Wēnyì lùn 溫疫論
Treatise on Warm-Epidemic Disorders by 吳有性 (Wú Yǒuxìng, zì Yòukě 又可, 1582–1652)
About the work
The foundational late-Míng treatise on epidemic febrile disease, written in immediate response to the great Chóngzhēn xīnsì 崇禎辛巳 (1641) epidemic that swept simultaneously through Northern and Southern Zhílì, Shāndōng, and Zhèjiāng. Wú Yǒuxìng’s preface — dated Chóngzhēn 15 rénwǔ (1642) — is the source of the standard date. The text in 2 juǎn plus a one-juǎn supplement is the first Chinese medical monograph to argue that epidemic warm disease is etiologically distinct from cold-damage (Shānghán) and is the foundation of the entire later wēnyì / wēnbìng doctrinal apparatus.
Abstract
Wú Yǒuxìng worked in Zhènzé 震澤 (modern Wújiāng 吳江, Jiāngsū) during the catastrophic Chóngzhēn-era epidemics. His preface describes how conventional Shānghán treatment was failing, prompting him to formulate a radically different doctrinal framework. The core claim is that epidemic warm disease (wēnyì 瘟疫 / 溫疫) is caused not by climatic liùyín (six excessive vapors) but by a distinct pestilential qi (lìqì 戾氣 / yìqì 異氣) that enters through the mouth and nose, lodges in the móyuán 膜原 (“membranous source”) between the surface and the interior, and follows nine distinctive transmission patterns. Treatment is purgative rather than diaphoretic, the signature prescription being Dáyuán yǐn 達原飲.
The work circulated rapidly and went through many editions in the late Míng and Qīng. The standard recension was edited and supplemented by Wú’s student 魏之琇 Wèi Zhīxiù and others under the title Wēnyì lùn bǔzhù 溫疫論補注 in the early Qīng. The catalog meta gives 1582–1652 as Wú’s lifedates (now standard from Republican-era research); these are confirmed by Hinrichs–Barnes (2013: 156, 204) and by the modern Zhōngyī rénwù cídiǎn.
Wú’s pestilential-qi doctrine had no immediate institutional uptake but was rediscovered in the late 17th and 18th centuries and became the doctrinal kernel of the entire Qīng wēnbìng school. 戴天章 Dài Tiānzhāng’s Guǎng wēnyì lùn (KR3eg023) is the principal extension of Wú; 王旭高 Wáng Xùgāo’s Wú Yòukě wēnyì lùn gēkuò (KR3eg024) is the standard versified summary.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — extensive treatment of Wú Yǒuxìng (esp. ch. 4) within the late-Míng epidemic context.
- Hinrichs, T. J. and Linda L. Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Belknap, 2013, pp. 156, 204–205 (Hanson) — concise treatment.
- Cao Dongyi 曹東義 et al., Wēn-yì lùn jiào-zhù 溫疫論校注. Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1995 — standard modern critical edition.
- Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2018), §41.7.6 lists this as a principal source for Qīng epidemic medicine.
- Despeux, Catherine (ed.), Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale. Collège de France / Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2010 — situates Wú in the broader history of contagion theory in China.
- No standalone full English translation located; selected chapters in scholarly anthologies.
Other points of interest
The 2003 SARS epidemic and the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic both triggered new scholarly interest in Wú’s Wēnyì lùn as a clinical reference framework: the canonical TCM SARS-treatment protocols were derived in part from Wú’s prescription apparatus, particularly Dáyuán yǐn.