Symbolic image of the liver: Chinese/Korean/Japanese

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Symbolic image of the liver: Chinese/Korean/Japanese. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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Description

Symbolic illustration of the liver. One of a set of five illustrations of internal organs from Uibang-yuchwi (Classified Collection of Medical Recipes), section on the Five Viscera.

Uibang-yuchwi is a compendium Yifang leiju -- or Chinese, Yifang leiju -- is a compendium of Chinese medical remedy literature compiled in C.15 Korea by Kim Rye-mong (1406-1469), Yu Seong-won (?- 1456) et al., under the auspices of King Sejong of Korea (r. 1418-1450). It originally comprised 365 juan (volumes), and contained over 50,000 precriptions drawn from 150 medical works ranging from the Qin period (221-206 BCE) to the early Ming (1368-1644). The original text is no longer extant. This image comes from a Japanese facsimile made in 1861 (1st year of the Bunkyu era), which unfortunately lacks juan 155, 156, 09 and 220.

The text says: Liver: Qi of zhen (Thunder), essence of Wood. Its colour is blue/green (qing, glaucous). It looks like a suspended gourd. Its spirit has the form of a blue/green dragon.Liver engenders the hun soul, which is transformed into Two Jade Children, one dressed in blue/green and the other in yellow. Each of them is 9 cun tall (1 cun [Chinese/proportional inch] = c. 3 cm). Holding the jade syrup, they emerge from the treasure-house of the liver.

Lettering

Picture Title: Illustration of the Liver. Lettering: Zhen (Thunder) trigram; Liver; Qi of zhen (Thunder); essence of Wood

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