Zhōng Xī huìcān tóngrén túshuō 中西匯參銅人圖說
Sino-Western Synthetic Annotated Bronze-Figure Atlas by 劉鍾衡 Liú Zhōnghéng (撰)
About the work
A late-Qīng synthesis-treatise by 劉鍾衡 Liú Zhōnghéng that compares the traditional Chinese channel-and-acupoint atlas (the Tóngrén 銅人 bronze-figure tradition descending from 王惟一 Wáng Wéiyī, KR3ee056) with the Western anatomical atlas as it had reached the Chinese-speaking world via the 19th-century medical-missionary publications. Liú’s preface recounts his intellectual itinerary: he had practiced as a literatus-physician for years on the basis of the Língshū-Sùwèn and the major Sòng-Míng-Qīng synthesizers (薛己 Xuē Lìzhāi, 李中梓 Lǐ Shìcái, 張介賓 Zhāng Jǐngyuè, 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě, 張璐 Zhāng Shíwán), but found their zàngfǔ anatomy unconvincing. Stationed in the field during anti-rebellion campaigns, he observed the actual anatomical structures of the killed and found “great discrepancy” (大相徑庭) with the canonical accounts. In Chénzhōu 辰州 he obtained the Tóngrén zhēnxiàng mìcè 銅人真像秘冊 and 王清任 Wáng Qīngrén’s revisionist Yīlín gǎicuò 醫林改錯; in Shànghǎi after 1884 he obtained Western medical books including the Quántǐ xīnlùn 全體新論 (Benjamin Hobson’s 1851 Outlines of Anatomy and Physiology, which had circulated in Chinese translation) — and found these to “match almost perfectly” the Wáng Qīngrén anatomical observations.
Abstract
The Zhōng Xī huìcān tóngrén túshuō is a major late-Qīng work in the huìcān 匯參 (“synthetic comparison”) genre that emerged in response to the impact of Western anatomy on traditional Chinese medical thought. Liú Zhōnghéng’s broader argument follows Wáng Qīngrén in critiquing the traditional Sānjiāo 三焦 and Dànzhōng 膻中 doctrines as anatomically incoherent, and proposes to retain the channel-and-acupoint apparatus while updating the zàngfǔ anatomy through Western anatomical reference. The work survives in a late-Guāngxù block-print and a Republican-period lithograph. The composition date 1894 followed here is internal to Liú’s preface.
Translations and research
- Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (2014) — covers the late-Qīng huìcān tradition in detail.
- Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity (2014).
Other points of interest
The Tóngrén túshuō is one of the principal late-Qīng works that prepared the conceptual ground for the Republican-period TCM modernization debate.