Wàng Zhěn Zūn Jīng 望診遵經
Inspection-Diagnosis in Accordance with the Classics by 汪宏 (Wāng Hóng, zì Guǎngān 廣庵, fl. Tóngzhì–Guāngxù, 清)
About the work
A two-juan late-Qing manual of inspection diagnosis — wàng zhěn 望診 — by Wāng Hóng, completed in 1875 (Guāngxù 1). The book is the most systematic single-author Qing treatment of inspection as a discrete diagnostic mode: where most pulse-and-diagnosis manuals treat inspection as a brief preliminary to pulse work, Wāng dedicates two full juan to inspection alone, drawing extensively on the Sùwèn’s Wǔ sè 五色 chapter, the Língshū, and the prior commentarial literature. The book treats colour signatures of the five viscera, the tongue inspection, the eye-and-ear examination, the inspection of bodily proportion and posture, and the inspection of nails and skin texture, with classical citations throughout.
Prefaces
KR3eb050_000.txt carries the author’s Xù 敘 — a long autobiographical preface in which Wāng recounts a conversation with his father, Wāng Kūnjiān 汪坤堅 (zì Yìzhāng 義彰, hào Shíchéngwēng 石城翁), about the proper structure of medical learning, organised under zhěn 診 (diagnostics) and zhì 治 (treatment). The preface is dated Guāngxù yuán nián 光緒元年 = 1875. The book is presented as the diagnostic counterpart to a (planned but not necessarily completed) treatment-side companion volume.
Abstract
Wāng Hóng 汪宏 (字 廣庵 Guǎngān), conventionally given lifedates 1825–c.1900, was a late-Qing physician of Húizhōu 徽州 (Anhui) or possibly Jiāngsū. No CBDB record. His father Wāng Kūnjiān (the “Shíchéngwēng”) is identified in the preface as the principal early teacher; the project of the Wàng zhěn zūn jīng is presented as a working-out of the father’s pedagogical injunction to “明辨而行之” — to discriminate clearly and act on the discrimination. The book is one of three principal late-Qing manuals of non-pulse diagnostics, the others being Zhōu Xuéhǎi’s KR3eb049 Xíng sè wài zhěn jiǎn mó (1894) and Liú Héngruì’s KR3eb053 Chá shé biàn zhèng xīn fǎ (tongue diagnosis). It is the most influential of the three in modern zhōng yī training and the standard Qing reference for inspection diagnosis.
Translations and research
- No full Western-language translation exists.
- Modern Chinese critical edition: Wàng zhěn zūn jīng jiào zhù 望診遵經校注 (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 1995).
- Discussed in Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Qí Huáng yī xué 岐黃醫學 (Beijing: Liaoning jiaoyu, 1991).
Links
- Companion late-Qing inspection text: KR3eb049 Xíng sè wài zhěn jiǎn mó (Zhōu Xuéhǎi).
- Wikidata: not assigned.
- 望診遵經 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB