Chóng Dìng Zhěn Jiā Zhí Jué 重訂診家直訣
A Revised Direct Manual for Diagnosticians by 周學海 (Zhōu Xuéhǎi, 字澂之, 號健霞, 1856–1906, 清)
About the work
A two-juan distillation of Zhōu Xuéhǎi’s four-volume pulse-and-diagnostics cycle: Mài yì jiǎn mó 脈義簡摩 (KR3eb036), Mài jiǎn bǔ yì 脈簡補義 (KR3eb037), Zhěn jiā zhí jué 診家直訣, and Biàn mài píng mài zhāng jù 辨脈平脈章句 (KR3eb038) — twelve juan in all. In the author’s own preface to this volume, he explains that the four works are “different in name but mutually continuous in substance” (名雖四種，義實相承), and that he has now extracted the load-bearing material into a single condensed handbook for clinical use, hence Chóng dìng 重訂 — a revised abridgement rather than a new composition. The two juan cover (1) the four classical pulse rubrics (浮沉遲數), the twenty-eight pulse types, and Zhōu’s distinctive doctrine of “form-vs-momentum” (氣血形勢) in pulse reading; and (2) the cùnguānchǐ topology, the right-and-left positions, anomalous channels (fǎnguān 反關, xiéfēi 斜飛 pulses), and pulse signatures of specific diseases.
Prefaces
KR3eb007_000.txt contains Zhōu’s own preface explaining the editorial principle of the abridgement and listing the four parent works. The jicheng.tw file does not retain a dated colophon, but the four parent works were printed in Zhōu’s Zhōu shì yī xué cóng shū 周氏醫學叢書 in the 1890s, with the Zhěn jiā zhí jué core appearing in the first series (1891) and the revised abridgement Chóng dìng compiled and circulated shortly thereafter, before Zhōu’s death in 1906.
Abstract
Zhōu Xuéhǎi was the most prolific late-Qīng compiler of medical works (see his person note for full bibliography); the pulse cycle is the heart of his original scholarship. His distinctive innovation, set out programmatically in this abridgement’s chapter Qì xuè xíng shì zhí jiě 氣血形勢直解, is the analytical separation of pulse form (xíng 形 — the shape and consistency of the vessel-column under the finger, indexing the blood) from pulse momentum (shì 勢 — the cadence and force of arrival, indexing the qì). On this distinction he reorganises the inherited twenty-eight-pulse repertoire, arguing that traditional descriptions confuse form and momentum: a “thin” pulse is one with thin form (blood-vacuity) regardless of how forceful its momentum, and so on. The text was widely admired in Republican-period medical pedagogy. Zhōu’s textual base for the cited literature is Wáng Shūhé’s KR3eb011 Mài jīng, Cuī Jiāyàn’s 紫虛 mnemonic, Lǐ Shízhēn’s KR3eb014 Bīnhú mài xué, Zhāng Lùyù’s 張璐 KR3eb022 Zhěn zōng sānmèi, and Lǐ Yánshì’s 李延是 KR3eb018 Mài jué huì biàn, each cited with attribution. The reference in juan 1 to “近日西人” — the Westerners — marking the encroachment of Western anatomical doctrine, dates this preface firmly to the post-1880s milieu.
Translations and research
- No full Western-language translation exists.
- Catherine Despeux discusses Zhōu’s pulse cycle in her contribution to Elisabeth Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), as the principal late-Qing rethinking of the pulse repertoire.
- The standard modern critical edition is in the Zhōu Xuéhǎi yī xué quán shū 周學海醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhongguo zhongyiyao, 1999, ed. Dīng Guāngdí 丁光迪).
Links
- Parent works: KR3eb036 Mài yì jiǎn mó, KR3eb037 Mài jiǎn bǔ yì, KR3eb038 Biàn mài píng mài zhāng jù.
- 重訂診家直訣 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB