Lèizhèng pǔjì běnshì fāng xùjí 類證普濟本事方續集
Continuation of the Original Formulae of Universal Salvation, Classified by Pattern by 許叔微 Xǔ Shūwēi (zì Zhīkě 知可, 1080–1154, Zhēnzhōu 真州 / Yízhēn 儀真, Jiāngsū).
About the work
A ten-juǎn late-Southern-Sòng clinical formulary by the great Sòng physician Xǔ Shūwēi, conceived as the supplement (xùjí 續集) to his principal earlier work, the Lèizhèng pǔjì běnshì fāng 類證普濟本事方 (= Běnshì fāng 本事方, conventionally dated 1132), which is itself one of the major monuments of Southern-Sòng formulary literature. The Xùjí covers categories the parent work had under-treated and incorporates formulae Xǔ collected in the two decades between the Běnshì fāng and his death (i.e., 1132–1154).
The contents are organised by clinical category — xūsǔn 虛損 (consumption / deficiency-injury), chángfú 常服 (regular tonifying), jǐnjí 緊急 (emergency), and the various internal-medicine and gynaecological-paediatric topics — with each formula given with composition, dosage, indications, and Xǔ’s characteristic clinical anecdote (the Běnshì fāng and its Xùjí are the principal extant Southern-Sòng witnesses for the bìngàn 病案 / case-record genre that became standard in the Yuán-Míng tradition).
Xǔ’s doctrinal-clinical signature is the spleen-and-stomach-centric tonifying programme: the work’s opening juǎn lays out a programmatic critique of the contemporary fashion for using tiānxióng 天雄 and fùzǐ 附子 (hot powerful drugs) to treat shènjīng shuāibài 腎經衰敗 (kidney-channel exhaustion), arguing that the kidney is yīn water and should not be treated with zào dry-hot drugs — instead, the proper method is to bǔ pí hù wèi 補脾護胃 (“supplement spleen, protect stomach”), allowing the grain-qi (gǔqì 穀氣) to nourish all viscera. This anticipates Lǐ Dōngyuán’s Píwèi lùn by nearly two centuries and is one of the foundational Sòng-period statements of the spleen-centric clinical position.
The signature formulae include the Wùjǐ wán 戊己丸 (a spleen-stomach tonifying pill with huíxiāng, báizhú, fúlíng, etc.), the Wèizhēn tāng 衛真湯 (a major decoction for zhēnyáng bùgù and three-burner discord), the Huíyáng xiǎoyù fǎ 回陽小浴法 (the famous “small-bathing method” of yang-recovery using chuānwū, chénxiāng, zǐshāohuā, jílí, shéchuángzǐ, tùsīzǐ in a steaming-bathing regimen), and the various huàzhēng wán 化症丸 (mass-dissolving pills with bādòu, péngézhú, sānléng — the Sòng-period antecedent of the Míng jījù dissolving formulary).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt (= KR3er108_001.txt) carries no preserved preface — the available transcription begins directly with juǎn 1. The Sòng-Yuán-Míng editorial history of the Xùjí is not preserved in the surviving recension.
Abstract
The Běnshì fāng proper was dated 1132 in the Běi-Sòng zhì / Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì. The Xùjí was composed later and is conventionally dated to Xǔ’s late-career period, 1132–1154 (the 1154 terminus ante quem being Xǔ’s death year). The work has had a complicated transmission history: the parent Běnshì fāng was thoroughly Sòng-edited and circulated in multiple Yuán-Míng recensions, while the Xùjí was much less widely circulated and survived in only a handful of late-Imperial copies, principally through Japanese (Edo-period) transcription and reprinting. The hxwd recension descends from this Japanese-preserved line.
Xǔ Shūwēi was a jìnshì of Shàoxīng 紹興 2 / 1132 (extraordinarily late in life — he was 52) and a high official, but is principally remembered for his medical writings: in addition to the Běnshì fāng and Xùjí, he composed the Shānghán bǎizhèng gē 傷寒百證歌 (100-pattern Shānghán mnemonic verses), the Shānghán jiǔshí lùn 傷寒九十論 (90 case-essays on Shānghán), and the Shānghán fāwēi lùn 傷寒發微論. He is one of the most important Southern-Sòng Shānghán commentators and the principal Sòng figure in the spleen-centric clinical tradition.
CBDB has Xǔ Shūwēi at c_personid 0007283.
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
No European-language translation of the Běn-shì fāng xù-jí specifically located. For the Běn-shì fāng and Xǔ Shū-wēi’s place in Southern-Sòng medicine see Asaf Goldschmidt, The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200 (Routledge, 2009); Goldschmidt argues that Xǔ’s case-record genre is one of the key Sòng innovations that established medicine as a literate-elite discipline. See also TJ Hinrichs, Shamans, Witchcraft, and Quarantine: The Medical Transformation of Governance and Southern Customs in Mid-Imperial China (Cambridge, 2024).
Other points of interest
The Xùjí preserves Xǔ’s mature clinical-anecdotal voice (“I once treated a woman in her forties suffering from ten years of fānwèi with thirty-some physicians attempting unsuccessfully…”) and one of the earliest substantial bodies of Chinese clinical case-records. As such it is — together with the Běnshì fāng proper — a foundational document for the historical anthropology of premodern Chinese clinical practice.
Links
- Person notes 許叔微 (author).
- Parent work: Lèizhèng pǔjì běnshì fāng 類證普濟本事方 (1132).