Mài Jué Chǎn Wēi 脈訣闡微
Subtleties Elucidated in the Pulse Songs by 陳士鐸 (Chén Shìduó, zì Yuǎngōng 遠公, zì Jìngzhī 敬之, hào Dàqiáo Shānrén 大樵山人, fl. late 17th c., 清)
About the work
A one-juan early-Qīng pulse manual attributed to Chén Shìduó, who frames the work as a Daoist miàofǎ 妙法 transmission from supernatural masters. The preface — Guǐ Zhēnjūn Mài jué xù 鬼真君脈訣序 — explains that the author met a Daoist immortal in Yánjīng 燕京 (Beijing), the Yúnzhōng Yìlǎo 雲中逸老 (“Old Recluse of the Cloudy Centre”), who transmitted to him the teaching of the Guǐ Zhēnjūn 鬼真君 — Guǐ Yúqū 鬼臾區, one of the Yellow Emperor’s legendary court physicians. The pulse-doctrinal content of the book, despite this revelatory framing, is actually a competent synthesis of standard early-Qing pulse material, with particular attention to paediatric pulses (the closing section quotes the Guǐ Zhēnjūn on the principle that, in children, non-roughness at the left guān is the surest sign that the underlying yù 鬱 disorder has not yet progressed).
Prefaces
KR3eb039_000.txt opens with the Guǐ Zhēnjūn Mài jué xù — an undated preface in Chén’s name — establishing the revelatory framework. The text appears in the Chén Shìduó yī xué quán shū alongside the larger Chén-corpus of spirit-revealed medical works (Wài jīng wēi yán 外經微言, Biàn zhèng lù 辨證錄, Shí shì lùyī 石室祕錄, etc.); the conventional dating of Chén’s productive period to the Kāngxī 20s–30s (c. 1680–1700) places this work around 1687, the year of the Biàn zhèng lù’s composition.
Abstract
Chén Shìduó 陳士鐸 (zì 遠公 Yuǎngōng / 敬之 Jìngzhī, hào 大樵山人 Dàqiáo Shānrén) was a Shàoxīng 紹興 physician of the early-Kāngxī period whose entire medical corpus is presented as transmitted through dream-encounters and visionary meetings with Daoist immortals. The two principal divine teachers in his accounts are Qí Tiānshī 岐天師 (Qí Bó as a Daoist deity) and Léi Gōng 雷公 (Léi Zhēnjūn, Master Thunder); the present work adds Guǐ Yúqū. Modern medical historiography is largely agreed that Chén’s “transmissions” are a literary device — the doctrinal content is recognisably late-Ming DānxīZhèngyī tradition with Chén’s own clinical innovations — but the framing is not merely ornamental: Chén deliberately positions his medicine within the late-Ming popular religious revival that pinned its medical authority on visionary access to the Nèijīng deities.
The Mài jué chǎn wēi is the smallest and least studied of Chén’s surviving works; it has been reprinted in modern editions but receives little attention next to the much more famous Biàn zhèng lù and Shí shì lùyī.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation exists.
- The Chén Shìduó corpus is surveyed in Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Yī shì wú yán de tiān-rén guān 醫之有言的天人觀 (Beijing: Beijing kexue jishu, 2003), which treats the revelatory framing as a serious feature of late-Ming popular religious medicine.
- Modern critical edition: Liǔ Chánghuá 柳長華 (ed.), Chén Shìduó yī xué quán shū 陳士鐸醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào, 1999).
Links
- Wikidata: not assigned.
- 脈訣闡微 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB