Chóngdìng Shāyì Zhǐmí 重訂痧疫指迷
A Revised Guide to the Bewilderments of Cholera-Pestilence by 費養莊 (Fèi Yǎngzhuāng, fl. late 19th c., 清)
About the work
The Chóngdìng shāyì zhǐmí is a revised 2-juǎn treatise on the differential diagnosis and treatment of shāzhàng 痧脹 (“sand-bloat” — the cluster of cholera-like and severe-summer-fever syndromes that swept the lower Yangtze in repeated outbreaks from the early 19th century onward) and concurrent wēnyì 溫疫 (warm-pestilence). The work is one of the substantial body of cholera and warm-pestilence pharmacy texts produced in late-Qīng China in response to the worldwide cholera pandemics of 1817–1824, 1826–1837, 1846–1860, 1863–1875, and 1881–1896, which had devastating impact on Chinese coastal cities.
Prefaces
The source opens with a section titled Jíjiù sùyuán 急救溯原 (“tracing the source of emergency rescue”), which functions partly as a preface. Its argument:
- Time-sensitive pestilences (shíxíng huòluàn 時行霍亂, shāzhàng wēnyì) kill within hours of onset. Diagnostic and therapeutic delay is fatal.
- The critical clinical sub-type is bìshā 閉痧 — “closed cholera,” in which the patient becomes unresponsive. The drugs needed to break the closure cannot be compounded on the spot; they must be pre-prepared as pills or powders.
- Closed-cholera divides into hot and cold types — opposite treatments. The current charitable-distribution shāyào pills are all hot-and-drying in composition, which is fine for cold-damp closure (people sleeping rough in the open) but disastrous for summer-heat-dry-fire closure.
- Therefore: distribute neutral drugs. Xuē Yīpiáo (Xuē Xuě 薛雪) praised the Tàiyǐ zǐjīn dān 太乙紫金丹 as “less hot than Sūhé wán, less cold than Zhìbǎo dān, combining the detoxifying power of Yùshū dān, joining the opening-and-closing virtues of both” — a true neutral pill. Wáng Mèngyǐn (王士雄) praised the Fēilóng duómìng dān 飛龍奪命丹 for “expelling pestilence, transforming poison, opening the channels, and joining the yíng” — particularly the rénzhōngbái 人中白 ingredient that drives evil downward through the turbid passage.
- Both formulas are temperature-neutral and therefore safe across hot and cold closure types. Charitable halls and donors should pre-compound both for emergency distribution.
The “revised” (chóngdìng 重訂) of the title implies an earlier edition; the KR text appears to be the revised recension, with no explicit date.
Abstract
The work is a clinical-practical contribution to the late-Qīng cholera literature, framed as a charitable-distribution treatise rather than a scholarly monograph. Fèi Yǎngzhuāng’s methodological commitment — neutral-temperature formulas safe across hot/cold differential — is a thoughtful response to the practical problem of charitable-distribution pharmacy, where the recipient cannot be examined for differential diagnosis before swallowing the pill. The use of Xuē Xuě and Wáng Mèngyǐn as theoretical authorities anchors the work in the mainstream SūzhōuWúxī warm-disease tradition.
The dating is approximate: the cholera-revision genre flourishes from c. 1862 (the post-Tàipíng cholera recovery) through the early 20th century. We set the window to 1862–1908.
Translations and research
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011). The standard English-language survey of Chinese epidemic-medicine literature; treats the shā-zhàng genre in context.
- Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC Press, 2014). Discusses the late-Qīng cholera literature.
- No major Western-language monograph dedicated specifically to this work.
Other points of interest
The work documents the late-Qīng charitable-pharmacy as a practical institutional response to recurrent cholera epidemics: shàntáng 善堂 benevolent halls maintained working stocks of pre-compounded Tàiyǐ zǐjīn dān and Fēilóng duómìng dān for emergency distribution during outbreaks. Fèi’s analysis of the hot/cold compatibility problem (a hot formula given to a hot-summer cholera case kills the patient) is one of the most lucid statements of the dilemma of standardised mass distribution under conditions of differential-diagnostic medicine.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- 重訂痧疫指迷 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB