Wàitái mìyào 外臺秘要
The Secret and Essential Formulae from an Outside Censor by 王燾 Wáng Tāo (c. 670 – c. 755, Méi 郿, Jīngzhào).
About the work
A forty-juǎn mid-Táng medical encyclopaedia in 1104 entries (mén 門), compiled by the official-physician Wáng Tāo during his Yèjūn 鄴郡 prefectship and self-dated Tiānbǎo 11 / 752. The title combines: (i) Wàitái 外臺 — the Táng administrative designation for a censorate-inspectorate-bearing prefect serving outside the central censorate (here, Wáng’s Yèjūn post); and (ii) mìyào 秘要 — “the secret and essential” matters of the medical tradition. Together with Sūn Sīmiǎo’s KR3er088 Qiānjīn yàofāng (c. 650–659) and Cháo Yuánfāng’s Zhūbìng yuánhòu lùn 諸病源候論 (c. 610), the Wàitái mìyào is one of the three principal monuments of the medieval Chinese medical synthesis.
Wáng’s editorial method is distinctive and historically critical: he selected the most-cited formulae from “five-or-six dozen” pre-Táng formularies — most importantly the Shēnshī fāng 深師方 (the Buddhist physician Shi Shēn 釋僧深), the Cuīshì fāng 崔氏方 (Cuī Zhītì 崔知悌), the Sūn chǔshì fāng 孫處士方 (Sūn Sīmiǎo), the Zhāng Wénzhòng fāng 張文仲方, the Mèng Tóngzhōu fāng 孟同州方 (Mèng Shēn 孟詵), the Xǔ Rénzé fāng 許仁則方, the Wú Shēng fāng 吳升方, the Guǎngjì 廣濟, the Lùyàn 錄驗, the Shānfán 刪繁, the Zhǒuhòu 肘後 (Gě Hóng 葛洪), the Yánnián 延年, the Xiǎopǐn 小品 (Chén Yánzhī 陳延之), and the Bìxiào 必效 — and explicitly attributed each excerpted formula to its source by title, with the Bìngyuán 病源 (Cháo Yuánfāng) doctrinal discussion supplied as the head of each entry. As the Sòng Jiàozhèng yīshū jú postface (also preserved in _000.txt) emphasises: “for the most famous of the older works — Zhāng Zhòngjǐng, the Jíyàn, the Xiǎopǐn, all now mostly lost — though their content survives within the entries here, [other compilations] cannot distinguish them; Wáng’s editorial labour, by labelling each by source, permits later students to know whence each came. This is his greatest service.”
The work is therefore the principal extant secondary witness for an entire library of lost pre-Táng medical literature — and it is for this reason, far more than for any innovative doctrinal contribution by Wáng himself, that the Wàitái mìyào has been one of the most-studied texts of the modern Chinese-medical philological tradition.
The 40 juǎn are organised topically: juǎn 1–2 (shānghán 傷寒), juǎn 3–6 (tiānxíng 天行 / wēnbìng 溫病 and related fevers), juǎn 7 (kuángquǎn 狂犬 and bàishǔ 敗鼠 — rabies and rat-bite), juǎn 8–10 (cough, xūláo, fēng disorders), juǎn 11 (xiāokě 消渴 / diabetes), juǎn 12 (heart, gastric, abdominal), juǎn 13 (jaundice, water-disorders), juǎn 14 (fēngcì 風痺 paralysis), juǎn 15–16 (fēngtān 風癇 fits and convulsions, yōngjū 癰疽 abscesses), juǎn 17–18 (urological), juǎn 19–20 (jiǎoqì 腳氣 beriberi — Wáng’s two famously detailed juǎn on this characteristically southern complaint), juǎn 21–22 (head and face), juǎn 23–24 (eye, throat, mouth, teeth), juǎn 25–26 (poisons, jíjiù emergency), juǎn 27 (small surgery), juǎn 28–29 (gǔzhēng 骨蒸 consumption-fever, parasites), juǎn 30–31 (yǎngshēng 養生, chángfú 常服 longevity formulae), juǎn 32 (méizhì 美治 cosmetics), juǎn 33–34 (women), juǎn 35–36 (paediatrics), juǎn 37 (shíshí 食食 dietetics), juǎn 38 (rǔshí 乳石 mineral elixirs — important early evidence for Táng fúshí practice), juǎn 39–40 (acupuncture — though Wáng famously remarks in his preface that he has used jiǔ 灸 moxibustion alone and rejected needling, “since the needle can kill the living but cannot raise the dead, and the method has been long lost”).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries the full prefatory matter of the 1640 Chéng Yǎndào 程衍道 re-cut edition, in this sequence:
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Chóngkè Wàitái mìyào fāng xù 重刻外臺秘要方序 of 金聲 Jīn Shēng (jìnshì of Chóngzhēn 1 / 1628, Hànlín shùjíshì 庶吉士, Shāndōng jiànchá yùshǐ 監察御史); a substantial preface narrating Chéng Yǎndào 程衍道 (zì Jìngtōng 敬通) of Xīnān 新安 as a “pure Confucian who is also penetrating in medicine” who has undertaken the recutting.
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Chóngkè Wàitái mìyào xù 重刻外臺秘要序 of 張天祿 Zhāng Tiānlù (military governor Dūzhī tóngzhī of HuīNíngChíTài 徽寧池太 region), who funded the print.
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Wàitái mìyào xù 外臺秘要序 of 吳孔嘉 Wú Kǒngjiā (jìnshì of 1628, Hànlín biānxiū 編修), dated Chóngzhēn gēngchén qīnghé zhī jí 崇禎庚辰清和之吉 = Chóngzhēn 13 / 1640 fourth month; this is the firm date of the Chéng Yǎndào editio princeps of the Míng recension.
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Zìxù 自序 of Chéng Yǎndào 程衍道 (zì Jìngtōng 敬通, Xīnān), the actual Míng-period editor. Chéng narrates the philological labour (“ten years’ work, comparing the manuscript copies, with their many errors and lacunae, noting variants in the margins”); the work was the second of his medical-classics reprint programme, followed by his Shèngjì zǒnglù 聖濟總錄 reprint.
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Wáng Tāo’s own self-preface dated Tiānbǎo shíyī zǎi 天寶十一載 = 752, zài Zhíxú yuè zhī zāi shēng míng zhě yě 歲在執徐月之哉生明者也 (an obscure cyclical-calendrical formulation marking the third day of the month). Wáng’s self-titling — Yínqīng guānglù dàfū chíjié Yèjūn zhū jūnshì jiān shǒu cìshǐ shàngzhùguó Qīngyuán xiàn kāiguó bó 銀青光祿大夫持節鄴郡諸軍事兼守刺史上柱國清源縣開國伯 — places him at Yèjūn (Héběi, mod. An-yáng region) at the time of completion. He narrates: his lifelong illness from youth; his twenty-plus years of access to the Hóngwénguǎn 弘文館 imperial library in the capital; the bǐnyīn 婚姻 marriage-political circumstances that led to his banishment to Fánglíng 房陵 and Dàníngjùn 大寧郡 (the Yangzi-gorges region) and the zhànglì 瘴癘 (miasmic illness) he and his companions suffered there; and the resulting commitment to the present compilation.
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Sòng Jiàozhèng yīshū jú preface by 孫兆 Sūn Zhào, qián jiāngshì láng shǒu Diànzhōngchéng tóng jiàozhèng yīshū chén Sūn Zhào jǐn shàng 前將仕郎守殿中丞同較正醫書臣孫兆謹上, written for the Sòng editorial recension. Sūn Zhào notes that the Sòng editors regarded Wáng as “as a Confucian, the medical Way not reaching Sūn Sīmiǎo, but for excerpting and selecting the formulae of the various schools, sufficiently getting their essence — in the line of Cuī and Mèng Shēn”; he also notes the editorial choice to suppress duplicate prescriptions and to gloss textual variants in interlinear notes.
Abstract
The 752 Tiānbǎo 11 dating of the editio princeps is established beyond any doubt by Wáng’s own preface and is undisputed in the modern philological tradition. The Sòng Jiàozhèng yīshū jú recension (c. 1066–1069, by Sūn Zhào, Lín Yì 林億, Gāo Bǎohéng 高保衡, and others) is the textus receptus of all subsequent editions. The Míng tradition centres on the Chéng Yǎndào 1640 Xīnān re-cut, which is the basis of the present hxwd recension (descending through a Japanese reprint).
Beyond the editio princeps, the Wàitái mìyào exists in significant pre-Sòng manuscript form: substantial Dūnhuáng fragments and the famous Kūngzéjīng 孔澤經 references provide independent textual witnesses, and the Sòng edition itself shows multiple recensional layers in modern critical work. The principal modern Chinese critical editions are the 1955 Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè reprint of the 1640 Chéng Yǎndào edition (with critical apparatus by Gāo Wénzhù 高文鑄) and the 2014 Liú Tóngyuǎn 劉同源 critical edition.
Wáng Tāo is recorded only briefly in the Xīn Tángshū as an appendix to the biography of his grandfather 王珪 Wáng Guī (570–639) (NTS 98); he held Hóngwénguǎn 弘文館 and gěishìzhōng 給事中 posts before his Yèjūn prefectship. The traditional dates c. 670 – c. 755 are inferred from these biographical hooks.
Translations and research
No full European-language translation of the Wài-tái mì-yào located. Particular juǎn have been studied in detail: for jiǎo-qì 腳氣 (beriberi, juǎn 19–20), see Hilary Smith, Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine (Stanford, 2017); for xiāo-kě 消渴 (juǎn 11), the older monograph of Wú Kuān 吳琨 and the Japanese scholarship of Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠; for the fú-shí 服食 / mineral-elixir materials (juǎn 38) see Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Harvard, 1968), and Joseph Needham, SCC 5.3; for the rǔ-shí 乳石 chapter specifically Frédéric Obringer, L’aconit et l’orpiment (Fayard, 1997). The principal critical-philological work is Japanese: Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠’s series of articles, and the Sō ki Sho rinsen Gai dai hi yō hō 宋本外臺秘要方 reproduction project.
Other points of interest
Wáng Tāo’s preface contains the well-known statement zhēn néng shā shēngrén, bù néng qǐ sǐrén 針能殺生人，不能起死人 (“the needle can kill the living but cannot raise the dead”) — Wáng’s polemical justification for excluding acupuncture-needling from the work in favour of moxibustion alone. The Sòng Jiàozhèng postface explicitly identifies this as yījiā zhī bì 醫家之蔽 (“a blind spot of medicine”) and lets the original stand only because the editorial principle was to preserve. The dispute over needle versus moxa runs through the medieval Chinese medical tradition and the Wàitái is the principal pre-Sòng monument of the moxa-only position.