《济世全书》 (“Complete Book for Benefiting the World”) is a monumental Ming dynasty medical compendium compiled by Chen Ziming (陈自明) and others. The work brings together a wide range of classical medical writings, reflecting the late imperial vision of medicine as both a practical art of healing and a moral vocation.
Structure & Content
The text is encyclopedic in scope, organized systematically to cover:
- Foundational Theory – Yin-Yang, Five Phases, Qi, Blood, and Essence.
- Diagnostics – Pulse reading, symptomatology, and pattern differentiation.
- Therapeutics – Herbal prescriptions, acupuncture protocols, dietary therapy, and cultivation practices.
- Specialized Discourses – Women’s medicine, pediatrics, seasonal health regimens, and epidemics.
The work’s title, “benefiting the world,” highlights its intention to make medical knowledge available for the betterment of society, reflecting a Confucian ethos of extending care beyond one’s own family.
Hermeneutic Significance
At Cathay Science, we approach 《济世全书》 not merely as a medical manual but as:
- An Epistemology of Life – Mapping correspondences between body, cosmos, and moral order.
- A Technology of Care – Integrating diagnosis and treatment into an ethical framework of service.
- A Cosmological Text – Framing health as harmony, where the physician’s art becomes an act of aligning microcosm and macrocosm.
Contemporary Relevance
In a global context where biomedicine often isolates disease from personhood, 《济世全书》 offers a vision of health as relational and integrative. Its therapeutic pluralism—herbal, ritual, somatic—invites renewed thinking on holistic well-being and ecological balance.