Complete Compendium of Ancient and Modern Medical Orthodoxy (Volume One)

Also known as the Compendium of Medical Orthodoxy, this work was compiled by Xu Chunfu, a physician from Xin'an during the Ming dynasty, and completed in the thirty-fifth year of the Jiajing era (1556). It is one of the ten great comprehensive medical compendia of ancient China still extant. The work comprises one hundred volumes and draws extensively on sources ranging from the Inner Canon and the Classic of Difficult Issues down to the medical texts of the Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, as well as medical materials found in the classics, histories, philosophical works, and literary collections. It organizes this material by category into a coherent whole, combining both compilation and original exposition, and assembles and elaborates on medical theory, pulse diagnosis, the doctrine of the five movements and six qi, acupuncture and moxibustion, the diagnosis and treatment of clinical specialties, materia medica and formulas, and health preservation. Volume One, 'Surnames of Sages and Famous Physicians Through the Ages,' contains biographies of more than two hundred and seventy physicians from successive dynasties and includes a catalogue of 'Works Consulted'; Volume Two, 'Essentials of the Inner Canon,' is divided into chapters on yin and yang, health preservation, disease manifestations, treatment principles, pulse signs, color diagnosis, visceral manifestations, meridian pathways, the five movements and six qi, root and branch, acupuncture, and bone spaces, serving as an outline for the entire work; Volume Three, 'Supplementary Medical Investigations,' gathers medical discussions from various schools and also addresses medical administrative systems and the way of practicing medicine; Volume Four, 'Pulse Signs of the Inner Canon,' discusses pulse methods in detail; Volume Five, 'Easy Compendium of the Five Movements and Six Qi,' includes a work by Wang Ji with illustrated explanations and mnemonic verses; the subsequent volumes cover meridian points, acupuncture and moxibustion, and the diagnosis and treatment of clinical specialties, with each disease generally listing pathogenesis, pulse signs, treatment methods, formulas and medicinals, simple formulas, moxibustion methods, and daoyin exercises. This volume is the first of the two-volume set in the People's Medical Publishing House's 'Series on the Collation of Ancient Chinese Medical Texts,' chief-edited by Cui Zhongping and Wang Yaoting, based on the Ming Wanli edition by Chen Changqing and others, with reference to the Japanese Meireki third-year reprint. It is the first systematically collated and punctuated edition of this work in more than four hundred years since its initial publication. Volume One roughly corresponds to Volumes One through Fourteen, covering basic theory and acupuncture and moxibustion.