Elbow - Ready Emergency Formulas 葛仙翁肘后备急方

Compiled by Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty, and supplemented and published by Tao Hongjing of the Liang Dynasty, Yang Yongdao of the Jin Dynasty, and Zhao Yizhen of the early Ming Dynasty, among others. The version in The Daozang has eight volumes and is included in the Zheng Section; there is also a version in the Complete Library of Four Treasuries.

This work is a renowned medical book compiled by a scholar of Taoism. Its prescriptions are rooted in the traditional theories of Five Elements and Qi—the core of Taoist medicine. Initially written by Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty, it was created because Ge Hong noticed that the medical prescriptions and classics compiled by ancient people were voluminous and difficult to access in emergencies. Thus, he traveled across China, collected rare remedies, and compiled One Hundred Volumes of Prescriptions in the Lower Case. From this book, he selected three volumes and titled it Prescriptions for Acute Illnesses. The book contains eighty-six emergency prescriptions, chosen for their simplicity and ease of use—they can be kept in a pouch and carried at all times, prepared for the urgent needs of poor patients, hence its alternative name Emergency Prescriptions for Pocket Use.

During the Liang Dynasty, Tao Hongjing consolidated Ge Hong’s eighty-six prescriptions into seventy-nine, added another twenty, and renamed the book One Hundred and One Prescriptions for Pocket Use. This revised version also has three volumes: the first volume contains five prescriptions for internal diseases; the middle volume has thirty-five for external ailments; the lower volume includes thirty-one for diseases caused by external pathogens (i.e., infectious diseases). The book records a prescription for treating smallpox, making it the earliest existing document on smallpox.

Ge Hong’s original work and Tao Hongjing’s revised version circulated separately during the Sui and Tang dynasties. During the reign of Emperor Xizong of the Jin Dynasty, Yang Yongdao, a scholar from the Imperial Academy in Bianjing, excerpted prescriptions from Tang Shenwei’s Materia Medica with Textual and Historical Evidence, categorized them, and appended them to Prescriptions for Pocket Use, renaming the combined work Expanded Prescriptions for Pocket Use with Additional Remedies. In the Hongwu reign period of the early Ming Dynasty, the Taoist priest Zhao Yizhen supplemented Yang Yongdao’s version with prescriptions for surgical diseases, and the book was later included in The Daozang.

The existing version in The Daozang only retains seventy prescriptions, and it is impossible to distinguish between the original works and the supplements. Additionally, the One Hundred and One Prescriptions cited in Korea’s Classified Collection of Medical Prescriptions has fourteen more prescriptions than the Daozang version. Yu Jiaxi, in his Critical Notes on the Catalog of the Complete Library of Four Treasuries, commented: “This book has not only been repeatedly revised and augmented by later generations, but also become incomplete—what a great pity it is.” These prescriptions, while serving emergency treatment, also hold significant value for Health Preservation in daily life.