The Quest for Efficiency: Knowledge Management in Medical Formularies

Abstract

abstract:New textual techniques emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to facilitate the search for and use of information collected in medical formularies (fangshu). These techniques differed from those used in the production of literary and historical reference books, such as encyclopedias (leishu), because the need to find a medical treatment could be a matter of life and death. Formulary authors thus sought great efficiency in the retrieval and application of knowledge. Several material factors constrained how quickly any medicinal remedy, once found, could be prepared and offered to a patient, and formulary authors worked to limit these material constraints as part of their search for efficiency. I argue that the medically derived material constraints were the key contributors to the new textual techniques’ distinguishing features—notably, abridgement of text and ingredients—and thus explain formularies’ divergent history of knowledge-management technologies in middle-period China.䷃锣:本文探討方書作者用來加速檢索和應用書中藥方的技術,及其技術在宋代的新發展。方書記載的藥方知識在應用時受到許多物質條件的限制,造成方書的檢索技術不同於類書等文史文類。探討這些新技術遂有助學界更深入地理解中古中國知識管理方法的多樣性。