聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

瀕湖脈學

4 min read

Text ID
KR3eb014
Date
1564–1564
Dynasty
明

Bīn Hú Mài Xué 瀕湖脈學

Lakeside Pulse Studies by 李時珍 (Lǐ Shízhēn, zì Dōngbì 東璧, hào Bīnhú shānrén 瀕湖山人, 1518–1593, 明), incorporating Cuī Jiāyàn’s 崔嘉彥 Sì yán jǔ yào 四言舉要

About the work

A one-juan late-Míng pulse handbook by Lǐ Shízhēn — the most widely used pulse-doctrine text in Chinese medicine from the late Ming onwards — completed in 1564 and self-printed at his Hùběi 蘄州 home (the “Bīnhú” / Lakeside studio that gives the book its name). The work has two contiguous sections. First, Lǐ’s own systematic exposition of twenty-seven pulse types (二十七脈) — Wáng Shūhé’s KR3eb011 Mài jīng twenty-four expanded by adding cháng 長, duǎn 短, and láo 牢 — each laid out with a tǐzhuàng shī 體狀詩 (verse describing the pulse-image), a xiānglèi shī 相類詩 (verse on confusable pulses), a zhǔbìng shī 主病詩 (verse on diagnosis), and prose annotation tagging the Sùwèn, Mài jīng, and other sources. Second, the Sì yán jǔ yào 四言舉要 — the four-character mnemonic on pulse theory by Cuī Jiāyàn 紫虛 (1108–1190; see KR3eb025 Mài jué) — is reproduced as a coda. The verse format made the book a near-universal textbook in late-Ming and Qing medical pedagogy.

Prefaces

KR3eb014_000.txt carries Lǐ’s own preface dated Míng Jiājìng jiǎzǐ shàngyuán rì 明嘉靖甲子上元日 = the first-month full-moon day of 1564, in which he explains the project as a corrective to the long-popular pseudo-Wáng-Shūhé Mài jué 脈訣 of Gāo Yángshēng 高陽生 (a Song-period fabrication). Lǐ acknowledges his father Yuèchí 月池翁’s eight-juan Sì zhěn fā míng 四診發明 as the substantive predecessor and frames his own work as a “selection of the elegant essentials” (cuō cuì xié huá 撮粹擷華). He warns explicitly that the pulse is the last, not the first, of the four diagnostics — “the pulse is the trick (qiǎo 巧), but the upper-rank physician masters all four.”

Abstract

Lǐ Shízhēn’s pulse work follows immediately on his polemical Mài jué kǎo zhèng (see KR3eb019) and is its constructive complement: where the Kǎo zhèng assembles refutations of the pseudo-Wáng-Shūhé Mài jué, the Bīnhú mài xué supplies what should be taught in its place. Lǐ’s twenty-seven-pulse scheme is the immediate ancestor of the standard twenty-eight-pulse Qing-period taxonomy (Lǐ Yánshì’s KR3eb018 Mài jué huì biàn adds jí 疾 to round out twenty-eight). The work’s textual influence on the Yī zōng jīn jiàn 醫宗金鑑’s pulse curriculum (see KR3eb004) is decisive. The catalog files for KR3eb014 (the Mài xué proper) and KR3eb015 (the Mài jué of the same composite) are paired; the jicheng.tw file KR3eb015 is an empty stub, and all readable content for this work-cluster is contained in KR3eb014_000.txt.

For Lǐ’s biographical context — jìnshì 1551-cohort failure, Tàiyī yuàn pàn 太醫院判 service in 1556, retirement to Qízhōu, the parallel composition of the Běncǎo gāngmù over 1552–1578 — see the person note. The first independent printing of the Bīnhú mài xué is the Wànlì 1602 Qízhōu edition; it is most widely transmitted, however, as a satellite of the Běncǎo gāngmù in the post-1590 print runs.

Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, treats Lǐ Shízhēn principally for the Běncǎo gāngmù and references the Bīnhú mài xué in passing as part of his medical œuvre.

Translations and research

  • Yáng Shǒuzhōng (tr.) and Bob Flaws (ed.), The Pulse Studies of Bin-hu: not yet published; partial translations are available in scattered articles.
  • Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (Berkeley: UC Press, 1986), and the multi-volume Ben Cao Gang Mu translation (with H. Tessenow, 2018–), are the standard scholarly Western-language sources for Lǐ’s natural-history corpus; the pulse work is treated more cursorily.
  • Catherine Despeux, “Pulse Reading and Chinese Medicine,” in Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), uses the Bīnhú mài xué as the late-Ming canonical exemplar.
  • Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興 (ed.), Lǐ Shízhēn yī xué quán shū 李時珍醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào, 1999) — the standard collected critical edition.

Other points of interest

The Bīnhú mài xué is one of the books most often committed to memory by traditional Chinese medical students from the late-Ming through the Republican period; its rhyming format and clear taxonomic structure made it ideal for the kind of recitation-based learning practised in family-medicine traditions and at the Imperial Medical Academy.

Graph View

Backlinks