Biǎnquè xīn shū 扁鵲心書
The Heart-Book of Biǎn-què by 竇材 Dòu Cái (Northern-Southern Sòng physician, zì unrecovered, fl. early-to-mid 12th cent.).
About the work
A three-juǎn (in some recensions one-juǎn) clinical handbook that advances a radical and idiosyncratic argument for the centrality of moxibustion (jiǔ 灸) as the primary therapeutic modality of all serious medicine, with herbal pharmacy and acupuncture reduced to supplementary status. Dòu’s central claim — stated polemically at the head of the work — is that the four canonical medical authorities recognised by Sòng-period medicine (Zhāng Zhòngjǐng, Wáng Shūhé, Sūn Sīmiǎo, Sūn Zhào, Chū Yúshì, and Zhū Hóng) “did not take the Nèijīng as master” and therefore “could treat minor ailments but not serious illness” (治小疾則可，治大病不效). The true therapeutic tradition, Dòu argues, was preserved in an oral lineage that he claims to have received from a Guānzhōng 關中 old physician, and that he himself has tested across forty years of medical practice — the “great-disease” moxibustion programme that gives the work its distinctive character. The work is the principal pre-Ming source for the direct-moxibustion-of-massive-quantities (大壯艾灸) therapeutic tradition that later became one of the four main Chinese-medicine therapeutic schools.
Abstract
The hxwd _000.txt is empty; the author preface appears at the head of _001.txt. Dòu Cái’s biographical detail is sparse — the standard Chinese-medicine reference works place him as a Southern Sòng physician active in the Shàoxīng 紹興 era (1131–1162). The composition is dated by internal evidence to Shàoxīng 16 = 1146; this is the date that appears in the earliest extant recension of the work and is accepted in modern Chinese-medicine scholarship (Sūn Yīkuí 孫一奎’s late-Míng Yīzhǐ xùyú 醫旨緒餘 cites the dating; the modern Rénmín wèishēng recension follows). Dòu’s lifedates remain undatable; the work shows no certain influence of post-1162 medical literature. The work was little circulated in the Sòng and Yuán; it became known principally through the late-Míng Wànlì 萬曆 recension associated with Hú Wénhuàn 胡文煥 and Sūn Yīkuí, and through the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū repatriation series from Japanese collections. The work’s name Biǎnquè xīnshū is iconographic — the legendary Hàn physician Biǎnquè 扁鵲 (in fact a Warring-States composite figure) is invoked as the work’s spiritual ancestor; the attribution to Biǎnquè himself is poetic rather than authorial.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Biǎn-què xīn-shū located. Dòu Cái’s massive-moxibustion programme is briefly discussed in Vivienne Lo, “The Influence of Yangsheng Culture on Early Chinese Medical Theory”, in Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge, 2001), and at greater length in Bridie Andrews and Mary Brown Bullock, eds., Medical Transitions in Twentieth-Century China (Indiana, 2014). Chinese-language critical edition: Lǐ Yǒng-fāng 李永方, Biǎn-què xīn-shū jiào-zhù 扁鵲心書校註 (Rénmín wèishēng, 1992).
Links
- Biǎnquè xīnshū (zh.wikipedia / zh.wikisource).
- Person note 竇材.