救急選方

Jiùjí xuǎnfāng 救急選方

Selected Formulas for Emergency Rescue by 丹波元簡 (撰)

About the work

The Jiùjí xuǎnfāng 救急選方 (Japanese Kyūkyū senpō), 2 juàn, is a compact emergency-formulary by the Edo Igakukan 醫學館 director and medical philologist 丹波元簡 Tamba no Genkan 丹波元簡 (= Taki no Mototane 多紀元簡, zì Liánfū 廉夫, 1755–1810). It is the practical / clinical complement to Tamba Genkan’s textual-critical works (Màixué jíyào KR3eu061, Sùwèn shí, Língshū shí) — a pocket compendium of formulae for acute and life-threatening conditions assembled from across the inherited Chinese formulary corpus. The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3ed085 in the present knowledgebase.

Abstract

The two postscripts preserved in the source-file frontmatter give the composition and publication history. The first postscript is by Yukawa Tan-andō 湯川倓安道, identified as Genkan’s younger brother (胞弟), and is dated 癸亥正月初九日 = Kyōwa 3 / 1 / 9 = February 1803. The second is by Genkan’s eldest son 丹波元胤 Tamba Motoin 丹波元胤 (奕祺 Yakki), dated Bunka 7 / 10 / 16 = late 1810 (文化庚午孟冬既望). Motoin’s postscript gives the publication arc: the work was first cut for printing at the beginning of Kyōwa (= 1801), but the blocks were destroyed by fire shortly after, and only in Bunka 7 (1810) did the family commission a re-cutting and a wider reprint. The 1810 reprint also marked Tamba Genkan’s death year.

The work’s controlling intellectual project is set out in Yukawa Tan-andō’s 1803 postscript. The dominant Edo medical pathology, in Tamba’s view, is the disjunction between scholastic physicians who read but cannot practice (讀書而不善理者) and practitioner-physicians who practice but cannot read (善理者不讀書) — both ruinous, both punished by the “celestial net” of disease mortality. The Taki / Tamba family’s Igakukan institution was founded precisely to remedy this: scholarship in service of practice, practice in service of scholarship. The Jiùjí xuǎnfāng is offered as the practical-side companion: a curated emergency formulary, drawn from “the secret volumes of the Bureau of Ancient Documents 乾元崇文 and the Stone-Vault repositories 石包天承, down through the Shānjīng 山經 and the local gazetteers, and the unofficial chronicles and supplementary anecdotes” (上自乾元崇文之秘帙, 石包天承之奧冊, 下至山經地誌, 稗乘媵說) — i.e. a wide-net philological extraction of useful emergency formulae from across the inherited corpus, including obscure and out-of-print sources accessed through the family library and the Igakukan collection.

The book had been initiated by Tamba Genkan’s father Tamba Motonori 丹波元徳 (the Igakukan founder) as a Jìjí fāng 濟急方 project, which Motonori had not completed before his death. Genkan continued the project and brought it to publication. The book is therefore in part a memorial to the father, in part the first concrete output of the Igakukan’s philology-into-practice programme.

Content categories include the standard early-modern emergency-medicine list: sudden collapse (卒中, zúzhōng), drowning (溺水, nìshuǐ) with explicit reference to mouth-to-mouth and abdominal-pressure resuscitation, strangulation and hanging (縊死, yìsǐ), poisoning (中毒, zhòngdú — with toxin-specific antidotes for arsenic, monkshood, cinnabar, fugu fish, etc.), acute trauma and bleeding control, animal bites and stings, and emergency obstetric conditions (haemorrhage, retained placenta, eclampsia). Each entry gives the formula and an explicit attribution to its classical source.

Composition is conservatively bracketed 1801–1810: the original 1801 printing and the 1810 reprint. The work was transmitted to China and entered the Shanghai HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. Chén Cúnrén 陳存仁 — the immediate vector for the hxwd-series text.

Translations and research

No book-length Western-language monograph located.

• Hattori Toshirō 服部敏良. Edo jidai igakushi no kenkyū 江戸時代醫學史の研究. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1978 — for the Taki / Tamba family and the Igakukan institutional context.
• Macé, Mieko. 2003. “L’évolution de la médecine japonaise face au modèle chinois.” Daruma: Revue d’études japonaises — for the Taki house’s distinctive philology-into-clinic method.
• Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2013. “Native and Foreign in Tokugawa Medicine.” Journal of Japanese Studies 39 (2): 299–324 — for the broader Edo medical context.

Other points of interest

The work occupies a distinctive place in the Taki / Tamba corpus: where Tamba Genkan’s textual-critical works (Sùwèn shí, Língshū shí, Màixué jíyào) targeted the philological reconstruction of the classical canon, the Jiùjí xuǎnfāng is the visible payback to clinical practice that the Igakukan’s philology-into-clinic programme was supposed to deliver. The 1810 reprint by Tamba Motoin was the son’s filial commemoration of his father (who died in Bunka 7) and of his grandfather (whose Jìjí fāng draft this work continued).

Links

• Author: 丹波元簡.
• Continuation of: Tamba Motonori 丹波元徳’s incomplete Jìjí fāng (the Igakukan founder, no separate person note here).
• Postscript authors: Yukawa Tan-andō 湯川倓安道 (Tamba Genkan’s younger brother) and 丹波元胤 (Tamba Genkan’s son and heir).
• Sibling-text in same author’s hand: KR3eu061 Màixué jíyào (1795).
• Parallel listing: KR3ed085.
• Series: HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. 陳存仁.