Wēnbìng zhǐnán 溫病指南
A Guide to Warm-Disease Therapy by 婁傑 (Lóu Jié, late Qīng / early Republican, 山陰 Shānyīn = 紹興 Shàoxīng)
About the work
A concise late-Qīng clinical primer on warm-disease therapy, prefaced by the author Guāngxù guǐmǎo 癸卯 mèngchūn (1903). The author writes as a Shàoxīng physician living in Hénán, where local practitioners were still routinely treating warm disease with Shānghán-style warming and dispersing prescriptions — to fatal effect. The book is designed as a portable handbook that could carry the southern wēnbìng doctrinal frame to inland practitioners.
Abstract
The preface signs “Guāngxù guǐmǎo mèngchūn Shānyīn Lóu Jié” 光緒癸卯孟春山陰婁傑, fixing the date (1903) and Lóu’s native place (Shānyīn 山陰, Zhèjiāng — i.e. the western half of historical Shàoxīng). Lóu states his motivation: warm disease (wēnbìng) and cold-damage (shānghán) are as different as fire and water, ice and live coals, yet inland physicians persist in treating warm disease with Shānghán prescriptions — including in the height of summer. The book draws explicitly on the doctrinal authority of 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì, 薛雪 Xuē Shēngbái, and 吳塘 Wú Jūtōng, particularly the sānjiāo 三焦 (three-burner) differentiation of Wēnbìng tiáobiàn (KR3eg010).
Lóu’s pupil 蕭吉甫 Xiāo Jífǔ (who Lóu describes as well-versed in medical doctrine) assisted in the editorial process; the two worked together for half a year before sending the book to print.
The work is organised around concrete clinical scenarios: warm disease presenting with chills, headache, fever, and no sweat is to be treated with modified Xìngsū sǎn 加減杏蘇散 to gently release the surface (not with máhuáng 麻黃, guìzhī 桂枝, qiānghuó 羌活, dúhuó 獨活, shēngmá 升麻, or cháihú 柴胡, all of which Lóu warns against in warm disease); once chills resolve, switch to the cool-acrid Yínqiáo sǎn 銀翹散. Tàiyīn wēnbìng with surging-floating pulse, yellow tongue, great thirst, sweating and red face is treated with the cool heavy Báihǔ tāng 白虎湯; summer-heat penetrating to shàoyīn with thirst, or to juéyīn with paralysis, is treated with Liánméi tāng 連梅湯; the more severe juéyīn presentation with grey tongue, thirst, vomiting and bloody discharge is treated with Jiāoméi tāng 椒梅湯 (a derivation from 張機 Zhāng Jī’s Wūméi wán 烏梅丸).
The work is a representative late-Qīng wēnbìng clinical primer and an unusually direct witness to the doctrinal-geographic gap between the southern wēnbìng tradition and inland Chinese clinical practice ca. 1900.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — broader context of southern wēn-bìng dissemination.
- No standalone English translation located.