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察舌辨症新法

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Text ID
KR3eb053
Date
1910–1916
Dynasty
清

Chá Shé Biàn Zhèng Xīn Fǎ 察舌辨症新法

A New Method for Tongue Inspection and Syndrome Differentiation by 劉恆瑞 (Liú Héngruì, fl. late Qīng – early Republic)

About the work

A one-juan late-Qīng / early-Republican tongue-diagnostic manual by Liú Héngruì of Jīngjiāng 京江 (Zhènjiāng). Composed across more than thirty years of clinical practice, the text was first serialised in 1910–1911 in the Yī xué fú lún bào 醫學扶輪報, a Zhènjiāng-based medical journal founded by Liú jointly with Yuán Guìshēng 袁桂生, Yáng Suìxī 楊燧熙, and Yè Zǐshí 葉子實; the project was interrupted by the Xīnhài Revolution of 1911 — “至辛亥八月，而瑞等之《扶輪報》，亦與清鼎同時革命矣” — and only resumed in 1916, when the full text was issued through Zhōu Xiǎonóng 周小農’s Shàoxīng book-distribution arrangement. The book is thus the first major Republican-era tongue-diagnostic manual, written under and bridging the transition from Qīng to ROC clinical medicine.

Prefaces

KR3eb053_000.txt carries Liú’s self-preface, dated 柔兆執徐春分後三日 (= bǐngchén 丙辰 = the third day after the spring equinox of 1916) and signed at his studio Yǒuyùzhāi Tíngyúnzhuánshè 有預齋停雲傳舍 in Jīngjiāng. The preface opens with a strikingly self-aware historiographical claim — the pulse-diagnostic literature of 李時珍 Lǐ Bīnhú 李瀕湖 (Lǐ Shízhēn) and Zhū Dānxī 朱丹溪 had achieved a degree of analytical resolution that the tongue-diagnostic literature had never matched. The only tongue manuals available, Liú complains, were Áo / Dù KR3eb051 Shānghán shé jiàn (sic) and the Wēn yì shé jiàn 溫疫舌鑑; neither matched the granularity of the pulse manuals. The present work is Liú’s attempt to remedy this asymmetry.

Abstract

The book’s structural innovation is the eight-fold tongue inspection (kàn shé bā fǎ 看舌八法): (1) coating colour 看苔色, (2) tongue-body colour 看舌質, (3) tip 看舌尖, (4) centre 看舌心, (5) dryness vs. moisture 看燥潤, (6) edge 看舌邊, (7) root 看舌根, (8) change-over-time 看變換. Each axis is then cross-tabulated with a granular colour classification: yellow coatings are subdivided into twelve types (正黃, 老黃, 黃如炒枳殼色, 黃黑相間如鍋焦, 嫩黃, 牙黃, 裱心紙兼灰青, 黃如粟米, 黃如虎斑, 黃如蠟敷, 水黃如雞子, 黃腐); white coatings into thirteen (薄白如米飲, 白如豆漿, 白而厚如豆腐腦, 白如粟米成顆粒, 白如銀色, 白如旱菸灰, 白如銀錠底, 白如豆腐渣, 白如豆腐筋, 白如糙石, 似白非白 as scenic pinkish-white in two grades, 雪青湖縐 / 雪青杭綢, 紅蘿蔔干鹽霜); and the no-coating tongues into a dozen further types (紫無苔, 紅無苔, 鏡面光, 刺無苔, 中凹, 直溝, 橫裂, 冰片紋, 後根肉瘤, 皮內錢大斑, 圓暈分二三色, 青綠二色). The total surface-pattern repertoire is greater than that of any prior single-author Chinese tongue manual.

A second methodological innovation is Liú’s physiological framing of the tongue. The preface offers an explicit account of tongue innervation by “the fifth pair of cranial nerves” (第五對腦筋達舌) and of the two veins under the tongue — Jīnjīn 金津 and Yùyè 玉液 — as the surfacing of the Shàoyīn renal vessels (“少陰腎脈上達”). The coating itself is a deposit of “the turbid effluent of food undergoing digestion in the stomach” (“胃中食物腐化之濁氣，堆於乳頭之上”), explicitly localised on the “countless minute lingual papillae” (“多數極小乳頭”) visible under microscopy. This is the earliest sustained attempt to integrate a Western anatomical account of the tongue into the Chinese tongue-diagnostic literature; Liú’s framing was directly adopted by 曹炳章 Cáo Bǐngzhāng in KR3eb056 Biàn shé zhǐ nán (1920) and became the standard early-Republican framing of the discipline.

A third distinctive contribution is the tongue-change semiotics: Liú distinguishes “true retreat” (真退) — the gradual diminution of a coating from root to tip, from board to perforated, from dense to dispersed — from “false retreat” (假退) and “sudden retreat” (驟退), the last two being prognostically ominous, indicating either qì-collapse or iatrogenic injury from misuse of attacking, descending, or eliminating drugs. The principle that “thick rotten coatings never indicate a cold syndrome” (“厚腐之苔無寒症”) is a defining Liú dictum, cited throughout the Republican-era literature.

Translations and research

  • No full Western-language translation exists.
  • Anthologised in: 曹炳章 Cáo Bǐngzhāng (ed.), Zhōngguó yī xué dà chéng 中國醫學大成 (Shanghai: Dàdōng shūjú, 1935–37).
  • Discussed in Hé Shíxī 何時希, Zhōngguó lì dài yī jiā zhuàn lù 中國歷代醫家傳錄 (Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng, 1991) under the Liú Héngruì entry.
  • Modern punctuated edition: in Mìng jiā shé zhěn jīng yàn jí 名家舌診經驗集 (Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào, 1996).

Other points of interest

The work is one of the rare technical Chinese medical texts whose publication history is itself a documentary record of the 1911 Revolution. Liú’s preface treats the Xīnhài events with a wry equanimity (“與清鼎同時革命”), the only such reference in the entire Shé zhěn corpus.

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