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脈訣新編

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Text ID
KR3eb030
Date
1939–1941
Dynasty
民國

Mài Jué Xīn Biān 脈訣新編

A New Compilation of Pulse Songs by 劉本昌 (Liú Běnchāng, zì Dǔshēng 篤生, fl. late Qīng to early Republican Húnán); prefaced 1939, prefaced again and finalised 1941

About the work

A two-juan early-Republican pulse compendium by the Húnán physician Liú Běnchāng. The work is conceived as a defence of Wáng Shūhé’s KR3eb011 Mài jīng pulse-position assignments — large and small intestines at the cùn 寸, mìngmén and sān jiāo at the chǐ 尺 — against the Qing critiques accumulated since Lǐ Zhōngzǐ KR3eb020 and Shěn Wēiyuán 沈微垣 (Mài jué guī zhèng 脈訣規正), which had moved these correspondences. Liú argues that the late-Ming and Qing critics had been led astray by the pseudo-Wáng-Shūhé Mài jué of Gāo Yángshēng 高陽生 and had thrown out the genuine Mài jīng with it. The book accordingly restores Wáng Shūhé’s allocations as authoritative and then incorporates Lǐ Shízhēn’s twenty-seven pulse signatures, Cuī Jiāyàn’s Sì yán mài jué KR3eb025, and Huá Shòu’s Qí jīng schema, with extensive editorial corrections to received text and additional phonological glosses for difficult characters.

Prefaces

KR3eb030_000.txt carries: (1) a Xù yī 序一 by Zhōu Zhāngluán 周章鸞 (hào Shùntángshì 順堂氏) of Xiāngtán 湘潭, dated Mínguó xīnsì miǎo qiū 民國辛巳抄秋 = autumn 1941, describing how the author brought the manuscript to him in spring 1939 (己卯春) for editing; (2) a Xù èr 敘二 by the author’s elder cousin Liú Běnhóng 劉本洪 (zì Júshēng 菊生), undated but contemporary with the publication; and (3) the author’s own Zì xù 自敘 explaining the motivation for the project — a youthful encounter with Shěn Wēiyuán’s Mài jué guī zhèng in which Liú came to realise the Ming-Qing pulse-position critique was itself the error. The Zhōu preface also engages with the early-Republican “abolish-Chinese-medicine” debate (科學化 / scientism), arguing that Nèijīng’s capillary-and-vessel doctrine is in fact compatible with Western anatomy.

Abstract

Liú Běnchāng 劉本昌 (字 篤生 Dǔshēng) was a late-Qing / early-Republican Húnán physician, pupil of Liú Shíruò 劉時若 (his initial teacher), and of Hè Zǐrú 賀子儒 and Bīn Jǐntáng 賓錦堂. He is otherwise undocumented outside this book’s paratext. His doctrinal position — defending Wáng Shūhé’s pulse-position assignments against Lǐ Zhōngzǐ-via-Shěn-Wēiyuán — is unusual among Republican-era pulse writers; the late-Republican mainstream had moved away from such micro-disputes toward integration with Western medicine. Liú’s book is thus an interesting late survival of traditional pulse-doctrinal scholasticism. The catalog meta records the author as 劉本昌 and the dynasty as 民國; both are followed here.

The dating bracket 1939–1941 reflects: 1939 (manuscript completion and first preface request) → 1941 (final preface, presumably also year of printing).

Translations and research

  • No Western-language translation exists.
  • No substantial secondary literature located. The book is occasionally cited in modern Húnán medical historical surveys as a late-traditionalist outlier.

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