Yī Yàn Suí Bǐ 醫驗隨筆
Casual Notes on Medical Experience by 沈祖復 (Shěn Zǔfù, 字禮庵, 號奉江, 別署 鮐翁, c. 1860s–after 1924, 清末民國) as practising clinician — recorded and edited by his disciple 周逢儒 (Zhōu Féngrú)
About the work
A one-juan compilation of clinical case-records (yī àn 醫案) drawn from the practice of Shěn Zǔfù 沈祖復 (沈奉江), a Wúxī 無錫 physician of the Mènghé 孟河 school, recorded in the 1920s by his disciple Zhōu Féngrú 周逢儒 (a member of the Mènghé Zhōu medical family — Zhōu Xiǎonóng 周小農 was his elder relative). The cases are short narratives in the classical yī àn format: presenting complaint, prior treatments tried (often unsuccessfully), Shěn’s diagnostic reading, his prescription, and the outcome. They cover a wide range of internal medicine, gynaecological, paediatric, wài kē 外科, and emergency cases (cholera, eclampsia, postpartum haemorrhage). The work is one of the principal late-Mèng-hé case-record compendia and an important witness to the clinical style of the school in its terminal phase.
Prefaces
KR3eb009_000.txt carries: (1) a foreword by Zhāng Shùmíng 張樹銘 (zì Bóqiàn 伯倩), dated 甲子秋 = autumn 1924, comparing Shěn to Hán Yù’s “northern dragon-and-tiger” man; (2) a biographical sketch Liángxī Shěn jūn shì shù 梁溪沈君事述 written by Shěn himself in 光緒戊申 = 1908 (under the Shěn Tái wēng 沈鮐翁 byline) — giving his ancestry (Húzhōu Sòng jìnshì, family relocated to Wúxī), his training under Mǎ Wénzhí 馬文植 (馬培之, the Mènghé court physician), and an autobiographical account of his own near-fatal cholera in 1902 (虛列拉, xū liè lā); (3) the cases themselves; (4) postface by Dīng Shìyōng 丁士鏞 (民國十三年甲子小春月 = winter 1924) and (5) postface by Zhōu Féngrú himself.
Abstract
Catalog–vs–text discrepancy: the catalog meta gives the author as “張文藻 (清),” but neither name nor that dynasty appears anywhere in the source file. The text itself unambiguously names Shěn Zǔfù 沈祖復 (沈奉江) as the clinician and Zhōu Féngrú 周逢儒 as the recorder; the work was finalised and printed in 1924 (民國十三年甲子), squarely in the Republican period (民國), not the Qīng. The catalog entry has been followed in the front-matter only insofar as dynasty: 民國 corrects the period; the persons list reflects the textual evidence. Shěn was trained at Mǎ Péizhī’s 馬培之 gate after a jiǎwǔ 1894 turn from civil-service ambition to medicine (“為良相不如為良醫”); his clinical reputation was Wúxī-regional, but his case-style — heavy use of xī jiǎo 犀角, yáng jiǎo 羚羊角, zǐ cǎo 紫草 in damp-warm fevers, and fùzǐ 附子 / gānjiāng 乾薑 in collapse — is recognisably Mènghé. The cases include patients diagnosed with cholera (1902), xū liè lā drug-resistant infections, opium-poisoning, and several remarkable surgical cases handled non-surgically.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation exists.
- For Mèng-hé context: Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Seattle: Eastland Press, 2007), is the comprehensive history of the school; Shěn Zǔfù is mentioned briefly as a marginal-region disciple of Mǎ Péizhī.
- Yú Xīnzhōng 余新忠 et al., Zhōng guó jiā tíng yī xué chuán tǒng 中國家庭醫學傳統 (Shanghai: Fudan UP, 2010), uses the Wúxī Zhōu and Shěn families as a case study.
Links
- Mènghé school context: 馬培之.
- 醫驗隨筆 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB