tāng 金液湯 (a variant of the qiānghuó shèngfēng tāng group) supplemented by mineral eye-drops including the Yùhuá dān 玉華丹 (calamine-based) and a richly compounded Xiānchuán Zǐjīn gāo 仙傳紫金膏 with bear-bile, lithic-fossil minerals (shíyàn 石燕, shíxiè 石蟹), and zhūshā 朱砂. The pediatric portion is the work’s signal contribution, addressing post-smallpox ophthalmic complications and gānjī deficiency states with the Qīngdú bōyì tāng 清毒撥翳湯 and the lamb-liver-based Wǔbǎo dān 五寶丹.
The work is regularly anthologized in modern Chinese collections — the Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng 中國醫學大成 and Zhōngyī yǎnkē míngzhù jíchéng 中醫眼科名著集成 both reprint it — and is regarded as one of the principal independent ophthalmology monographs of the seventeenth century, alongside KR3em008 Yǎnkē chǎnwēi and KR3em010 Shěnshì yáohán.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation or monographic study located.
- Modern punctuated edition: collected in Lǐ Jīngwěi 李經緯 and Lín Zhāogēng 林昭庚 (eds.), Zhōngyī yǎnkē míngzhù jíchéng 中醫眼科名著集成 (Beijing: Huaxia, 1997).
- For the Qǐméng zhēndì 啟蒙真諦 compound transmission (Dèng’s text plus KR3em013 Yìshòu yǎnkē) see the modern annotated edition by Wáng Míngzé 王明澤 (ed.), Yīcǎotíng mùkē quánshū hékān 一草亭目科全書合刊 (Beijing: Renmin Weisheng, 1985).
Other points of interest
A late-imperial “two-book” transmission tradition combined Yīcǎotíng mùkē quánshū with the anonymous Yìshòu yǎnkē (KR3em013) — 年希堯 Nián Xīyáo printed both together in 1717, and they were reissued under the joint title Qǐméng zhēndì 啟蒙真諦 by 胡崧 Hú Sōng in 1882. The two are best read as a paired Qīng ophthalmological “starter library.”