Zhū bìng yuán hòu lùn 諸病源候論
On the Origins and Symptoms of the Various Diseases by 巢元方 Cháo Yuánfāng et al. (tàiyī bóshì 太醫博士, fl. early 7th cent.), compiled by imperial commission in Dàyè 6 (大業六年 = 610 CE).
About the work
A fifty-juǎn imperially commissioned medical encyclopaedia of disease aetiology and symptomatology, completed in the sixth year of the Dàyè reign of Suí Yángdì (610 CE). The text classifies some 1,720 disease entries under 67 mén 門 (gates / sections), arranged by anatomical site and clinical category — exhaustively covering fevers and cold-damage, internal medicine, gynaecology, pediatrics, surgical / external diseases, and ophthalmology. Each entry pairs an aetiological account (yuán 源) with the corresponding clinical manifestations (hòu 候), but the work pointedly omits prescriptions — its purpose is taxonomic and explanatory rather than therapeutic. It is the earliest surviving systematic pathological work in the Chinese medical tradition and remained the canonical reference for disease aetiology through the entire pre-modern period, cited continuously from the Wàitái mìyào 外臺秘要 (KR3er091) of Wáng Tāo through the late-Qīng synthetic encyclopaedias.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the Sòng-period preface of Sòng Shòu 宋綬 (991–1041, Hànlín académician, 上護軍 常山郡開國侯), composed when the work was collated by 翰林醫官副使 Zhào Gǒng 趙拱 and his colleagues and ordered to be cut into woodblocks together with the Nánjīng 難經 and Sùwèn 素問 for distribution throughout the empire. Sòng’s preface emphasises that “the Zhū bìng yuán hòu lùn was composed by 太醫 Cháo Yuánfāng and others under imperial commission in the Dàyè reign of the Suí” (隋大業中), summarises the work’s comprehensive coverage of pulse / symptom / pathology / regimen / acupuncture-cautery / massage / decoction-and-fomentation therapeutics, and notes that it was used as the standard text for imperial-medical-service examinations (監署課試 固常用此).
Abstract
The work was almost certainly the product of a team of compilers under Cháo Yuánfāng’s direction rather than the sole authorship of Cháo himself; the Suíshū 隋書 jīngjízhì lists the work as imperially commissioned and ascribes it to “Cháo Yuánfāng and others” 巢元方等. The text was preserved through the Táng as one of the four core texts of imperial medical training (the sìzhǒng zhī shū 四種之書 referenced obliquely in Sòng Shòu’s preface) and was re-cut by the Northern Sòng Bureau for Editing Medical Texts 校正醫書局 (jiàozhèng yīshū jú) in c. 1026 under direction of 宋綬 Sòng Shòu, in a parallel programme with the rectified Sùwèn and Nánjīng. The standard transmitted text descends from the Sòng recension; modern critical editions (Dīng Guāngdí 丁光迪 et al., Zhūbìng yuánhòu lùn jiàozhù 諸病源候論校注, Rénmín wèishēng, 1991) reconstruct from the Sòng YuánFēng 元豐 (1078–1085) edition preserved in Japanese collections. The work is the principal source for the early-Táng technical vocabulary of disease, and contains the earliest systematic notice of conditions including scabies, hookworm-related disease, allergic-type reactions, beriberi (juéqì 厥氣 / jiǎoqì 腳氣), and a number of pediatric and infectious disorders, often anchoring later technical nomenclature.
Translations and research
The principal critical edition is Dīng Guāng-dí 丁光迪 (chief ed.), Zhū-bìng yuán-hòu lùn jiào-zhù 諸病源候論校注 (Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, 1991, 2 vols.). The work has been only partially translated: see in particular Catherine Despeux, “The System of the Five Circulatory Phases and the Six Seasonal Influences (wuyun liuqi)”, in Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu (Cambridge, 2001); and Vivienne Lo’s translations of selected disease-entries in TJ Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes, Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard, 2013). For comprehensive treatment of the work’s status as the Suí–Táng codification of disease aetiology, see Fan Ka-wai 范家偉, Da yi jingcheng: Tangdai guojia, xinyang yu yixue 大醫精誠：唐代國家、信仰與醫學 (Dōngdà tú-shū, 2007), and Yamada Keiji 山田慶兒, Chūgoku igaku no kigen 中国医学の起源 (Iwanami, 1999).
Links
- Zhū bìng yuán hòu lùn (zh.wikipedia)
- Person note 巢元方.
- Sòng-period collation by 宋綬 (preface) and 翰林醫官副使 Zhào Gǒng.