Chóngdìng wēnrè jīngjiě 重訂溫熱經解
Revised Interpretation of the Warm-Heat Classics by 沈麟 (Shěn Lín, Mínguó)
About the work
A Republican-era heterodox commentary on the Nèijīng and Shānghán-tradition passages on warm and heat disease, written explicitly against the 吳塘 Wú Jūtōng / 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng line of Qīng wēnbìng synthesis. The author Shěn Lín sets out to restore what he claims is the canonical qìhuà 氣化 (qi-transformation) framework of the Nèijīng and Shānghán lùn, against the Qīng warm-disease school’s tendency to detach warm-disease pathology from Shānghán doctrinal anchoring.
Abstract
Shěn’s polemic targets are explicit and sharp. He argues that 王叔和 Wáng Shūhé and 王冰 Wáng Bīng (the canonical Jin / Táng editors of the Shānghán and Nèijīng) had already misread their source texts, with subsequent commentators compounding the errors — burying the original transmission for nearly two millennia. He singles out Wú Jūtōng and Wáng Mèngyīng for particularly hostile treatment: they attempt to set aside Shānghán doctrine altogether and forge a parallel wēnbìng line, drawing on 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì’s prescriptions from the Línzhèng zhǐnán yīàn — meritorious to Yè, but “sinners against 張機 Zhāng Jī” 仲景之罪人.
The doctrinal core is the five-movements-and-six-qi (wǔyùn liùqì 五運六氣) framework, which Shěn reads as a coherent qi-transformation cosmology that governs both heavenly weather and bodily channel-transmission. He distinguishes:
- Warm disease (wēnbìng 溫病) as caused by heavenly qi: south wind, excessive warmth, externally invading the channels — treat by following the channels; if unresolved, transforms into heat disease.
- Plague (wēnyì 瘟疫) as caused by earthly qi: when yīnyáng fails to circulate (e.g. snowless winter, earth-qi rising), this qi enters mouth and nose into the spleen-stomach — rats fall ill first (hence “rat plague” 鼠疫), contagious; treat by purgation.
The framework gives Shěn a doctrinal foothold for criticising Western medicine: he argues that westerners are dense-bodied with internal-origin diseases (pneumonia, hepatitis, gastritis) while Chinese are loose-bodied with external-origin diseases — accordingly Western diagnostic categories like bǎisīdú 百斯篤 (pestis, lung plague) are mistakes, conflating wind-heat coughs (a heavenly-qi disease) with earth-qi plague. He further argues that wind itself generates worms / microbes — when the wind departs, the worms disappear of themselves, a natural principle of qi-transformation.
The text is doctrinally extreme and not part of the standard wēnbìng canon; it is included as a witness to Republican-period doctrinal contestation rather than as a standard reference.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located — the text is doctrinally marginal even within Republican-era TCM.
Other points of interest
The work is notable as a self-conscious Republican-era polemic against the Qīng wēnbìng consensus, written in defence of Shānghán orthodoxy with an East–West comparative-medical apparatus. It pairs with 王德宣 Wáng Déxuān’s Wēnbìng zhèngzōng (KR3eg012) as the two principal anti-wēnbìng statements in the collection.