Ishinpō

The Medical Heart formulas, in thirty volumes, was compiled by the Heian-period Japanese physician Tanba Yasuyori by order of Emperor En'yū. Begun in 982 and submitted upon completion in 984, it is the oldest extant medical work in Japan. Yasuyori came from the Tanba clan, a family of immigrant descent reputedly descended from Emperor Ling of the Eastern Han; he rose to the offices of acupuncture doctor and left guard captain, and was thoroughly versed in the healing arts. Modeled on the Tang physician Wang Tao's Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library, the work draws extensively on Chinese medical texts predating the Sui and Tang dynasties, gathering a broad range of formulas and distilling the essential from the verbose. It collects more than two hundred medical books, many of them long lost in China itself and preserved only in fragments through this compilation, which has accordingly made it a document of great importance in the history of Sino-Japanese medical exchange. Its contents span general medical theory and medical ethics, the methods of taking and compounding medicines, acupuncture points, internal miscellaneous diseases and the seasonal disorders of the six excesses, external conditions such as abscesses, boils, and swellings, injuries from scalding, fire, metal wounds, and venomous beasts, the ingestion of mineral elixirs and grain avoidance, gynecology and obstetrics together with pediatric diseases, divination and prognosis, health preservation and daoyin exercises, sexual arts, dietary prohibitions, and dietetic materia medica. Part encyclopedia and part formula collection, it may justly be called a comprehensive medical magnum opus.

The 2023 edition from Huaxia Publishing House takes as its base text the Naka-i family manuscript of the Medical Heart formulas, a Japanese national treasure, and provides a thorough collation and annotation by Gao Wenzhu against various editions, together with a brief study of the sources cited in the work to aid readers in understanding and using it. This edition received a second prize for outstanding books in the collation of ancient texts nationwide and is among the most widely circulated and convenient scholarly editions available today.