Shānghán wēnyì tiáo biàn 傷寒瘟疫條辨

Section-by-Section Discrimination of Cold Damage and Warm Epidemic by 楊濬 (Yáng Jùn, Yùhuái 玉懷, hào Lìshān 栗山, 1705–1795, 清)

About the work

A six-juan late-Qiánlóng (1784) comparative treatise on cold-damage (shānghán) and warm-epidemic (wēnyì) disorders, by the Sìchuān physician 楊濬 Yáng Jùn (字 Yùhuái 玉懷; the same author is also widely cited as 楊栗山 Yáng Lìshān after his hào). The work — also titled Hányì tiáo biàn 寒疫條辨 in some editions — is a major late-18th-century contribution to the long-running debate over the doctrinal and clinical distinction between cold-damage and warm-epidemic, integrating both into a unified clinical framework.

Abstract

Composition date 1784 (Qiánlóng 49) given by Yáng’s preface. Yáng — practicing in Sìchuān during the period of recurrent epidemic outbreaks in the southwest — argued that the Shānghán lùn canon’s strict cold-damage framework was insufficient for the clinical realities of warm-epidemic outbreaks, and that the wēnbìng / wēnyì tradition (the long lineage running from 吳又可 Wú Yòukě’s Wēn yì lùn through 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì) provided the necessary supplement. The Tiáo biàn is the most systematic late-Qiánlóng synthesis of the two traditions and one of the principal sources used by 王孟英 Wáng Mèngyīng and subsequent 19th-century epidemic-medicine writers.

The work was reprinted multiple times in the 19th century and remains a touchstone for the integration of shānghán and wēnyì in modern Chinese medicine.

Translations and research

  • Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011) — major treatment.
  • Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Shānghán lùn jiào zhù (1991).
  • Hinrichs and Barnes (2013), 145–179 on the late-imperial wēn-bìng tradition.
  • No substantial English-language translation located.