Lánshì mìcáng 蘭室秘藏
Hidden Treasures from the Orchid Chamber by 李杲 Lǐ Gǎo (Dōngyuán 東垣, 1180–1251); compiled posthumously by his disciple 羅天益 Luó Tiānyì.
About the work
A three-juǎn clinical-formulary monument of the late Jīn — the third in the standard triad of 李杲 Lǐ Gǎo’s surviving works, alongside the Nèiwài shāng biànhuò lùn 內外傷辨惑論 (KR3e0033) and the Píwèi lùn 脾胃論 (KR3e0034). The work systematically applies the píwèi 脾胃 (spleen-and-stomach) doctrine — Lǐ Gǎo’s foundational clinical insight that yuánqì 元氣 depletion via dietary and emotional damage to the central digestion is the master pathomechanism of “internal-damage” disease (nèishāng 內傷) — to the full clinical-disease repertoire. The 21 mén 門 (disease-headings, organised into upper, middle, and lower juǎn) cover: yǐnshí láojuàn 飲食勞倦 (dietary fatigue), zhōngmǎn fùzhàng 中滿腹脹 (abdominal fullness and distension), xīnfù zhū tòng 心腹諸痛 (cardiac and abdominal pains), tóu 頭 (head), tóutòng 頭痛 (headache), yǎn 眼 (eye), kǒu chǐ yānhóu 口齒咽喉 (mouth, teeth, throat), fùrén 婦人 (women), and the major surgical / external-medicine categories — each treated through Lǐ Gǎo’s characteristic strategy of bǔpí shēngyáng 補脾升陽 (tonifying the spleen and raising the yang) with adjustments for the disease in question. The title alludes to the Sùwèn phrase “línglán zhī shì” 靈蘭之室 (“the chamber of orchid-spirit”), the canonical name for the storehouse of imperial medical-administrative authority.
Prefaces
The hxwd recension begins directly with the body of the text (_001.txt); the work’s original Yuán-era prefaces — most importantly the editorial preface of 羅天益 Luó Tiānyì, who saw the manuscript into print under the patronage of his and Lǐ Gǎo’s Mongol-court connections in the mid-13th century — are not preserved in this _001.txt file. The standard text accessible elsewhere preserves Luó’s preface dated Zhìyuán 13 / 1276.
Abstract
The composition of the Lánshì mìcáng is conventionally placed in Lǐ Gǎo’s last years, c. 1247–1251 (with the Píwèi lùn completed in 1249); the work was not seen through the press in Lǐ Gǎo’s lifetime but was transmitted to Luó Tiānyì on Lǐ Gǎo’s deathbed, alongside the Píwèi lùn and the Nèiwài shāng biànhuò lùn. Luó subsequently edited the manuscript and saw it into print, the first printing being conventionally dated to Zhìyuán 13 / 1276 (Luó’s editorial preface).
The work was repeatedly reprinted in the Yuán, Míng, and Qīng, and was included in the SKQS imperial collection. The hxwd recension is the modern repatriation from a Japanese (Edo-period) reprint.
The Lánshì mìcáng is the most clinically practical of Lǐ Gǎo’s three surviving works — the doctrinal exposition of the Píwèi lùn finds in the Lánshì mìcáng its full clinical-formulary application — and is the principal source for the formulae (notably the Bǔzhōng yìqì tāng 補中益氣湯) on which the Dōngyuán school’s later reputation rests.
Translations and research
No complete European-language translation of the Lán-shì mì-cáng located. Lǐ Gǎo and the Pí-wèi school are treated centrally in Paul Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (California, 1985); Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin (California, 1999); TJ Hinrichs and Linda Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard, 2013).