Huáng Hàn yī xué 皇漢醫學
Imperial-Han Medicine by 湯本求真 (Yumoto Kyūshin / Tāngběn Qiúzhēn, 1876–1941, 大正・昭和)
About the work
A three-volume early-Shōwa comprehensive defense and exposition of Shānghán / Jīnguì clinical doctrine by 湯本求真 Yumoto Kyūshin, the principal early-twentieth-century Japanese reviver of the kanpō / kohō tradition. Originally published in Tokyo 1927–1928 as Kōkan igaku 皇漢醫學, the work was translated into Chinese by Zhōu Zǐxù 周子敘 in 1930 and became one of the most influential single texts in the twentieth-century Chinese-medicine revival movement on both sides of the East China Sea.
Abstract
The self-preface (自序), dated 昭和二年(一九二七)六月上旬 = early June 1927 (Tokyo, Tabata 田端), records Yumoto’s biographical conversion narrative: born to a medical family, trained in Western medicine at the Kanazawa Medical Specialist School (graduated 1901), he practiced as a Western-medical doctor for nearly a decade before the death of his eldest daughter from dysentery in Meiji 43 (1910) — which he attributed to the failure of Western therapeutics — turned him toward the kanpō tradition under the influence of 和田啟十郎 Wada Keijūrō’s Igaku no tettsui 醫界鐵椎. Eighteen years of further study followed before the publication of Kōkan igaku.
The work is organized in three volumes covering (1) general doctrine and pathophysiology, (2) Shānghán prescriptions clause-by-clause, and (3) Jīnguì prescriptions clause-by-clause, throughout integrating modern Western pharmacology and clinical observation with classical Chinese-Japanese medical doctrine. Its argument — that the Shānghán–Jīnguì clinical system constitutes a rigorous, evidence-based therapeutic tradition equal in standing to modern Western medicine — was a watershed for the twentieth-century revival of East Asian medicine, and the Chinese translation circulated widely in Republican-period Shanghai, where it shaped figures such as 曹穎甫 (Cáo Yǐngfǔ) and the Shanghai Shānghán-school circle.
The catalog meta gives the author as “日本· 湯本求真” with no dynasty — the correct designation is Taishō / Shōwa (1927–28), or in Chinese chronology Mínguó 民國.
Translations and research
- Chinese translation: 周子敘 (Zhōu Zǐxù), Huáng Hàn yī xué 皇漢醫學, Shanghai, 1930. Multiple reprints. The standard Chinese-language vehicle for the work.
- Hinrichs and Barnes (2013), 207ff — on the twentieth-century kanpō / zhōngyī revival contexts.
- Yumoto’s Kōkan igaku has been the subject of extensive secondary Japanese-language treatment in the kanpō literature.
- No substantial English-language translation located.
Other points of interest
This is one of the most influential single twentieth-century texts in East Asian medicine: it is the principal Japanese contribution to the Republican-period Chinese-medicine revival, and one of the principal sources used by Republican-era Shanghai-school Shānghán clinicians (including 曹穎甫 Cáo Yǐngfǔ — see KR3ef093).
Links
- See KR3ef001 (parent Shānghán lùn).
- See KR3ef093 (Cáo Yǐngfǔ’s parallel Republican Shanghai Shānghán-school work).
- 皇漢醫學 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB