英文摘要 |
Existing studies of medical publications in Song dynasty China have thoroughly investigated medical literature printed by the court. In comparison, few scholars have examined activities through which medical texts were printed outside the court by local government officials, degree holders, physicians, private publishers, and commercial publishers. The activities in which these figures participated included deciding what to print, finding people to assist with printing projects, and collaborating in the process. Properly framing such activities is instrumental to achieving a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the process through which medical literature was printed in Song China. To enhance our understanding of the abovementioned activities, this article examines how scholar-officials outside the court participated in the printing of medical texts during the Song. With the phrase “scholar-officials,” I refer to educated men who either held degrees after passing civil service examinations or served as officials. When discussing scholar-officials’ roles in printing medical texts, existing studies have focused primarily if not exclusively on their capacity to serve as publishers. This article takes this idea a step further not only by examining scholar-officials as publishers but also by exploring their contributions as “helpers.” With the phrase “helpers,” I refer to people who facilitated the process through which writings were printed by offering networking and material resources to aid in the printing of a given medical text. This study will show that beginning in the late eleventh century, many Song scholarofficials became involved in the printing of medical texts outside the court as both publishers and helpers. Those scholar-officials were more interested in printing medical texts that had been completed by private individuals rather than re-printing treatises that had been edited by the Bureau of Editing Medical Texts (Jiaozheng yishu ju). Georelationships and interpersonal relationships often affected scholar-officials’ decisions regarding which texts to print. A geo-relationship might, for example, involve a magistrate’s decision to print a medical text that previous Song magistrates serving in the same administrative region had compiled as a means of commemorating his predecessors’ policies. Such a magistrate might decide to print a medical text written by a famous scholar-official whose place of origin fell under the magistrate’s rule. Interpersonal relationships also came into play, as some scholar-officials became involved in printing medical texts completed by their, or their colleagues’, families, relatives, or medical tutors. In contrast, the Song court preferred printing medical treatises and texts that had been completed before the Song. When serving as helpers, scholar-officials mobilized their social networks to facilitate the printing of medical texts, offering texts to be printed, funding the printing process, and endorsing printing projects in response to printers’ requests. Scholarofficials who responded to such requests included officials who had received publishers’ medical services over a long period of time, celebrities in publishers’ hometowns, and others whom publishers knew through common acquaintances or social events. When publishers requested that scholar-officials write promotional pieces endorsing their projects, they generally most valued the social and cultural reputations of those scholarofficials rather than their healing knowledge. The high visibility of scholar-officials as publishers and helpers in the printing of medical texts outside the Song court helps to explain why medical authors and physicians still valued scholar-officials’ appraisal of medical texts during in the Song era, a period when writing and publishing medical texts were activities open to anyone. The findings I will report in this article will challenge our current understanding of the influence of the Bureau of Editing Medical Texts on the development of medicine in the Song and expand our understanding of scholar-officials’ impact on medicine through publishing culture. |