This research investigated the “Shuhokiku, ” an Edo-era bestseller, said to have been authored by Manase Dosan (1507-1594) and supplemented by Manase Gensaku (1549-1631), The investigation yielded the following results:
(1) “Shuhokiku” is surmised to be the oral discourse of Manase Gensaku's disciple, Okamoto Genya (1587-1645), transcribed by Genya's student.
(2) Of the prescriptions included in the “Shuhokiku, ” seventy percent are quotations from Gong Ting Xian's medical treatises. There are numerous quotes from Gong Ting Xian's works, particularly the “Wanbing Huichun”; prescriptions stemming from this medical manuscript account for sixty percent of the prescriptions in the “Shuhokiku”.
(3) The “Shuhokiku” is based on a medical system of “basic and modified prescriptions.” The numerous modified prescriptions cited in the “Shuhokiku” demonstrate that the work relied heavily on the “Wanbing Huichun.”
(4) Various editions of the “Shuhokiku” are classified into three groups.

This paper reveals the formation of the decoctions in the Shanhanlun by comparisons of its pills, powders formulations and decoctions. In the early medicine found in the Huatuofang, pills and powder formulations, which have intense diaphoretic, emetic and laxative effects, were adopted. Although the Shanhanlun steers away from these extreme medicines, in the chapter Kebukepian there are two medical indications for such pills and powder formulations for basic treatment, and for such decoctions for relatively complicated symptoms of diseases. Focusing on the decoction preparations:the doses of the decoctions are related to those of the pills and the powder formulations. In addition, some of the decoction ingredients come from soup or gruel to take with a pill or a powder formulation. These mean that dosage forms are changed from pills and powders, to decoctions in stages. We therefore conclude that the decoctions in the Shanhanlun are derived from pills and powder formulations.