Jin Gui Yao Lue: Essential Prescriptions of the Golden Cabinet, Translation & Commentaries

The JÄ«n Gu¬ Y o LÇœe, like its sister volume the Shāng H¡n L¹n, is a gem reconstituted from fragments of a lost text called the Shāng H¡n Z¡ B¬ng L¹n ("On Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases") by indisputably the most brilliant medical mind that China ever produced, the H n Dynasty physician Zhāng JÄ« (Zhāng Zh²ng Jǐng). Exerting an influence on the development of Chinese medicine unmatched by any other medical scholar, Zhāng integrated the then relatively new theories of systematic correspondence of the N¨ijÄ«ng and N njÄ«ng with an already vast practical knowledge knowledge in the use of medicinals. Such was his brilliance that it was not fully recognized by Chinese physicians until centuries later in the S²ng Dynasty, when Zhāng's combination of theory and practice became the mainstream in Chinese medicine that survived centuries of scrutiny from successive generations of medical scholars and buttressed traditional medicine against the challenge of Western in the twentieth century. Combining theoretic etiologies with detailed diagnosis and skillfully devised treatments, Zhāng's work has left an indelible print on traditional medicine in China for nearly 2,000 years. A third of the most commonly used formulas in Chinese medical practice today were devised by Zhāng JÄ«. The JÄ«n Gu¬ Y o LÇœe covers diseases other than the external contractions dealt with in the Shāng H¡n L¹n, and includes lung diseases, water swelling, dissipation-thirst, impediment (b¬), summerheat stroke, mounting diseases, and gynecological diseases, to name just a few. It is presented in 25 chapters, most of which deal with two or three closely related diseases; however the final three chapters cover miscellaneous formulas and foodstuffs. Each chapter includes an introduction to the material, followed by the original lines of the text, which are rendered in simplified Chinese characters, PÄ«nyÄ«n, and English translation.