青囊瑣探

Qīngnáng suǒtàn 青囊瑣探

Trivial Probings from the Green Pouch (Seinō sasan) by 片倉元周 Katakura Genshū (zì Shinpo 深甫, hào Kakuryō 鶴陵, 1751–1822) — Edo-period Japanese physician, student of the Taki (Tamba) house.

Catalog dynasty correction: the catalog meta records no dynasty; the author is a Japanese Edo-period (江戶) physician of the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century. We catalogue under 江戶.

About the work

A three-juǎn (上 / 下 in the digital exemplar, with internal references implying an upper-middle-lower division) clinical-philological miscellany by Katakura Kakuryō — gathering several decades’ worth of his clinical observations, case-notes, and bibliographic-philological asides into the present compilation, which the author himself describes as one of five jí 集 (“collections”) into which he organized his miscellaneous writings. The other four jí — Shānghán qǐwēi 傷寒啟微 and Chǎnkē fāméng 產科發蒙 (already published when Qīngnáng suǒtàn was being prepared) — are well-attested in the Edo medical record. Katakura’s principal scholarly affiliation is to the Taki (Tamba) house of shogunal physicians (his second preface is signed Tàiyīlìng Duōjì shì zhī mén 太醫令多紀氏之門), and the work is a particularly clear specimen of the late-Edo kǎojù-medical method applied to clinical material. The work cites Chinese sources voraciously — Sòng bǐjì 筆記 (e.g. Guǐxīn zázhì 癸辛雜識, Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語), Míng bǐjì (Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞 Yǎnzhōu, Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 Jūyì lù, etc.), the Shěnshì yáohán 審視瑤函 ophthalmology, the Yīfāng lèijù 醫方類聚, and contemporary Chinese case-records — all alongside the Edo Japanese pharmacopoeia and Dutch-learning anatomy. The principal substantive contribution is (a) the preservation of clinical observations on rare presentations (e.g. the case of the man from Kōshū with retractable eyeballs at the Sakai-chō entertainment-quarters; the 1787 case of the Wakayama-domain official’s mother who vomited a strange insect from the chest after eight days of unrelieved chest pain; the documentation of Sentai-yaku 粒甲丹 opium-poisoning); and (b) the recovery of the Chizoku-sai jūkyūhō 知足齋德本十九方 — the 19 prescriptions of the legendary semi-legendary Kōshū physician Tokuhon — which Katakura reconstructs and prints with his own commentary.

Prefaces

Two prefaces:

1. Self-preface by Katakura Genshū (鶴陵片倉元周), signed Kyōwa 1 / 享和改元白雞春二月十三日 = 13th day of the 2nd month of Kyōwa 1 = early 1801. Records the work’s composition as a multi-decade accretion of clinical-philological notes.
2. Preface by Tadamichi, lord of Himeji 播磨白鷺城太守忠道, signed Kyōwa 2 杏月下浣 = 1802. Records that Katakura was a student of the shogunal Taki (多紀氏) medical house.

Abstract

Katakura Genshū / Kakuryō 片倉元周 / 鶴陵 (1751–1822), Edo-period Japanese physician of the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century, was a leading clinician of the Taki Mototane school and a prolific medical author. His best-known works are the Chǎnkē fāméng 產科發蒙 (“Awakening the Obscure in Obstetrics”, a major Edo treatise on obstetrics, much-cited in subsequent Sino-Japanese clinical literature) and the Méilì xīnshū 黴癘新書 (“New Book on Pestilent Malignancy”, a major Edo-Japanese venereology / syphilis treatise referenced multiple times in the present work). The composition window 1795–1802 reflects the multi-decade accretion of clinical notes (with internal references to events from Anei 6 = 1777 and Kansei 12 = 1800) and the Kyōwa 1–2 = 1801–1802 publication dates. The work entered Chinese circulation via the late-Qīng / Republican-era Kōkan igaku sōsho 皇漢醫學叢書 (1936) repatriation programme; it is preserved digitally at jicheng.tw.

Historiographical significance: the Qīngnáng suǒtàn is one of the most useful single texts for the late-Edo Japanese assimilation of Dutch-learning anatomy and pharmacology into the classical-medical framework — including the Hélán bencao 和蘭本草 (Dutch herbal) materia medica entries on jiāndìyànà gēn 犍地亞捺根 (gentian), shèdúyàlìyǐ gēn 設獨亞慄乙根 (galangal substitute), zhònglóu jīnxiàn 重樓金線, the famous Dǐyějiā 底野迦 (theriac — thériaque andromaque / theriaca andromachi, classical Mediterranean / Galen-era compound antidote) recipe (which Katakura prints in full, with each Dutch botanical substituted by a Chinese / Japanese equivalent and the proportions specified), and the cúntuōsāijiāzhīxīnjǐzhě 猗瑳迦知心幾者 episode of Tenmei 2 (1782) where a visiting Dutch official confirmed for Katakura the proper compounding technique. The work is also the locus classicus for the Tokuhon jūkyūhō — the legendary 19-prescription corpus of the early-Edo wandering physician Nagata Tokuhon 永田德本 — which Katakura reconstructs from a manuscript obtained via the Kuroda 黑川 village (Kōshū) tradition and prints with his own clinical commentary. Not in CBDB (Japanese figure).

Translations and research

No substantial European-language translation of the Qīng-náng suǒ-tàn located. For Katakura Kakuryō’s obstetrical work (Chǎn-kē fā-méng) see Susan Burns, Kingdom of the Sick (Hawaii, 2019). For the broader late-Edo Sino-Dutch-Japanese pharmacological interface see Daniel Trambaiolo, “Translating the Body” (Princeton diss., 2014); Wolfgang Michel-Zaitsu, “On Engelbert Kaempfer’s ‘Ginkgo’”, Research Notes (Kyūshū University). For Tokuhon and his prescriptions see Yakazu Dōmei 矢數道明, Kinsei Kanpō igaku-shi 近世漢方醫學史 (Tōkyō: Meiji Shoin, 1971).

Other points of interest

The work includes a Japanese reproduction of the classical Mediterranean thériaque recipe (底野迦, dǐyějiā) with each ingredient identified and the compounding method given — one of the earliest Sino-Japanese textual reproductions of the entire Mediterranean theriac tradition outside of Jesuit / rangaku Latin-language sources, and a particularly important text for the global history of materia medica.

Links

• Person note 片倉元周.
• Related work by the same author: Chǎnkē fāméng 產科發蒙 (KR3ei065).
• Kanseki DB
• 青囊瑣探 (jicheng.tw)