Jíjiù guǎngshēng jí 急救廣生集
Compendium of Emergency Rescue for Spreading Life by 程鵬程 Chéng Péngchéng (fl. late Qiánlóng to early Dàoguāng era, Qīng).
About the work
A ten-juan household emergency-medicine and folk-therapy compendium, gathering prescriptions for the principal classes of accident, poisoning, drowning, animal-bite, and acute medical emergency that the late-imperial household might encounter, supplemented by Daoist talismanic and almanac-divinatory material. The work integrates: (i) classical-medical jíjiù (emergency rescue) prescriptions from the 千金方 Qiānjīn fāng and 外台秘要 Wàitái mìyào traditions; (ii) folk-medical recipes drawn from local practice; (iii) Daoist liturgical and almanac material (the Liùwù 六戊 day taboos; the 九天神霄玉訣 Jiǔtiān shénxiāo yùjué; the Dǒumǔ Tiānzūn féiqīnwán 鬥母天尊肥親丸 — the “Plump-Parent Pill” of Heaven-Mother Bow-Star, a Daoist xiàozǐ [filial-son] preparation for the elderly parent).
Prefaces
The reprint preserves no separate xù; the work opens directly with the Fù Jiǔtiān shénxiāo yùjué Wùrì jìnjì 附九天神霄玉訣戊日禁忌 (“Appended: Nine-Heaven Divine-Empyrean Jade-Formulae Wù-Day Prohibitions”), narrating the canonical fable of 漢武帝 Hàn Wǔdì receiving the 西王母 Xīwángmǔ (Queen Mother of the West) on the seventh-month wàng (full-moon) day of Yuánfēng 1 (110 BCE); the Queen Mother explains that the locust, water, and drought disasters of the world derive from the people’s ignorance of the seasonal wù-day taboos (the six wù days within each lunar month, on which ground-disturbance is forbidden). The work then proceeds through a substantial sequence of named recipes — most famously the Dǒumǔ Tiānzūn féiqīnwán (“Plump-Parent Pill”), a filial-piety preparation explicitly drawing on the metaphor of the raven fǎnbǔ (returning to feed its parent): human (essence from the son’s body), cinnamon (collected from the son’s body), Chinese-angelica root (from one liǎng of son’s [body]) — the recipe is a literalisation of the late-imperial xiàozǐ discourse, with the filial son metaphorically supplying his own substance to make his parent’s medicine.
Abstract
程鵬程 Chéng Péngchéng (fl. late Qiánlóng to early Dàoguāng) is a poorly-documented Qīng literatus whose surviving work is the present compendium. The integration of medical-emergency recipes with Daoist almanac and talismanic material places the Jíjiù guǎngshēng jí squarely in the late-Qīng popular-medical compilation tradition that combines literate-medical learning with the practice-economy of shànshū 善書 (morality-books) and local-religious almanacs. The work was widely re-engraved in late-Qīng charitable-publication circuits.
The dating bracket 1800–1830 reflects the late-Qiánlóng to early-Dàoguāng plausible composition window.
Translations and research
- 程鵬程, Jí-jiù guǎng-shēng jí, ed. 楊靜, 程鵬程 (Běijīng: Zhōng-yī gǔ-jí chū-bǎn-shè, modern reprint).
- 王爾敏, Wǎn-Qīng cí-shàn shì-yè (Tāi-běi: Lián-jīng, 1985) — for the broader late-Qīng charitable-publication economy.
- Zhōng-guó yī-jí dà-cí-diǎn, s.v. 急救廣生集.
- Marta E. Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (London: Routledge, 2011) — for the regional-medical and almanac-divinatory context.
- No substantial Western-language treatment specifically located.
Other points of interest
The féiqīnwán (“Plump-Parent Pill”) recipe — a filial-piety preparation that literalises the xiàozǐ fǎnbǔ (filial-son repaying the parent like the crow) trope by drawing on the son’s own bodily substance — is one of the more striking examples of the integration of moral discourse and pharmaceutical practice in late-imperial Chinese medicine, and has been noted by modern Chinese ethical-medical historians as a significant cultural document.