Wàigǎn wēnbìng piān 外感溫病篇
Chapter on Externally-Contracted Warm Disease by 陳平伯 (Chén Píngbó, zì Zǔgōng 祖恭, fl. late Qiánlóng / Jiāqìng)
About the work
A short Qīng monograph on the fēngwēn 風溫 (wind-warm) variety of externally-contracted warm disease, the principal Qīng-period treatise dedicated specifically to wind-warm pathology and treatment. The text was most widely transmitted as juǎn 5 of 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng’s Wēnrè jīngwěi (KR3eg008, 1852), where it received Wáng’s running annotations and entered the standard wēnbìng canon.
Abstract
The text consists of a sequence of brief doctrinal-cum-therapeutic propositions. The opening section establishes the etiological framework: warm 溫 is the antithesis of cold; “wind-pathogen externally constraining” = fēngwēn, “damp-pathogen internally penetrating” = shīwēn. The treatment principle that follows — “release the surface with cool-acrid, not hot-acrid; clear the interior by draining heat, not chasing heat” (發表宜辛涼不辛熱，清里宜泄熱不宜逐熱) — is the locus classicus of cool-releasing therapy in the wēnbìng tradition.
Chén’s doctrinal innovation is the lung-stomach axis: “the lung governs the surface, the stomach is the root of the surface, therefore fēngwēn externally attacks while the lung-stomach internally responds” (人身之中，肺主衛，又胃為衛之本，是以風溫外薄，肺胃內應). The therapeutic strategy follows: “draining heat and harmonising the yīn are the fixed treatment principles for fēngwēn, since dryness damages yīn and heat damages fluids” (泄熱和陰又為風溫病一定之治法).
The authorship and exact date are uncertain. Wáng Mèngyīng, who first put the text into canonical print, explicitly notes: “此與下編相傳為陳、薛所著，究難考實。姑從俗以標其姓字。俟博雅正之” — “the present chapter and the following one are traditionally said to be by Chén and Xuē respectively; the attribution is hard to verify; I follow the conventional ascription pending better information.” Modern scholarship dates the text broadly to the late Qiánlóng / Jiāqìng period.
The text is brief — approximately 5,000 characters — but doctrinally weighty: it provides one of the canonical statements of the cool-releasing therapeutic principle and of the lung-stomach axis in fēngwēn pathology.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — discusses Chén within the southern wēn-bìng line.
- Wēn-rè jīng-wěi jīn-shì 溫熱經緯今釋 (Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1980) — modern annotated edition transmitting the Wài-gǎn wēn-bìng piān in its Wáng-Mèng-yīng setting.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
Wáng Mèngyīng’s textual-critical flagging of the doubtful attribution is itself one of the locus classicus examples of late-Qīng kǎojù approach to medical texts.