Kǎo zhèng bìng yuán 考證病源
Verifying-and-Documenting the Origins of Disease by 姚永濟 Yáo Yǒngjì (zì Rǔjí 汝楫, late-Míng).
About the work
A four-juǎn mid-late-Míng clinical handbook on disease aetiology, organised around the canonical bìngyīn (病因) framework and pairing aetiological discussion with characteristic zhìbìng zhǔyào jué 治病主藥訣 — mnemonic verse formulae for the principal therapeutic drugs by anatomical site (headache, hypochondrial pain, abdominal pain, lower-burner damp-heat, upper-burner damp-heat, etc.). The work belongs to the late-Míng bìngyuán (disease-origin) genre that descends from the Suí Zhū bìng yuán hòu lùn (KR3er002) and the YuánMíng Sānyīn (Three-Cause) framework; Yáo’s particular contribution is to fuse the bìngyuán taxonomy with a tightly aphoristic mnemonic-verse drug-formulary, producing a hybrid handbook designed for both reference and pedagogical memorisation.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a jièshàn 借書 framing preface comparing the work to “the Dragon Palace’s divine arts and the Crane-back’s immortal prescriptions, transmitted to the islands of the sea — a rare-in-the-world strange book” (龍宮神術，鶴背仙方，傳之海島，殆稀世之奇書). The preface places Yáo in a lineage running from Biǎnquè 扁鵲 (whose canonical Bāshíyī Nán 八十一難 represents the néngjīng 通神 lineage of the spiritual physician) through Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景 (whose Shānghán lùn represents the rùshèng 入聖 lineage of the sage physician). The signature reads Wànlì dīngyǒu zhòngchūn Rǔjí Yáo Yǒngjì 萬曆丁酉仲春汝楫姚永濟 — the middle month of spring of Wànlì dīngyǒu = April 1597.
Abstract
Yáo Yǒngjì (Rǔjí) is a late-Wàn-lì physician; the 1597 self-preface dating is the secure evidence. The “fellow-physician Yīrén Liú” 一仁劉先生 mentioned in the preface as the work’s intellectual benefactor is unidentified — possibly Liú Chún 劉純 (the early-Míng Yījīng xiǎoxué 醫經小學 author, KR3er051) or a contemporary Wàn-lì-era Liú-surnamed physician. The work circulated modestly in the late Míng and Qīng and was preserved in Japanese collections; the hxwd transmission is from a Japanese source.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. The late-Míng disease-origin / mnemonic-verse drug-formulary hybrid genre is briefly treated in Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007).