Xú Yǎngtián fāngàn 徐養恬方案
Prescriptions and Cases of Xú Yǎngtián by 徐養恬 Xú Yǎngtián (CBDB 402790, late Qīng).
About the work
A four-juǎn late-Qīng casebook of the physician Xú Yǎngtián, opening with an appended section of empirical-formula recipes (附方) covering eye-ringworm (眼癬), opium-quitting (洋菸斷癮方, with multiple variants including a Sìwùyǐn formula of Gāncǎo, Chuānbèimǔ, Lǎo shēngjiāng, and Chì shātáng), and breast-cancer empirical formulas (乳岩秘驗方 — fourteen live crabs steeped in a urine-pit for half a month with calcined oyster-shell, taken in aged Shàoxīng wine). The presence of an opium-quitting prescription dates the work decisively to the second half of the nineteenth century.
Prefaces
No transmitted preface in the source. The _000.txt opens directly with the empirical-formula appendix.
Abstract
Xú Yǎngtián 徐養恬 (CBDB 402790, dynasty 20 = Qīng, dates not specified) was a late-Qīng physician of obscure biographical record. The casebook is distinctive among the KR3ep series for its inclusion of an empirical-formula appendix that documents the social-medical realities of mid-to-late nineteenth-century China: in particular, the opium-addiction crisis (with multiple prescriptions for yángyān duànyǐn 洋菸斷癮 — quitting foreign-tobacco / opium habit, of varying complexity from a five-ingredient simple decoction with Báishātáng to a more elaborate eel-blood-and-aged-wine regimen). The breast-cancer (rǔyán 乳岩) empirical formula is a notable specimen of late-Qīng folk-empirical oncology.
The main body of the casebook follows in the subsequent files (_001.txt through _003.txt). The composition window 1820–1900 brackets the Dàoguāng-to-Guāngxù period implied by the opium-quitting prescription.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- Comparable late-Qīng empirical-formula-plus-casebook compilations.
- 徐養恬 CBDB
- Kanseki DB
- 徐養恬方案