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 YuánMíng 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 SòngYuánMíng editorial history of the Xùjí is not preserved in the surviving recension.
Abstract
The Běnshì fāng proper was dated 1132 in the BěiSòng 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 YuánMíng 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
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).