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異授眼科

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Text ID
KR3em013
Date
1600–1717
Dynasty
明

Yìshòu yǎnkē 異授眼科

Ophthalmology by Extraordinary Transmission anonymous; ascribed in the text’s own self-narrative to a wandering Dàoist who transmitted it to 王振吾 Wáng Zhènwú of Bózhōu 亳州 (Ānhuī).

About the work

A single-juan question-and-answer ophthalmology manual whose distinctive contribution is a complete catechistic catalogue of the canonical “seventy-two diseases of the eye” (yǎn yǒu qīshíèr zhèng 眼有七十二症) presented as seventy-two question-and-answer items (wèndá 問答), each fixing a particular symptom and its cause, indicated prescription, and indicated eye-drop. The work opens with a Míngmù lùn 明目論 setting out the standard late-imperial wǔlún bākuò 五輪八廓 anatomical framework, follows with mnemonic verses (Yǎnbìng gējué 眼病歌訣, Lěngyǎn gējué 冷眼歌訣, Rèyǎn gējué 熱眼歌訣, Yàoxìng guāngmíng fù 藥性光明賦), a virtuoso pharmacological fù 賦 listing the indications of all major eye-medicine ingredients in rhymed prose, instructions for compounding the signature prescriptions (the Hǔyè 虎液 and Fènglín 鳳麟 gāo 膏, Qīnglóng 青龍 and Yángnǎoyù 羊腦玉 mineral powders), and the central 72-question catalogue. The work closes with several appended star prescriptions (Hēidòu wán 黑豆丸, Bābǎo dān 八寶丹, Qīzhēn dān 七針丹, etc.).

Prefaces

The text transmits no preface or postface of its own. The transmission-story is embedded mid-text, between the Jǐqī fúrén guǎngshī paragraph on the master prescription and the catechistic catalogue: “This prescription is from Mr. 王振吾 Wáng Zhènwú of Bózhōu 亳州, whose father’s eyes were going blind. Wáng posted notices offering three hundred jīn of silver to anyone who could cure him. The most famous doctors came and failed. Then a Dàoist who saw the notice presented himself, treated the father, and within half a month restored his sight. When Wáng offered the three hundred jīn, the Dàoist refused even a single lí; the whole family thanked him with prostrations, and the Dàoist transmitted this book, instructing Wáng to manufacture the prescription and distribute it as charity.” A friend 楊奉林 Yáng Fènglín obtained the manuscript from Wáng; an unnamed Huī-merchant Wáng then obtained it from Yáng; the anonymous narrator of the text obtained it from this latter Wáng. The story is a textbook prestige-frame, situating the work in the Dàoist-secret-transmission genre.

The work’s actual publication history is recoverable from the paratextual cluster of the parallel work KR3em009 Yīcǎotíng mùkē quánshū: the prefaces by 曹晉墀 Cáo Jìnchí, 胡崧 Hú Sōng, and 張壽六 Zhāng Shòuliù (all 1882) and by 姚寶炘 Yáo Bǎoxīn (1901) record that 年希堯 Nián Xīyáo of Guǎngníng 廣寧 printed both Yīcǎotíng (which he reissued from a defective old block in 1717) and Yìshòu yǎnkē (which he himself first cut for printing) together in the Kāngxī period. Hú Sōng reissued the two together in 1882 under the joint title Qǐméng zhēndì 啟蒙真諦.

Abstract

The Kanripo meta records no author; following the text’s own claim, none can be assigned. The work is fully anonymous (shū rén xìngmíng zé bù chuán 著書人姓名則不傳, as 胡崧 Hú Sōng’s 1882 preface to KR3em009 explicitly states). The Kanripo meta also assigns no dynasty; the dynasty field here is set to 明 on the basis of the work’s full integration into the Yīcǎotíng / 啟蒙真諦 transmission lineage (whose primary text KR3em009 is conventionally Míng), the text’s apparent late-Míng vocabulary and prescription forms, and the fact that 年希堯 Nián Xīyáo (active in the 1710s) treats it as a received earlier work rather than a recent composition. The terminus ante quem is firm at 1717, the date of Nián Xīyáo’s printing; a defensible terminus a quo of c. 1600 is set on the basis of the 72-disease classification, the consolidated wǔlún bākuò doctrine, and the prescription corpus, which all closely match late-Wàn-lì to early-Qīng eye-medicine practice. The composition window adopted here is therefore 1600–1717.

Doctrinally the work is striking for two reasons. First, it preserves a deeply traditional Dàoist-secret-transmission framing that contrasts with the more academic-Confucian voice of contemporary published ophthalmology like KR3em008 Yǎnkē chǎnwēi and KR3em010 Shěnshì yáohán — it is the Yìshòu yǎnkē type of work (anonymous, xiānrén chuán 仙人傳, oral-formula register) that the published treatises systematically purport to digest and elucidate. Second, the 72-disease question-and-answer catalogue is uniquely streamlined: each disease is reduced to a single etiological vignette, a single indicated decoction, and a single indicated eye-drop, with the four core ophthalmological powders (the Hǔyè, Fènglín, Qīnglóng, Yángnǎoyù) functioning as a closed pharmacopoeia from which all internal-symptom variation is to be addressed by recombination. This is the closest the late-imperial ophthalmological corpus comes to a clean rule-book.

The 72-disease catechism here is the most explicit late-imperial enumeration of the canonical 72-disease taxonomy that KR3em011 Yínhǎi jīngwēi takes for granted and that KR3em010 Shěnshì yáohán superseded with the rival 108-disease scheme. Yìshòu yǎnkē therefore stands as the principal textual witness for the older 72-disease classification.

Translations and research

  • No Western-language translation or monographic study located.
  • Modern punctuated edition: in the Qǐméng zhēndì 啟蒙真諦 reprint by Wáng Míngzé 王明澤 (ed.), Yīcǎotíng mùkē quánshū hékān 一草亭目科全書合刊 (Beijing: Renmin Weisheng, 1985).
  • Anthologized in Lǐ Jīngwěi 李經緯 et al. (eds.), Zhōngyī yǎnkē míngzhù jíchéng 中醫眼科名著集成 (Beijing: Huaxia, 1997).

Other points of interest

The transmission-frame motif — wealthy patient offers reward; named doctors fail; wandering Dàoist appears, cures, refuses payment, transmits the secret prescription — is so consistent across the late-Míng / Qīng prestige-attribution corpus (cf. KR3el001 LiúBówēn jiācáng jiēgǔ jīnchuāng jìnfāng with its Liú Bówēn frame, and KR3em011 Yínhǎi jīngwēi with its Sūn Sīmiǎo frame) that Yìshòu yǎnkē should be read as the genre’s purest specimen — a work that is literally named “ophthalmology by extraordinary [Dàoist] transmission.” Its survival as a stand-alone work, repeatedly reprinted alongside the openly authored KR3em009 Yīcǎotíng over two centuries, is a useful corrective to any reading of late-imperial medicine as a uniformly literati-authored tradition.

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