Mài Xiàng Tǒng Lèi 脈象統類
A Comprehensive Classification of Pulse Images by 沈金鰲 (Shěn Jīn’áo, zì Zhīwēi 芷薇, hào Zùnshēng zǐ 尊生子, 1717–1776, 清)
About the work
A one-juan pulse-classification compendium by the mid-Qiánlóng Wúxī 無錫 physician Shěn Jīn’áo, one component of his very influential Shěn shì zùnshēng shū 沈氏尊生書 medical cóngshū (1773). The book applies a six-character organising rubric — fúchén chíshù huásè 浮沉遲數滑澀 (floating-sunken, slow-rapid, slippery-rough) — as a six-fold matrix into which all twenty-eight standard pulse types are sorted. Shěn argues in his programmatic opening that the inherited twenty-eight-pulse repertoire is unwieldy without an organising classification; the six-character matrix gives the practitioner a working clinical taxonomy.
Prefaces
KR3eb027_000.txt carries the body text directly without a separate dated preface; the work belongs to the Shěn shì zùnshēng shū cluster, which is conventionally dated to the Qiánlóng 38 = 1773 printing. The companion Zhū mài zhǔ bìng shī KR3eb028 is its mnemonic-verse appendix.
Abstract
Shěn Jīn’áo 沈金鰲 (1717–1776) was an Wúxī polymath who turned from civil-examination studies to medicine in middle age and produced, in the years 1760–1773, the seventy-juan Shěn shì zùnshēng shū — covering pulse, Shānghán, paediatrics, women’s medicine, formulary, and bíngjī pathology — which remained one of the standard Qing medical training compendia. The Mài xiàng tǒng lèi is the pulse component of that work; the companion Zhū mài zhǔ bìng shī 諸脈主病詩 KR3eb028 supplies the mnemonic verses that accompany it. Shěn’s pulse-classification scheme stands within the High-Qing rationalising tradition that includes Huáng Gōngxiù’s KR3eb024 Mài lǐ qiú zhēn (also of the 1760s); the two works represent contemporary but distinct attempts at the same project.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation exists.
- Modern Chinese critical edition: Tián Sīshèng 田思勝 et al., Shěn Jīn’áo yī xué quán shū 沈金鰲醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào, 1999).
Links
- Companion: KR3eb028 Zhū mài zhǔ bìng shī.
- 脈象統類 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB