Item ID: 11530 Yuanheng liaoma ji fu niujing tuojing 元亨療馬集附牛經駝經 [Yuan and Heng’s Collection for Treating Horse, Together with Scriptures on Ox & Camel]. Benyuan 喻本元 YU, Benheng 喻本亨 YU.

YU, Benyuan 喻本元 & YU, Benheng 喻本亨.

Yuanheng liaoma ji fu niujing tuojing 元亨療馬集附牛經駝經 [Yuan and Heng’s Collection for Treating Horse, Together with Scriptures on Ox & Camel].

Woodblock-printed. Numerous full-page & double-page woodcuts. [1], 2, 4, 31, [4], 46; 46, [2], 40; 50, [3], 47; 17, 1, 32, [3], 33 folding leaves. Nine juan in four vols. 8vo (150 x 235 mm.), old wrappers with handwritten titles & juan number on upper covers, old stitching. Shanghai: Saoye shanfang, 1885.

First Saoye shanfang edition. Generously illustrated with hundreds of woodcuts, Yuan and Heng’s Collection is the most popular and influential work of Chinese veterinary medicine, covering all aspects of equestrian medicine as well as the diagnosis and treatment of cattle and camels. First published in 1608, the work significantly contributed to the early modern development of equestrian medicine not only in China but also in Japan, Korea, and Mongolia.

“The most significant works in the genera of horse medicine date only from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Among them is the Yuan Heng liaoma ji 元亨療馬集 (Yuan and Heng’s Collection for Treating Horses), first published under that title in 1608...The existing [Yuan and Heng’s Collection] has clearly been compiled from a variety of existing sources. In this respect it is like the older Simu anji ji 司牧安驥集, although editors have made the material in the [Yuan and Heng’s Collection] fit more seamlessly than is the case with the heterogeneous material in the earlier collection...

“Spurious attribution notwithstanding, [this text] is an extraordinarily rich work. It is in six books and includes detailed discussion of a variety of topics: horse physiognomy; horse whorl lore, a kind of divination based upon close examination of the configurations assumed by a horse’s hair that is also found outside of China; horse diagnosis and physiology; horse pathology, including a consideration of the eye diseases of the horse; taboo and propitious days for treatment; correspondences; and a huge section, comprising all of books 3 and 4, on specific conditions and the treatments preferred for them. At the end of the book, there is also a detailed listing of herbal medicines and preparations and their specific applications...

“In [Yuan and Heng’s Collection], the basic format remains the same [from earlier works in the genre] but symptoms and treatment are described in far more detail, and text and its illustration are not confined to a single printed sheet but take as much space as needed. In addition, [this work] tends to describe horse diseases in terms not of pragmatic symptoms...but as they relate to the abstract qualities of human medicine as applied to animals.” - Buell et al., “Chinese Horse Medicine: Texts and Illustrations,” pp. 316 & 321.

The original collection on equestrian medicine, in six juan, is traditionally attributed (following Ding Bin’s 丁賓 Preface in the 1608 first edition) to the Yu brothers, active in the Liu’an Prefecture of Anhui province during the 16th century. As biographies of the Yu brothers are not otherwise attested in historical records, modern scholars have since questioned this traditional attribution (see ibid., p. 316). In 1736, Li Yushu 李玉書 published an influential expanded edition of Yuan and Heng’s Collection, with a Preface by Xu Qiang 許鏘, appending to the original work two juan on bovine medicine and one juan on camel medicine.

Our copy follows the organization of the 1736 edition. It is generously illustrated throughout with fine woodcuts depicting horses, their anatomy, pressure points for acupuncture, images of teeth to judge age, diseased horses in considerable agony, a horse doctor diagnosing a horse and checking its pulse, places on the horse where blood could be drawn, joint diseases, pregnant horses, horses with fevers or liver diseases, skin diseases, views of the stomach, treatment of constipation with enemas, eye diseases and their treatment, horses wounded in battle, etc. Each illustrated ailment is accompanied by detailed information about diagnosis and treatment, including pharmacological recipes and mnemonics for the practicing veterinarian.

The additional sections on bovine and camel medicine are located in the fourth volume, which opens with 48 woodcut illustrations of camels with various internal and external diseases, their pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment, with an appendix of pharmacological recipes. The extensive section on bovine medicine begins with an illustrated guide for identifying different kinds of bovines, followed by a double-page woodcut depicting the acupoints on the animal, followed by many woodcut illustrations of bovines vomiting, urinating blood, fainting, giving birth to a calf, exhausted from being overworked, infested by parasites, etc. Each illustration is accompanied by information on diagnosis and treatment, with an appendix of pharmacological recipes.

The title-page is dated Guangxu 11 (1885) and states the publisher to be the Saoye shanfang, in Shanghai. This is the first of two Saoye shanfang editions of Yuan and Heng’s Collection and less common than the second, lithographic edition published in 1898.

Nice, clean set, with some discoloration on wrappers. Our set was likely re-bound in the early 20th century, with earlier flyleaves and wrappers bound in the middle of volumes.

❧ 中國農業古籍目錄, #1262 (cf. #1260-61, #1263-67). 烏蘭塔娜, “《元亨療馬集》的價值簡述,” 內蒙古農業大學學報（社會科學版） 12, No. 6 (2010), pp. 204-5. 劉鐘傑, 許劍琴 (eds.), 中獸醫學, 4th ed. (中國農業出版社: 2011), pp. 3-4. Paul D. Buell, Timothy May, & David Ramey, “Chinese Horse Medicine: Texts and Illustrations,” in Lo & Barrett (eds.), Imagining Chinese Medicine (Brill: 2018), pp. 315-26.