Formulary Collections — the 6 books the tradition kept on this shelf
The formulary shelf — collections whose value is organisational. They gathered what had been scattered across families and lineages, checked recipes against each other, and in doing so became the record of what a given era actually used.
Every entry below is taken from the same catalogue the product is built on: the title, the hand behind it, when it sits in time, what the book works on, and what it changed. Sentences in bold are the ones we can point an outside source at; the rest is our summary of the book, not a claim from it.
Prescriptions for Universal Relief (普济方)
明·朱橚 等 · Ming (1406) · Pu Ji Fang
Works on: A formulary that means to leave nothing out. The first juan is theory — pulse method, the three causes, interior against exterior injury, drug properties, the Five Movements and Six Qi diagrams. After that, disease by disease, and beneath each disease the prescriptions of many dynasties laid side by side with no ruling on which is correct. Our file runs from juan one to juan four hundred and twenty-six, plus an appendix.
What it changed: It turned looking up a formula into comparing them: under one disease name, prescriptions from several dynasties sit side by side. The Siku notice praises exactly that, and immediately admits the cost — repetition, contradiction, a certain mess. Total and tidy are two different choices. More useful still, many formulas carry their own "(from such-and-such book)" tag, over twenty-five thousand of them. East Asian compendia such as Korea's Ibang-yollu drew on it, and some Song formulas survive only because they did.
Taiping Holy Remedies (太平圣惠方)
宋·王怀隐 等 · Song (992) · Tai Ping Sheng Hui Fang
Works on: A prescription archive assembled on imperial orders, and the preface says so plainly: effective family prescriptions were gathered in from the Hanlin Medical Office and private hands — over ten thousand of them — and handed to Wang Huaiyin and three colleagues to collate and classify. General discussion comes first (how one becomes a physician, pulse method, the three wrist sections, the nine regions, exterior and interior), then a materia medica in three grades, then disease by disease: each section explains why the illness arises and only then lists prescription names.
What it changed: What it established was a form: a medical book commissioned by the state, compiled by named officials, and cut into blocks for distribution — the preface records the hundred juan being carved and sent out. What is more useful for retrieval is its section format. Our text carries 1,464 headings of the pattern 治……诸方, each theory first and list second, which works as an index keyed on the disease rather than on the physician or the school. Its spread through East Asia and what it changed there is the subject of a journal article in its own right, framed around the Song state's official pharmacopoeia project. It set the template for the state-commissioned medical book — ordered by the throne, compiled by named officials, cut and distributed — and Korea and Japan adopted the same template.
Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold for Emergencies (备急千金要方)
唐·孙思邈 · Tang (652) · Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Fang
Works on: The same work as the Qianjin yaofang entry, in the edition arranged by titled chapter. Thirty scrolls: scroll one opens with six programmatic essays — what a physician must read, what he owes the sick, general rules, diagnosis, prescribing, handling drugs — then a materia medica in ranked bands. From scroll two it sorts by who is sick: conception, pregnancy and women, infants, cold-damage; then organ systems, one category at a time, closing on food, cultivation, pulse and needling.
What it changed: The opening pair turns "becoming a physician" into two things you can audit: a reading list, where skipping it is walking at night with no eyes; and a conduct clause — do not sort callers by rank or wealth, meet them all as kin. A third passage supplies a rule modern practice still skips: southern ground is hot and damp and its people thin-skinned, so remedies run lighter there. Same illness, different body, different start. Japanese physicians copied its prescriptions wholesale into the Ishinpō, so part of this book comes back to us through Japanese books.
Medical Secrets of an Official (外台秘要)
唐·王焘 · Tang (752) · Wai Tai Mi Yao
Works on: A Tang anthology whose virtue is attribution rather than bulk. Very many prescriptions say which book they were taken from: in our text 50 distinct titles appear in book brackets — Qianjin, Zhoubi, Fan Wang, Shenshi, Jizheng, Guangji, Jinxiao among them — and the marker naming the source volume, 出第某卷中, occurs 2,189 times. Forty juan, and the first one opens not on a disease but on eight earlier authors' views of feverish disease set side by side.
What it changed: Two legacies. The habit of naming source and volume saved books that no longer exist: Sun Zhao, writing for the Song state editorial office, says exactly this — the great earlier names had largely perished, and it is Wang Tao's practice of titling each prescription's origin that lets later readers know where anything came from. And where his sources disagree, the disagreement is printed under the prescription, so the collection survives as a set of witnesses instead of one scrubbed text. It was lost in China and came back through Japanese manuscripts and block prints; the book's own exile is a history of Sino-Japanese medicine.
A Supplement to the Thousand-Gold Formulas (千金翼方)
唐·孙思邈 · Tang (7th c.) · Qian Jin Yi Fang
Works on: Thirty scrolls, composed after the Qianjin yaofang as its companion, not its rival. Scroll one lays the pharmaceutical ground: when to collect, a census of names, and where drugs come from - by circuit, then prefecture, then what that prefecture yields. Scrolls two to four run the drugs themselves, stone and shell, wood and herb, beast and insect, fruit, vegetable and grain each in its own company. Clinical matter resumes at scroll five: women; then cold-damage, its two scrolls sliced into what must not be sweated, what may, what may be purged; then cultivation, wasting, miscellaneous disease, sores, examination, points and moxa, with the last two given to incantation.
What it changed: It states its own division of labour. A collator's preface kept at the front says Sun's earlier book was already exhaustive on wind-stroke and sores but had not got cold-damage in detail — so thirty further scrolls rearranged Zhongjing by pattern. The other move is geography: the first scroll counts drugs from 133 prefectures, 519 kinds, then complains the old place names are unfindable and relabels them with current ones. Putting drugs on a map is where East Asian materia medica became a geography.
Thousand-Gold Essential Formulas (千金要方)
唐·孙思邈 · Tang (7th c.) · Qian Jin Yao Fang
Works on: The same work as the Beiji qianjin yaofang entry, in a different modern arrangement: thirty scrolls, materia medica after six opening essays, then conception, pregnancy and women, infants, cold-damage, organ systems, and food, cultivation, pulse and needling at the end. What differs is the cut — every title carries its scroll number, and long passages are broken into blocks you can cite on their own.
What it changed: Two passages travel well. One grades urgency without naming anything: while the organs are not yet spent, the vessels not yet disordered, medicine can still save; once the illness has formed, half of it can be recovered; once it has passed its point, nothing can be promised. That is a triage rail, not a diagnosis. The other is an obligation: a woman of fourteen or more has a cycle, whatever cold or damp she met during it must be stated, and whoever prescribes must ask. Sex and physiological history belong in the intake form, not in a footnote. Japanese physicians copied its prescriptions into their own canon, the Ishinpō, and a journal article exists that traces exactly which prescriptions were taken and from where — part of this book survives because it was transcribed in Japan.
Where this leaves our product
Qicura reads a described symptom against this kind of material and returns a pattern in plain language with the sources named. It does not dispense: no herb quantities, no formula composition, no preparation instructions, and no needling technique - those are deliberate limits enforced on the server, not wording we soften for a page.
Educational, self-care content - not a medical diagnosis. For personal advice, consult a qualified practitioner.