Shāng fēng yuē yán 傷風約言
Concise Words on Wind-Damage by 後藤省 (Gotō Sei / Hòuténg Shěng, fl. eighteenth century, 江戶)
About the work
A short Edo-period one-juan polemical clinical handbook on wind-damage (shāng fēng 傷風) and related cold-damage disorders, by the kohō-ha 古方派 physician 後藤省 Gotō Sei (Hòuténg Shěng). The work is a sharp critique of contemporary Japanese medical pedagogy — which Gotō characterizes as prioritizing yùnqì doctrine and six-conformation theorizing at the expense of practical clinical training — and an argument for a return to direct clinical engagement with the Shānghán–Jīnguì corpus, in the manner of the kohō founders 吉益東洞 Yoshimasu Tōdō and Gotō Konzan.
Abstract
Composition window 1740–1800 is bracketed by Gotō Sei’s likely productive period in the mid-late Edo. The preface — quoting the Sùwèn and Língshū tradition with characteristic kohō skepticism (“豈唯一朝一夕之故也哉”) — frames the critique through a memorable analogy: contemporary medical students, like shìzhōng chǔnǚ 市中處女 (city girls before marriage), learn yùn qì and six-conformation theory as a kind of social accomplishment (like learning zhēng 箏 and sān xián 三絃 before marriage) — only to abandon it entirely once they begin actual practice. The result, Gotō argues, is that 王叔和 Wáng Shūhé and 成無己 Chéng Wúyǐ’s redactions and commentaries — followed by Míng–Qīng eclectics like 方有執 Fāng Yǒuzhí, 喻昌 Yú Jiāyán, 程應旄 Chéng Yīngmáo, 張思聰 Zhāng Sīcōng, and 張璐 Zhāng Lù — produced “reside duō shǔ shèng yǔ” (much surplus verbiage) that obscures rather than clarifies the canonical doctrine.
Gotō’s closing meditation on the pulse — that the only thing one need attend to clinically is “shǔ yǔ bù shǔ” 數與不數 (rapid vs. non-rapid: rapid pulse indicates disease progression) — is a characteristic kohō austerity, reducing the elaborate Sòng–Jīn–Yuán màifǎ tradition to a single operational criterion.
The catalog meta gives dynasty as 清 — the more accurate designation is Edo / 江戶.
Translations and research
- No substantial European-language treatment located.
- The work has been the subject of specialist studies in the Japanese kanpō secondary literature.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the more polemically articulate late-Edo kohō statements — particularly distinguished by its memorable rhetorical figures (the shìzhōng chǔnǚ analogy and the shǔ yǔ bù shǔ pulse rule) — and a useful window into the Edo critique of contemporary Chinese-medicine pedagogical practice.
Links
- See KR3ef001 (parent Shānghán lùn).
- 傷風約言 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB