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養生四要

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Text ID
KR3eo025
Date
1549–1582
Dynasty
明

Yǎngshēng sìyào 養生四要

Four Essentials of Nourishing Life by 萬全 Wàn Quán (1499–1582, hào Mìzhāi 密齋, of Luótián 羅田 in Húběi; “Wàn Mìzhāi” — bearer of the principal Míng-period Wàn-family medical lineage).

About the work

A five-juan systematic treatise on yǎngshēng organised around four canonical “essentials” (sì yào 四要): 寡欲 guǎyù (reducing desires), 慎動 shèndòng (caution in activity), 法時 fǎshí (modelling oneself on the seasons), and 卻疾 quèjí (warding off illness). The work belongs to Wàn Quán’s larger systematic project, the 《萬密齋醫書十種》 (萬密齋醫書十種) (“Ten Works of Wàn Mìzhāi”), in which he produced a complete pedagogical apparatus for clinical practice — paediatrics, gynaecology, internal medicine, shānghán, and yǎngshēng. The Yǎngshēng sìyào is the family-life volume of this curriculum, intended for the household reader rather than the clinical specialist.

Prefaces

The transmitted xù is by 萬全 Wàn Quán himself. He frames the work autobiographically: “The meaning of this book: dismiss appetites, accord with cold and warmth, follow contraction and expansion, regulate moistening and seepage, comprehending young and old, equalizing wise and foolish — those who get the essentials prosper, those who reverse them transgress. I have therefore deemed [it] fit for any young man — yea, let him place a copy at his seat-corner. — Now: knowledge is the guide of feeling; passion is the flood of desire. Knowledge not firm — and laziness lies in ambush; passion not collected — and ruin follows close. — He who looks back retreats his pace; he who considers happiness brings happiness to its end. The cup leaks and is patched — but few escape rupture. — When I was a youth practising the broad studies, I would see my great-grandmother, my grand-uncle’s wife — they did not refuse their canes and staffs, dot by dot they filled the house. By the time I rose to the xiàolián my late grandmother — with crane-white hair receiving the láicǎi — the days of transformation were warmly fused, the spring breeze diffusing, how peaceful that was. — Could this not be the call of the bǎozhēn yùnsù (preserving truth and embryonic plainness), of the unchiselled and unshaken state? After a while: my second-cousin “Xuánlǎng” 玄朗 had a great boy; he sailed through the classics, won renown at his first sitting, ate at the huìcān on his second, and battled the thorn-enclosure on his third. Set down high in expectation, then for the time pulled back — and his second was still no failure-by-merit. But all were ruòguàn piánpián (just-capped, in profusion), and lost by inward-injury, in the prime of qīngyáng, the orchid-shoot snapped early — bēi fū! — At the time, had he learned early the jiàngxìng zhī jué (the spirit-checking secret), and possessed long forethought, drawn and propped up, then with the unchiselled and unshaken — without speaking of qīngzǐ (officialdom), without speaking of shíyī (one-in-ten) — his voice, his laughter, his bearing, would today still be alive. I, dreading this, therefore engrave this book and leave it to the family school. — The Shū says: ‘When essential, nourish.’ — I [will] dismiss the essential and the essential, the youthful and the youthful — its beginning is joyful-joyful, but its end is sorrow.” Wàn’s xù is therefore framed as a family-tragic protreptic, born of his witness to multiple promising young male relatives dying through dietary intemperance and overexertion in the pursuit of office.

Abstract

Wàn Quán’s Yǎngshēng sìyào is the principal Míng-period systematic treatise on yǎngshēng — comparable in stature to 高濂 Gāo Lián’s Zūnshēng bājiān 遵生八牋 (KR3j0172) (1591) but predating it. Wàn’s four-fold organisation (guǎyù / shèndòng / fǎshí / quèjí) is the most influential late-Míng compression of the yǎngshēng curriculum, adopted by many subsequent compilers (cf. KR3eo009 Zhōu Chén’s Hòushēng xùnzuǎn; KR3eo002 徐文弼 Xú Wénbì’s Shòushì chuánzhēn). Wàn’s distinctive contribution lies in the clinical grounding of his yǎngshēng: as one of the foremost mid-Míng paediatricians and family physicians, he draws directly on his case experience to specify the regulative regimen, particularly for the developmental stages of childhood and adolescence (where his expertise in paediatrics surpasses that of any contemporary yǎngshēng author).

The work was composed during Wàn’s mature clinical period at Luótián, plausibly in the Jiājìng to early Wànlì decades (c. 1549–1582), with the precise compositional date undetermined. It was first printed posthumously and circulated widely in Wànlì and Tiānqǐ reprintings, becoming a standard household reference.

Translations and research

  • 萬全, Wàn Mì-zhāi yī-xué quán-shū 萬密齋醫學全書, ed. 傅沛藩, 姚昌綬, 王曉萍 (Běijīng: Zhōng-guó zhōng-yī-yào chū-bǎn-shè, 1999) — the standard critical edition of Wàn’s medical corpus, including the Yǎng-shēng sì-yào.
  • Zhōng-guó yī-jí dà-cí-diǎn, s.v. 養生四要.
  • Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History (Berkeley, 1999) — for the gynecological context of Wàn’s larger corpus.
  • Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women (Berkeley, 2010) — for the family-medicine context.
  • 馬烈光, Zhōng-yī yǎng-shēng kāng-fù xué cí-diǎn (Běijīng, 2007).

Other points of interest

The xù is one of the most affecting yǎngshēng prefaces in the late-Míng corpus: a senior family physician witnessing the early deaths of multiple promising kinsmen, attributing the deaths to dietary and exertional intemperance in the pursuit of officialdom, and committing to publish in order to preserve future generations.

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