The Quest for Efficiency: Knowledge Management in Medical Formularies

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 These techniques differed from those used in the production of literary and historical reference books, such as encyclopedias (leishu), because the need to find a medical treatment could be a matter of life and death.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.