Zhěn Zōng Sān Mèi 診宗三昧
The Three Treasures of Diagnostic Mastery by 張璐 (Zhāng Lù, zì Lùyù 路玉, hào Shíwán Lǎorén 石頑老人, 1617–c.1700, 清)
About the work
A one-juan early-Kāngxī treatise on pulse-and-diagnosis by the Suzhou master Zhāng Lù (張石頑), one of the “Three Great Physicians of the Early Qīng” (with Yú Jiāyán 喻嘉言 and Wú Qiān 吳謙). The title evokes the Buddhist sānmèi 三昧 (samādhi) — diagnostic mastery as meditative absorption. Composed as a teaching framework for Zhāng’s disciples (the text is staged as the master seated in lotus position on a rope-bed taking questions from his pupils), the book is short but doctrinally programmatic. It covers: (a) the zōng (lineage / orthodox) doctrines on pulse, organising the inherited material under twenty-eight headings; (b) integrated diagnostic strategies — pulse plus chǐfū 尺膚 (forearm-skin) palpation as both Língshū-classical and clinical-practical; and (c) clinical pearls (the closing passage on infant diagnosis, where the practitioner uses a single finger across all three positions for children under three, is widely cited).
Prefaces
KR3eb022_000.txt carries a preface by Guō Xiù 郭琇 (1638–1715, the Tàiyuán Bǎoān gōng 卓越御史 famous for impeaching Mǐngzhū), dated Kāngxī jǐsì 康熙己巳 = 1689, signed Jímò Tōngjiā dì Guō Xiù zhuàn 即墨通家弟郭琇撰. The preface elaborates the cosmic analogy (“人身猶天地也”) and locates Zhāng’s project as the xiè zàixiàng 燮宰相 (“balancing-minister”) of the body. The main text opens with the Zōng zhǐ 宗旨 chapter, framed as a Chán-style master-disciple dialogue (“石頑老人跏趺繩床，有弟子進問醫學宗旨”).
Abstract
Zhāng Lù 張璐 (1617–c.1700) of Sūzhōu — zì Lùyù 路玉, hào Shíwán 石頑 — was the most influential early-Kāngxī Suzhou physician and the founder of the Zhāng shì yī tōng 張氏醫通 lineage (his magnum opus is the Yī tōng of 1695, KR3e0095). The Zhěn zōng sān mèi is the pulse-and-diagnosis distillation of his clinical philosophy, prepared with the help of Guō Xiù during Guō’s brief residence in Suzhou and printed in 1689. The book’s distinctive doctrinal contributions are: (a) the inseparability of mài and chǐfū — Zhāng insists, against the late-Ming tendency to read pulse alone, that the Língshū’s requirement that pulse signatures correspond to forearm-skin signatures (急/緩/小/大/滑/澀) must be observed in clinical practice; (b) the single-finger paediatric examination for children under three; (c) the rejection of the Tài sù mài divinatory tradition (see KR3eb017); and (d) the use of Bīnhú mài xué KR3eb014 as the orthodox modern pulse text against the pseudo-Wáng-Shūhé Mài jué.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation exists.
- Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Seattle: Eastland Press, 2007), treats Zhāng Lù as the principal pivot from the late-Ming Sōngjiāng tradition to the high-Qing Sūzhōu medical orthodoxy.
- Bāo Lái-fā 包來發 et al., Zhāng Lù yī xué quán shū 張璐醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào, 1999) — the standard collected critical edition.
Links
- Companion magnum opus: KR3e0095 Zhāng shì yī tōng.
- Wikidata: not assigned.
- 診宗三昧 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB