Zhujing daquan 豬經大全

Zhujing daquany 豬經大全 "The great classic of swine [medicine]" is an anonymous veterinary book compiled in the mid- or early 19th century. The original print was very brief with descriptions of 48 diseases of pigs. For each of them, typical symptoms are illustrated by a crude image of a pig's posture, and one or two treatments or prescriptions for the illness are listed. The prescriptions can be characterized as single prescriptions (danfang 單方), simple-effective prescriptions (jianyi xiaofang 簡易效方) or classic-effective prescription (jingdian xiaofang 經典效方).

For example, for the pig's raw-beans bloated stomach symptoms (shengdou zhangdu zheng 生豆脹肚癥), caused by erroneous feeding with pulse, the prescription is radish boiled in broth (luobo ao tang 蘿卜熬湯); general stool obstruction symptoms (dabian jiezheng 大便結癥), talcum powder (huashi fen 滑石粉) with honey is of help, enriched by sesame oil mixed with water (mayou tiao shui 麻油調水); "wind-and-fire" constipation (fenghuo bianjie 風火便結), the use of a laxative combination nourishing yin and lowering the fire (Yang) is due, consisting of dried and prepared Rehmannia root (shengdi 生地, shudi 熟地), Chinese asparagus (tiandong 天冬), tuber of dwarf liliturf (maidong 麥冬), rhubarb root (dahuang 大黃), Scutellaria baicalensis (huangqin 黃芩) and large-leaf gentian (qinjiao 秦艽).

The close combination of evidence and prescription embodies the principle of "seeking the root cause of a disease". Half of the selected prescriptions are classic-effective prescriptions with remarkable efficacy. Some of the names of symptoms are mentioned first in the book, for example, "rotten heart and lungs" (lanxinfei zheng 爛心肺癥), "rotten liver" 爛肝子癥 (lan ganzi zheng), "swollen waist" (zhong yaozi zheng 腫腰子癥), or "swollen heart" (zhong xinzi zheng 腫心子癥). These names do not originate in the diagnosis of symptomatology, but from the autopsy of corpses.

The book was widely circulating in the provinces of southwest China, where it served as an important and reliable compendium on swine medicine. An enlarged version from 1892 includes ten more prescriptions added by Li Dehua 李德華 and Li Shihua 李時華, and ten supplemented by Li Yusheng 李玉生. Three original woodblock prints from the years renchen 壬辰 (1892)、辛戊 gibt es nicht xxx and bingshen 丙申 (1896) are preserved. In 1960, the Nongye Chubanshe 農業出版社 published a modern, annotated edition. It was further brought to the public through the annotated edition Zhujing daquan zhushi 豬經大全注釋 in 1979, published by the Guizhou Renmin Press 貴州人民出版社. Xiang Chuntao 向春濤 edited a new annotation, Zhujing daquan xinjie 豬經大全新解 (Sichuan Keji Press 四川科技出版社, 2008).