Chóngdìng Guǎng wēnrè lùn 重訂廣溫熱論
Revised “Expanded Treatise on Warm-Heat Disorders” by 戴天章 (Dài Tiānzhāng, 1644–1722) — base text; 陸懋修 (Lù Màoxiū, 1818–1886) — Tóngzhì-era abridgement and supplement; 何廉臣 (Hé Liánchén, 1861–1929) — late-Qīng / Republican re-edition
About the work
The principal late-Qīng recension of Dài Tiānzhāng’s foundational Guǎng wēnyì lùn 廣瘟疫論 (KR3eg023), passed through two successive editorial layers: first Lù Màoxiū abridged and supplemented Dài’s text into the Guǎng wēnrè lùn 廣溫熱論 in his Shìbǔzhāi yīshū 世補齋醫書 collectanea (1884), changing the title from “warm-epidemic” (wēnyì) to “warm-heat” (wēnrè) to align with the later wēnbìng terminology; then Hé Liánchén further re-edited Lù’s recension in 1909 to produce the present Chóngdìng version, integrating the Sūzhōu and Shàoxīng wēnbìng commentary traditions and adding extensive case-records and a separate prescription volume.
Abstract
The base text is Dài Tiānzhāng’s Guǎng wēnyì lùn of ca. Kāngxī 14 (1675), itself a systematic extension and clinicisation of 吳有性 Wú Yǒuxìng’s Wēnyì lùn (KR3eg004). The editorial history is a model case of late-Qīng wēnbìng textual transmission: an early-Qīng treatise on epidemic warm disease, refracted twice through subsequent generations of wēnbìng scholarship, with each layer adapting the doctrinal apparatus to a different intellectual moment.
Lù Màoxiū’s 1864 editorial layer reflects the Sūzhōu wēnbìng synthesis of the high Tóngzhì era — the period in which 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng was active in nearby Shànghǎi and the Wēnbìng tiáobiàn / Wēnrè jīngwěi / Wēnrè lùn trio had become the standard wēnbìng canon. Lù’s title-change from wēnyì to wēnrè signals the late-Qīng convention by which the older late-Míng terminology of “warm-epidemic” was subsumed into the broader category of “warm-heat disorders”.
Hé Liánchén’s 1909 layer represents the Shàoxīng Yuèpài 越派 medical synthesis of the late-Qīng / early-Republican period — the moment when Chinese-medical periodical publishing took off and when the wēnbìng tradition was being reframed in dialogue with Western anatomical-physiological vocabulary. Hé’s re-edition extends the prescription apparatus, adds Shàoxīng-school clinical cases, and brings in cross-references to the contemporary Shīwēn xīnlùn literature.
The composite work in 5 juǎn is one of the most clinically rich late-Qīng wēnbìng treatises and remains an important reference in modern TCM teaching.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — treats Dài and the Lù/Hé editorial line within the late-Qīng wēn-bìng canon.
- Zhōng yī rén wù cí diǎn 中醫人物詞典 (Shanghai cishu, 1988) — entries on Dài, Lù, Hé.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The text’s three-layer editorial structure is a textbook example of how the Qīng wēnbìng canon was continually re-edited rather than canonically fixed — each successive editor preserved Dài’s pestilential-qi doctrine while adapting the prescription apparatus to the contemporary clinical idiom.