The Ink Line of the Medical Forest

The Ink Line of the Medical Forest is a lecture manuscript written by the Ming dynasty physician Fang Gu to explain medical principles and transmit clinical insights to his disciples; it was later compiled by his son Fang Yu, then corrected and annotated item by item by Fang Gu himself, and first published in the twelfth year of the Wanli reign of the Ming (1584), in eight volumes. The title "ink line" borrows the carpenter's ink marker as a metaphor, meaning that the book can serve as the rules and standards for physicians to follow in clinical practice. The book consists mainly of medical discourses. Volume One discusses external-contraction and seasonal diseases such as wind-stroke, common cold, cold damage, wind-cold, summerheat, dampness, damp-heat, dryness, fire, malaria, and dysentery. Volumes Two through Six successively discuss internal miscellaneous diseases such as phlegm, wheezing, cough, cholera, diarrhea, vomiting, acid regurgitation and gastric upset, qi and blood, sweating, palpitations and timidity, consumptive depletion, dizziness, headache, heart pain, abdominal pain, hypochondriac pain, low back pain, toothache, hernia pain, beriberi, obstruction and rejection, hiccup, spleen and stomach, internal injury, dysphagia, six stagnations, tympanites, wasting-thirst, strangury, disorders of urination, seminal emission, flaccidity, bi-syndrome, reversal, mania, and epilepsy. Volume Seven covers the ear, eye, mouth, nose, throat, tongue, as well as accumulations, abdominal masses, lumps, and constipation. Volume Eight discusses gynecological and external diseases such as women's menstrual regulation, flooding and spotting, vaginal discharge, prenatal and postpartum care, virgins' amenorrhea, and gout, joint-wandering wind, hemorrhoids and fistula, rectal prolapse, sores, and swellings and toxins. The author's doctrine takes the Inner Canon, the Classic of Pulse, the Treatise on Cold Damage, and the Essentials of the Golden Cabinet as its masters, also adopts the theories of Liu Wansu, Zhang Zihe, Li Dongyuan, Zhu Danxi, and other Jin-Yuan masters, and expounds them in combination with his own clinical experience, not bound to established theories and often offering original insights. The book runs through the approach of eight-principle pattern identification: for each pattern it first sets out a medical discourse, deducing the source of the disease and analyzing its mechanism, then prescribes according to the pattern and compounds medicines according to the formula, detailing medicinal properties, compatibility, and modifications; after each pattern it separately establishes a "governing treatment idea" item summarizing the key points of diagnosis and treatment and the appropriate and inappropriate measures, which is both easy to memorize and convenient for beginning clinicians to follow like a map. This edition is based on the original Wanli twelfth-year woodblock edition, collated and annotated by Zhou Jian, Lin Shiyi, and Liu Shijue, with standardized punctuation, simplified character forms, and an appended collation and annotation postscript; it is one volume of the "Chinese Ancient Medical Texts Collation Series" and is a relatively widely used modern collated edition for studying Fang's medicine.