Màidù yùnxíng kǎo 脈度運行考
Investigation of the Measure and Circulation of the Channels by 李彰五 Lǐ Zhāngwǔ (撰)
About the work
A single-juan late-Qīng technical-philological treatise by 李彰五 Lǐ Zhāngwǔ (fl. Guāngxù period), prefaced and printed in Guāngxù 24 (1898, zhūyōng yānmào 著雍閹茂 = the wùxū year). Lǐ’s self-preface gives the genesis: in his nearly-forty years of medical practice he had completed several monographs — the Bìngjiā xūzhī gējué 病家須知歌訣, the annotated Hánwēn tiáobiàn 寒溫條辨, the Zhòngjǐng Shānghán jízhù 仲景傷寒輯注 (30 juan), and the Zhòngjǐng màifǎ wàizhù 仲景脈法外注 — but lost the original draft of the Màidù yùnxíng kǎo in the upheavals of his official career. The popular memory-verse “Lung-Yín, large-intestine-Mǎo, stomach-Chén… gall-bladder-Zǐ-Chǒu-Liver” — fitting the twelve channels onto the twelve double-hours — Lǐ holds is “all over the place but inaccurate” (人多宗之，然究屬參差，未敢沿誤), because the channels are of unequal length (the hand-yīn channels are each 3 chǐ 5 cùn, the hand-yáng 5 chǐ, the foot-yīn 6 chǐ 5 cùn, the foot-yáng 8 chǐ, the rèn-dū each 4 chǐ 5 cùn, totaling 16 zhàng 2 chǐ) — how can twelve equal-length double-hours be assigned to twelve unequal channels, with rèn and dū left unaccounted for? Lǐ recommissioned his wife to compute (按照《內經·營氣運行》諸冊，詳為覈計) the precise chǐ-cùn-fēn values of each channel at each kè 刻 (quarter-hour subdivision) according to the Língshū doctrine of yíngqì circulation, and to standardize them in tabular form.
Abstract
The Màidù yùnxíng kǎo is one of the most technically rigorous late-Qīng treatises on the Nèijīng doctrine of yíngqì circulation. Lǐ Zhāngwǔ’s polemical move — to discard the popular twelve-hour-twelve-channel mnemonic as a popular oversimplification, and to substitute a chǐ-cùn-fēn-resolved tabular system — exemplifies the kǎozhèng late-Qīng impulse to subject the medical canon to mathematical-philological scrutiny. The work is short (one juan) but theoretically dense; it is registered in the Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù. The composition date 1898 is internal.
Translations and research
- 嚴世芸 Yán Shìyún, Zhōngyī rénwù cídiǎn, “Lǐ Zhāngwǔ” entry (sparse).
Links
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù, zhēnjiǔ section.
- 脈度運行考 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB