YOSHIDA, Sōjun 吉田宗恂.

Rekidai meiiden ryaku 歷代名醫傳略 [Collection of Short Biographies of Famous Chinese Physicians].

74; 83 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo, orig. semi-stiff wrappers, title in manuscript on upper covers, new stitching. [Kyoto]: Tahara Nizaemon 田原仁左衛門, 1633.

An early woodblock edition of this popular work. Our 1633 edition was preceded by three movable type editions (1597, 1617, and 1626) and one xylographic edition issued in 1632. Our 1633 is the only edition found in WorldCat.

Yoshida (1558-1610) was a member of a medical dynasty. His grandfather, Sōkei (d. 1572), went to China twice, in 1539 and 1547, to study medicine. On his second trip, he was asked to treat the Ming Jiajing Emperor, who suffered from a prolonged illness, possibly due to alchemical elixir poisoning.

Sōjun, an early Edo doctor, served as physician to Toyotomi Hidetsugu, the nephew of Hideyoshi, and afterwards treated the Goyōzei Emperor. Sōjun was assigned by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was deeply interested in herbal remedies, to head the honzo (materia medica) research institute.

In the present work, Yoshida provides brief but detailed biographies of the greatest physicians of China from the earliest times and describes the evolving philosophies of medicine, methods of treatment, the most interesting case histories, and practices of prescribing medicines.

Fresh set, with some mostly marginal worming. Preserved in a chitsu.

❧ For Yoshida Sōkei: Sugimoto & Swain, Science and Culture in Traditional Japan (Tuttle: 1989), p. 214.