Shānghán wēizhǐ lùn 傷寒微旨論
Treatise on the Subtle Import of Cold Damage by 韓祗和 (Hán Zhīhé, fl. late Yuányòu 元祐 reign, 北宋)
About the work
A short two-juan Northern-Sòng theoretical treatise on the doctrine of cold-damage, the earliest free-standing post-Sòng-bureau theoretical work on the Shānghán canon, by 韓祗和 Hán Zhīhé — a Northern Sòng physician active in the late Yuányòu and early Shàoshèng reigns (ca. 1086–1093). The work focuses on the underlying yīnyáng and qì-blood patterns of Shānghán progression, with original prescriptions designed to fit the climate and constitutions of Sòng-period northern China. It is one of the first works to articulate the doctrine of “yáng depletion → cold-damage” 陽虛傷寒 explicitly.
Abstract
The composition window of 1086–1093 is based on the preface’s references to contemporary Yuányòu officials and the work’s first appearance in the Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 (KR2n0001, early Northern Sòng catalog). Hán Zhīhé’s surviving treatise consists of approximately twenty short essays, each followed by a clinical case-example and a recommended prescription. The work has been described as the first systematic clinical commentary on Zhāng Jī’s canon — preceding 成無己 Chéng Wúyǐ’s 1144 annotation (KR3ef005) by half a century — and was a major source for the Jīn medical-theoretical literature, although Chéng’s commentary subsequently displaced it as the standard pedagogical text.
The work is preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 (永樂大典) in fragmentary form, and reconstructed in the Qīng from those fragments and from YuánMíng witnesses. The transmitted recension is two juan.
Translations and research
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Sòng-Yuán Shānghán xué shù yán-jiū 宋元傷寒學術研究, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1988.
- Goldschmidt, Evolution of Chinese Medicine (2009), chapter 7 — Hán Zhīhé situated within the Sòng Shānghán revival.
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.