According to tradition,
Liu Juanzi Guiyi Fang was written in the early 5th century by military physician Liu Juanzi (), who had received a
yong ju fang (; "Recipes for [the Treatment of] Obstruction- and Impediment-Illnesses") from a ghost named Huangfu (). First published during the
Northern and Southern Dynasties in 499, it is the earliest known Chinese medical text about surgery. The original text comprised ten
juan or volumes but is no longer extant, although fragments were unearthed in
Xinjiang in 1902. Much of the original text was reproduced in later publications such as the
Wai tai mi yao fang () and the
Zheng lei ben cao (). Moreover, a surviving abridged version containing five of the original ten volumes was compiled by Gong Qingxuan (; 550–577) and published sometime in the
Song dynasty (960–1279). Almost all of the formulae in the five-volume edition were copied into
Sun Simiao's
Qianjin yifang (). ==Contents==