Yi Lue Chao

Yi Lue Chao was completed in the first year of Eihō (1081). Its author is Tanba no Masatada, a renowned physician of the Heian period. The Tanba family practiced medicine for generations; his great-grandfather Tanba no Yasuyori had compiled the earliest extant Japanese medical work, Ishinpō, so Tanba no Masatada was familiar with Jin and Tang formularies from childhood. This book is a small formulary for emergency medicine. From thirty-four Chinese formularies of the Jin and Tang periods, Tanba no Masatada excerpted simple and easy-to-use remedies, adding hereditary single remedies and proven prescriptions. It is divided into fifty-two categories by disease, with over 240 prescriptions in total. The contents cover abscesses and boils, ding sores, sudden lockjaw from windstroke, facial deviation, stiff tongue, sudden loss of voice, confused speech, and other acute conditions; nosebleed, foreign objects in the ear, poisoning from various fruits, vegetables, fish, meats, and mushrooms, bone impaction, and other accidents; as well as incised wounds, burns and scalds, falls, dog and snake bites, cholera, difficult and transverse labor, retained placenta, infant umbilical cutting and various pediatric diseases, drowning, and more. Among the cited remedies are contents not recorded in Qianjin and Waitai and rarely seen in later formularies, which can supplement the gaps in Chinese formularies. Extant editions include the Japanese Kansei seventh year (1795) Hitsujūdō woodblock edition and the typeset edition in Zoku Gunsho Ruijū; the Huanghan Yixue Congshu published by Shanghai World Book Company in 1936 also includes this book. This edition is a simplified-character, collated and annotated edition in the Huanghan Yixue Jinghua Shuxi series, collated and annotated by Lu Chengding and Tian Sisheng, with a comparison table of abbreviated and full titles of cited works for easy tracing of original sources.