Jìshì quánshū 濟世全書
The Complete Book for Saving the World by 龔廷賢 Gōng Tíngxián (zì Zǐcái 子才, hào Yúnlín 雲林, c. 1522 – c. 1619, Jīnqī 金谿, Jiāngxī).
About the work
An eight-juǎn late-Wàn-lì comprehensive clinical-prescription compendium — the most ambitious of the prolific Gōng Tíngxián’s late-career works, conventionally dated to Wànlì 44 / 1616 (Gōng’s title-page colophon places it then, in his ninety-fourth suì). The work is organised by clinical category (general internal medicine, shānghán 傷寒, zázhèng 雜證, women’s medicine, paediatrics, surgery, ophthalmology, throat-and-mouth) with a systematic three-tier structure for each entry: (i) a doctrinal lùn 論 on the pathogenesis of the pattern, (ii) the principal formulae with composition, dosage, and jiājiǎn modifications, (iii) selected case observations from Gōng’s own clinical career. The materia-medica references draw heavily on Lǐ Shízhēn’s Běncǎo gāngmù 本草綱目 (1596), which Gōng appears to have absorbed in the interval between this work and his earlier Wànbìng huíchūn 萬病回春 (1587).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt is exceptionally rich in paratexts. The opening Hè Yúnlín Gōngjūn róngshòu Lǔfǔ ēncì yīlín zhuàngyuán xù 賀雲林龔君榮授魯府恩賜醫林狀元序 by 張孟男 Zhāng Mèngnán (hào Zhènfēng 震峰, 1534–1606, jìnshì of 1559, then Nánjīng hùbù shàngshū 南京戶部尚書) narrates the career-anecdote on which Gōng’s late reputation was built: in winter of guǐsì 癸巳 = Wànlì 21 / 1593 the consort of the Lǔ Wáng 魯王 of Shāndōng fell gravely ill, and the prince summoned physicians from across the empire without effect; he then sent an official with a zhào 詔 to Dàliáng 大梁 (Kāifēng) to fetch Gōng, whose drug-treatment cured the consort within days; the prince awarded Gōng the title Yīlín zhuàngyuán 醫林狀元 (“Top-Graduate of the Medical Forest”), gifts of yíwèi 儀衛 (ceremonial retinue) and a thousand jīn, of which Gōng accepted only the title and refused the gold; the prince thereupon had Gōng’s confidential formulary printed as the Lǔfǔ jìnfāng 魯府禁方 to publicise his merit. Zhāng’s preface, written for a celebration of Gōng’s elevation, runs through the long list of senior officials in the Hénán and capital regions who had patronised Gōng over the preceding thirty years.
This is followed by Zhāng Shòumíng 張壽明’s Zèng Yúnlín Gōngjūn rónglì zhū mínggōng jīngyáng xù 贈雲林龔君榮歷諸名公旌揚序, and an extensive Hǎinèi mínggōng zèng Gōngshì qiáozǐ shī 海內名公贈龔氏橋梓詩 — over forty short verse-eulogies from Wàn-lì-era officials, the contributors a roll-call of late-Míng provincial and capital administrators (Liú Zìqiáng 劉自強, Wáng Kǎomín 王考民, Chéng Xùn 成遜, Lǐ Yǒutú 李攸圖, the great Bīngbù zuǒ shìláng 兵部左侍郎 崔景榮 Cuī Jǐngróng, and many others). The mass of laudatory paratext is more documentation of Gōng’s networks than of the work’s contents, and is one of the principal sources for prosopographical study of the late-Wàn-lì jiànshēng and jìnshì class.
Abstract
Gōng’s Jìshì quánshū is the largest of his clinical compendia and represents the mature synthesis of his career: it absorbs and supersedes the earlier Wànbìng huíchūn (1587) and Yúnlín shéngòu (KR3er084, 1591), and is closely related in organisation to the lost Lǔfǔ jìnfāng (1593) compiled at the Lǔfān court. The 1616 dating is established by the title-colophon and is consistent with the paratextual evidence (Zhāng Mèngnán’s death in 1606 places his preface — written for the 1593 award celebration — substantially before publication, but the verse-eulogies span the full Wànlì 20–44 period and are evidently a cumulative compilation Gōng appended to the editio princeps).
The work was reprinted multiple times in the late Míng and Qīng; the hxwd recension descends from a Wàn-lì-era imprint repatriated from Japan. Gōng is not in CBDB under a confidently identifiable c_personid.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Jì-shì quán-shū located. For Gōng Tíng-xián and the late-Míng yī-lín zhuàng-yuán phenomenon see Angela Ki Che Leung, “Medical Instruction and Popularization in Ming-Qing China,” Late Imperial China 24.1 (2003); for the Lǔ-fān medical-publishing milieu see Joseph P. McDermott, The Making of a New Rural Order in South China, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2020), and references there.
Other points of interest
The mass of verse-eulogies in _000.txt — over forty short poems from late-Wàn-lì officials — is a substantial prosopographical resource. Notable contributors include the Bīngbù zuǒ shìláng Cuī Jǐngróng 崔景榮 (Chángyuán 長垣, Zhènfēng 鎮峰), the Lǔfán Tàixìngwáng 魯藩泰興王 Zhū Shòuyōng 朱壽鏞 (Lǔfán prince, zì Ānyǔ 安宇), and a long list of xúnfǔ 巡撫 and xúnàn 巡按 of Shāndōng, Shānxī, Fújiàn, and Hénán.