[Study of the contents of Da He Wai Ke in the Ming Dynasty].

ABSTRACT

Da He Wai Ke (the Great River External Medicine), an ancient book written by WANG Quan, a folk doctor, who was an apprentice of an unknown mysterious person in the Ming Dynasty. There are two volumes thirty-six diseases were recorded in volume 1 with a figure for each disease before the descriptive texts, and 72 prescriptions were recorded in volume 2. The current research results about the origin of the contents of this book showed that (1) contents in volume 1 texts were mainly from Chuang Ke Tong Xuan Lun (Enigmatic Theories for Sores Diseases); (2) there are no any direct clues about the source of the illustrations in volume 1. Though some of them are similar to those in Chuang Yang Jing Yan Quan Shu (the Collected Works for Experience in Sores (Diseases), it is impossible that the illustrations are from that book; (3) the disease names listed in Da He Wai Ke were basically consistent with the ones in an ancient Korean book entitled 36 Zhong Tu Lu (the 36 Illustrated Abscess Diseases); (4) the clues about where 67 of 72 prescriptions in volume 2 came from were revealed; (5) it was found that 27 of 37 prescriptions in the first half of volume 2 were rewritten from Chuang Ke Tong Xuan Lun, and 24 of them were completely corresponding to the prescriptions mentioned in volume 1; (6) 35 prescriptions in the second half of volume 2, showing no correlation with volume 1, were confirmed as subsequent supplements by Wang's descendants. Of the 35 prescriptions, 12 had close relationship to those in Chuang Yang Jing Yan Quan Shu it is assumed that authors of the two books used the same books as their reference.