Complete Compendium of Ancient and Modern Medical Orthodoxy

Complete Compendium of Ancient and Modern Medical Orthodoxy, also known as the Complete Compendium of Medical Orthodoxy, is a large comprehensive medical compendium compiled over nearly ten years by the Ming dynasty physician Xu Chunfu and completed in the thirty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign (1556). It runs to one hundred juan and more than one million characters. Xu Chunfu, courtesy name Ruyuan, style name Donggao, was a native of Qimen in Xin'an. He once served at the Imperial Medical Academy, practiced medicine in Jiangsu and Zhejiang for more than ten years, and helped organize the "Yititang Zhairen Medical Society." The compendium's stated aim is to "reconcile the differences among the hundred schools and continue the orthodox pulse of Xuanyuan and Qibo," drawing on medical works from the Inner Canon and the Classic of Difficult Issues down to the Ming dynasty, as well as medical material in the classics, histories, and philosophical and literary collections, citing more than 270 physicians and nearly 500 titles. The opening juan lists "Surnames of Sages and Famous Physicians Through the Ages," with biographies of physicians across the dynasties; juan 2 to 5 are, in order, Essential Points of the Inner Canon, Supplementary Examination of Medical Orthodoxy, Pulse Diagnosis of the Inner Canon, and A Convenient Survey of the Five Phases and Six Qi, systematically setting out the essentials of the medical classics, pulse methods, and the five phases and six qi; juan 6 and 7 cover the discovery of meridians and acupoints and direct guidance on acupuncture and moxibustion; juan 8 to 92 discuss in categories more than 400 conditions in internal medicine, external medicine, gynecology, pediatrics, orthopedics and traumatology, the five sense organs, and geriatric diseases, each condition generally arranged under pathogenesis, pulse signs, treatment methods, formulas, simple formulas, moxibustion methods, and daoyin exercises; juan 93 to 98 collect proven secret formulas, essentials of materia medica, famine relief materia medica, records of preparation methods, and general formulas; juan 99 and 100 are the Supplementary Records of Health Cultivation. Beyond gathering earlier discussions, Xu Chunfu offers many expositions on medical theory and formulas, and the biographies of physicians and the titles cited are especially important materials for studying medical history and medical texts. The People's Medical Publishing House edition, chief-edited by Cui Zhongping and Wang Yaoting and collated from the Ming Wanli Chen Changqing edition and the Japanese Meireki third-year reprint, is the first comprehensive collation and punctuation of the book more than four hundred years after its appearance, included in the "Series for the Collation of Ancient Chinese Medical Texts."