Yī fāng jí yí 醫方集宜
A Collection of the Apposite Medical Formulae by 丁毅 Dīng Yì (catalogue attribution) — note that the preface in the hxwd transmission is signed Dīng Fèng 丁鳳 (hào Zhúxīzǐ 竹溪子, of Jiāngpǔ 江浦), dated Jiājìng jiǎyín (1554).
About the work
An eleven-juǎn (in some recensions seven-juǎn) clinical formulary organised under the broad rubric of internal-medicine disease categories, with each disease entry pairing a description of aetiology with a selected formula tested in the compiler’s clinical practice. The work’s distinctive feature, set out programmatically in the preface, is its emphasis on the fittedness (yí 宜) of formula to clinical situation — a polemical response to what the compiler describes as the late-Míng tendency to mechanically apply established formulae without regard to the specific pulse-pattern and disease-presentation of the individual patient. The compiler’s metaphor for this is striking: rote-formulary use is like the hare-hunter who surrounds the field on four sides hoping the hare will run into one of them, rather than seeking the hare’s actual lair; the formula is to be “weighed on the balance” (持權衡以較輕重) against the clinical case at hand. The work is methodologically aligned with the Yīfāng kǎo 醫方考 (Wú Kūn 吳崑, 1584) tradition of formula-centred clinical pedagogy that became dominant in late-Míng medicine.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves the author’s self-preface, signed Jiājìng jiǎyín suì chūnyuè yīlín hòuxué Jiāngpǔ Zhúxīzǐ Dīng Fèng 嘉靖甲寅歲春月醫林後學江浦竹溪子丁鳳 — the spring month of Jiājìng 33 (1554). Catalog discrepancy: the catalog meta records the author as 丁毅 (CBDB 344030 c_index_year 1385, almost two centuries earlier), while the prefatory signature in the hxwd transmission is 丁鳳 of Jiāngpǔ. Both names are míng (formal personal name) forms; the difference is not a zì / hào relationship. The 1554 dating fits the Jiājìng era catalog ascription and the late-Míng medical-historical context; the surname 丁 is consistent across both. The author is most plausibly Dīng Fèng of Jiāngpǔ (Jiāngsū) — a Míng-period physician otherwise unattested in CBDB — with the catalog’s “Dīng Yì” being a possible scribal misreading or alternative-name tradition. The catalog attribution to Dīng Yì is followed in the persons frontmatter for catalogue-meta consistency, but the prose body reflects the source evidence.
Abstract
The preface develops the yí programme through a chain of metaphors — the hare-hunter, the weigh-balance, the legacy of the family medical books (襲先人之遺編) — and explicitly aligns the work with the Confucian rényì 仁義 ethical framework: rén governs the physician’s motive (compassion for the patient); yì governs the methodology (fittedness of formula to case). The work was modestly received in late-Míng medical literature; it does not appear in the standard Sìkù 四庫 catalogue and was preserved in Japanese collections, from which it was returned through the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū repatriation series.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. The late-Míng formula-centred medical-pedagogical genre is discussed in Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), ch. 2.
Links
- Person note 丁毅 (catalog attribution); see also the prefatory-signature variant Dīng Fèng 丁鳳.