Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng · Nǚkē 證治準繩·女科
Plumb-Line for Pattern-and-Treatment — Women’s Medicine by 王肯堂 (撰)
About the work
The Nǚkē zhǔnshéng 女科準繩 (“Plumb-Line for Women’s Medicine”) is the women’s-medicine treatise of 王肯堂 Wáng Kěntáng’s Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng — 5 juàn (one cè per juàn in the Wànlì print), completed in Wànlì 35 / dīngwèi (1607) together with the Yòukē zhǔnshéng. It systematises late-Míng women’s-medicine practice through the same balanced, evidence-by-school framework that characterises the rest of the encyclopaedia. The major upstream sources are 陳自明 Chén Zìmíng’s Fùrén dàquán liáng fāng (KR3e0038, in Xuē Jǐ’s annotated form — cf. KR3eu008) and 薛己 Xuē Jǐ’s Nǚkē cuō yào 女科撮要; the structural plan follows Chén’s eight categorical gates (menstrual regulation, miscellaneous diseases, seeking-offspring, prenatal education, pregnancy, the lying-in month, difficult births, post-natal care).
Abstract
Wáng integrates the SòngMíng women’s-medicine corpus through a clinical-categorical structure that selects from rather than is dominated by the warming-tonifying Xuē-school: each category presents both the cooling / blood-moving Sòng tradition and the Xuē-school warming-tonifying alternative, with case-and-prescription material from Wáng’s own practice. Together with the Yòukē zhǔnshéng (the paediatric companion completed the same year — cf. KR3eu015), the Nǚkē zhǔnshéng is the principal late-Míng synthesis of the reproductive-and-family-medicine literature and is heavily cited in the corresponding Qīng Yīzōng jīnjiàn chapters (cf. KR3eu021 / KR3eu032).
Composition window: 1607. For the parent compound work see KR3eu011 / KR3e0078.
Translations and research
- Furth, Charlotte. 1999. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665. Berkeley: University of California Press — extensive treatment of Wáng’s Nǚ-kē zhǔn-shéng.
- Wilms, Sabine. 2010. Bèi-jí qiān-jīn yào fāng — Volume 2–4 on women’s medicine. Portland: Chinese Medicine Database (for Táng-era comparison).
- Wú Wéi-jiā et al. (eds.). 1999. Wáng Kěntáng yī-xué quán-shū 王肯堂醫學全書. Beijing: Zhōng-yī Gǔjí.