Chen Ziming, revised by Xue Ji

24 parts in 12 volumes, 8vo (240 x 153mm.), one woodcut illustration, modern blue paper wrappers sewn in the eastern style, in a blue buckram case, manuscript additions in upper margins, some markings in red, occasional manuscript corrections to the text, red library stamps, a few wormholes, occasional paper repairs

Margaret Wee Siang Ng, Male brushstrokes and female touch: medical writings on childbirth in Imperial China (Montreal, McGill University, doctoral dissertation, 2013), chapter 3, pp.164-235; Charlotte Furth, Gender in China's medical history 960-1665 (University of California Press, 1999)

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Chen Ziming's substantial treatise devoted to obstetrics and gynaecology was originally written in about 1237 (and first published at this time in Hangzhou), and revised in the sixteenth century by the physician Xue Ji (1487-1559), and it was this revised version that was considered the most widely disseminated, comprehensive and influential gynaecological treatise in Chinese medical history. At the time that Chen was writing and compiling his works, there was a substantial number of medical works in circulation in both print and manuscript, and in the preface to this book he states that his family library contained a goodly number of books; there are many works and authors that are now known only from their inclusion or mention in Chen's work. He also travelled widely and collected medical tracts and case histories. Unlike earlier works, this one begins with menstruation, asserting that other gynaecological and obstetrical functions follow from this beginning.