ZhōngXī huìtōng yījīng jīngyì 中西匯通醫經精義
The Essential Meaning of the Medical Classics, in Chinese-Western Synthesis by 唐宗海 (Táng Zōnghǎi, 1847–1897, 清) — author
About the work
The ZhōngXī huìtōng yījīng jīngyì in two juan is the late-Qīng pioneering attempt at a systematic Chinese-Western synthesis (中西匯通) of the Sùwèn and Língshū by Táng Zōnghǎi 唐宗海 (zì Róngchuān 容川), a Sìchuān-born physician active in Shànghǎi who is conventionally regarded as the founder of the late-Qing “Chinese-Western synthesis school” of Chinese medicine. The work was first printed in Guāngxù 18 = 1892 in Shànghǎi. It is the first of the five works in Táng’s ZhōngXī huìtōng wǔzhǒng 中西匯通五種 series, alongside Yīyì tōngshuō 醫易通說, Jīnguì yàoluè qiǎnzhù bǔzhèng 金匱要略淺注補正, Shānghán lùn qiǎnzhù bǔzhèng 傷寒論淺注補正, and Běncǎo wèndá 本草問答.
Prefaces
The author’s preface (KR3ea044_000.txt) opens with a careful methodological framing: those who “guard their own corner of the world” (守方隅之見) cannot range freely over wider horizons, while those who chase novelty for its own sake abandon the proven Way (好高務廣，捨近求遠). Táng cites Zhào Wǔlíng Wáng’s adoption of Hú dress and cavalry warfare as a case of successful adaptation in service of the deeper purpose. He frames the Chinese-Western synthesis as a project of selective adoption: the goal is to zéshàn ér cóng 擇善而從 (“select the good and follow it”), drawing on the best of both traditions. Western anatomy is admitted for the visible structures (heart, lungs, kidneys, blood vessels) but is held to be incomplete because it cannot see the channels (經絡); conversely Chinese physiology is admitted for the channels but corrected on anatomy.
Abstract
Táng Zōnghǎi was a jǔrén of 1889 who served briefly in the Hànlín before turning fully to medicine and Western-medical translation in Shànghǎi. He was deeply familiar with the Protestant medical-missionary texts (合信 Hobson, Dudgeon, Kerr) circulating in the late-19th-c. treaty-port milieu and produced the first systematic Chinese-language attempt to integrate Western anatomy with Nèijīng physiology. His specific contributions: (i) identifying the xīnbāo luò 心包絡 with the pericardium of Western anatomy; (ii) reading the sānjiāo 三焦 in terms of fascia and connective tissue; (iii) re-reading the Língshū’s channel system as a network of structures partially identifiable with the Western nervous and circulatory systems. His positions on most of these specific identifications were rejected by later 20th-c. huìtōng (synthesis-school) authors, but his programmatic framing of the project was foundational.
The work is the first of any systematic Chinese-Western medical comparison published in Chinese, and stands at the historical pivot from late-imperial to modern Chinese medicine. The jicheng.tw source carries the original 1892 Shànghǎi print.
Translations and research
- Bridie Andrews-Minehan, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014) — chap. on Táng Zōnghǎi and the founding of the huìtōng school.
- Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007).
- Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity (Chicago, 2014).