Yīzōng jīnjiàn · Yùnqì yàojué 醫宗金鑑·運氣要訣
Essential Rhymed Tenets on Climatic Cycles, from the Golden Mirror of the Medical Tradition by 吳謙 (Wú Qiān, fl. 1739, 清) et al. — chief editor (奉敕)
About the work
The Yùnqì yàojué is the opening juan of the Yīzōng jīnjiàn 醫宗金鑑 (Golden Mirror of the Medical Tradition), the comprehensive imperial medical compendium in ninety juan compiled by Wú Qiān 吳謙 and a bureau of imperial physicians under direct edict of the Qiánlóng emperor between 1739 and 1742 (preface dated Qiánlóng 7 = 1742, presentation memorial 1741). The Yùnqì yàojué condenses the Nèijīng’s doctrine of the five circulatory phases and six climatic influences (五運六氣) into a series of rhymed mnemonic verses (歌訣) with prose annotations, designed for examination memorization at the imperial Tàiyī yuàn 太醫院. The jicheng.tw source carries only this opening juan, not the full Yīzōng jīnjiàn. The parent compendium as a whole circulates separately (and is widely available in the WYG and other recensions).
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw source has no separate preface; the body opens directly with the citation chain of authoritative Sùwèn passages on yùnqì and proceeds to the rhymed verse. The first verse — Tàixū lǐqì tiāndì yīnyáng gē 太虛理氣天地陰陽歌 — is a striking attempt to graft Sòng lǐxué metaphysics (citing 周敦頤 Zhōu Dūnyí’s Wújí ér tàijí 無極而太極) onto the Nèijīng cosmology, locating “principle” (理) and “qì” 氣 in mutual implication within the Great Void.
Abstract
The Yīzōng jīnjiàn was undertaken at the personal initiative of the Qiánlóng emperor (with 鄂爾泰 Èěrtài as the responsible Grand Secretary) to provide a definitive imperially-sanctioned curriculum for the Tàiyī yuàn after a decade in which official medical education had been criticized for incoherence. Wú Qiān, then 院判, drew on more than eighty existing medical texts including the Nèijīng, Shānghán lùn, Jīnguì yàoluè, the four-master JīnYuán works, the late-Míng surgical and gynaecological literature, and 18th-c. case literature, organizing them under fifteen major curricular headings: (1) revised Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì; (2–5) miscellaneous internal medicine; (6) gynaecology; (7) paediatrics; (8) smallpox; (9) inoculation; (10) acupuncture; (11) external medicine; (12) ophthalmology; (13–14) injury / dentistry; (15) climatic cycles and seasonal medicine — to which the present text belongs.
The Yīzōng jīnjiàn immediately became the standard textbook of Qīng official medicine and its Yùnqì yàojué set the form of all subsequent yùnqì pedagogy. The verses are still memorized in PRC TCM university curricula. The compendium was admitted to the Sìkù quánshū in its entirety and is the central representative of “imperial Qing medicine” — in deliberate contrast to the various private-school works (KR3ea014 吳崐 Wú Kūn, KR3ea008 張志聰 Zhāng Zhìcōng, KR3ea013 黃元御 Huáng Yuányù, KR3ea040 章楠 Zhāng Nán) that competed for status in the 18th c.
Translations and research
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (London: Routledge, 2011) — chapter on the Yīzōng jīnjiàn and the imperial codification of medical doctrine.
- Bridie Andrews-Minehan, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014) — background on the Qiánlóng compendium and its 19th-c. afterlife.