Shānghán mài zhèng shì 傷寒脈證式
Schema of Pulse-and-Syndrome in Cold Damage by 川越正淑 (Kawagoe Masayoshi / Chuānyuè Zhèngshū, fl. late eighteenth–early nineteenth century, 江戶)
About the work
A three-juan late-Edo schematized exposition of Shānghán pulse-and-syndrome differentiation by the southern-Japanese (南越) kohō-ha physician 川越正淑 Kawagoe Masayoshi, companion to his Shānghán yòng yào yán jiū 傷寒用藥研究 (KR3ef069, 1797). The work presents the Shānghán clinical material as a shì 式 — a formal-diagrammatic schema — pairing canonical pulse-types with corresponding syndrome-presentations and prescription-choices.
Abstract
The opening “緒言” (Foreword) makes one of the most extraordinary doctrinal interventions in the entire Edo Shānghán tradition: Kawagoe explicitly questions the conventional attribution of the Shānghán lùn to the Later Hàn period and to Zhāng Jī 張機 (Zhòngjǐng). He argues that (1) the Hòu Hàn shū and the Sānguó zhì do not mention Zhāng Jī or the Shānghán lùn; (2) Jìn–Táng–Sòng–Yuán–Míng catalogs only retrospectively cite the work; (3) the self-preface attributed to Zhòngjǐng is stylistically inconsistent with the body of the text and bears the hallmarks of a later forgery; (4) the work’s literary style is “yùn gǔ” 韞古 — archaic — but in a way that aligns it with the Yì jīng / Wén yán / Xì cí tradition rather than the Hàn medical-scholarly style. Kawagoe’s conclusion is striking: “yào zhī wú xí suǒ jīn shì, wéi qí lùn yǔ fāng ér yǐ; rú qí shí yǔ rén, zé miǎo hū bù kě dí duàn yě” (What we hold as our touchstone is only the discourse and the prescriptions — as for the date and the person, they are too distant to be determined with certainty). Kawagoe further proposes that the Shānghán lùn’s structural inspiration is the Yì jīng — “太一肇生陰陽，而八卦位焉。邪氣備虛實，而六經定焉” (the Supreme One gives birth to yīn and yáng, and the eight trigrams are positioned; pathogenic qì exists in vacuity and repletion, and the six conformations are fixed) — i.e., the six-conformation schema is a clinical adaptation of the eight-trigram / hexagram structure of the Yì jīng.
Composition window 1790–1830 is bracketed by Kawagoe’s productive period; the work is undated but the textual style closely matches Shānghán yòng yào yán jiū (1797). It is one of the most theoretically ambitious late-Edo kohō contributions — and one of the few East Asian Shānghán commentaries to question the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng attribution.
Translations and research
- No substantial European-language treatment located.
- The skeptical argument about the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng attribution was an unusual position even in Edo kohō-ha — most kohō practitioners venerated Zhòngjǐng as the founder. Kawagoe’s stance places him close to the textual-critical wing of the kogaku movement.
Other points of interest
Kawagoe’s argument that the Shānghán lùn is structurally an application of the Yì jīng / hexagram-trigram schema, while the date and authorship of the canonical text are uncertain, anticipates twentieth-century critical-philological work on the Shānghán text-history by nearly two centuries.
Links
- See KR3ef069 (Kawagoe’s companion Shānghán yòng yào yán jiū).
- See KR3ef001 (parent Shānghán lùn).
- 傷寒脈證式 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB