Liùyīn tiáobiàn 六因條辨
Detailed Analysis by the Six Pathogenic Factors by 陸子賢 (Lù Zǐxián = Lù Tíngzhēn 陸廷珍, 清)
About the work
A late-Qīng treatise on externally-contracted disease, organised around the six pathogenic factors (liùyīn 六因: wind, cold, summer-heat, damp, dryness, fire), in 3 juǎn, completed Tóngzhì 7 (1868). The title plays on the standard liùyín 六淫 (six excessive vapors) nosological scheme but substitutes liùyīn 六因 (six causes) to indicate the etiological focus. The work is distinctive within the wēnbìng corpus for its cold-warm integrationist (hánwēn rónghé 寒溫融合) doctrinal position: Lù refuses the sharp 吳塘 Wú Jūtōng-line distinction between Shānghán and wēnbìng pathology, treating externally-contracted disease as a single integrated clinical field.
Abstract
The three juǎn are organised by season-and-pathogen. Juǎn 1: spring-warm disorders (chūnwēn biànlùn), summer-heat (shāngshǔ zhōngshǔ zhōngrè biànwù). Juǎn 2: latent summer-heat (fúshǔ), autumn-dryness (qiūzào), winter-warm and warm-toxin (dōngwēn wēndú). Juǎn 3: damp-injury (shāngshī), sudden cold (bàogǎn fēnghán), wind-warm (fēngwēn), miscellaneous bānshāzhěnlěi 斑痧疹瘰 (rash, shā-disorder, eruption, scrofula), counterfeit yīn-syndromes (yīnzhèng 陰癥), and others.
The text contains 12 doctrinal essays (lùn 論) followed by 171 condition-prescription propositions (zhèngfāng tiáobiàn 證方條辨), each with an explanatory commentary 釋文. The format is recognisably continuous with Wú Jūtōng’s tiáobiàn model, but Lù’s commentary takes Wú’s sānjiāo (three-burner) staging only loosely, integrating it with Shānghán liùjīng (six-channel) doctrine to produce a more synthesised clinical apparatus.
The work was reprinted multiple times — Guāngxù 32 (1906) blockprint, 1937 Wénguāng Shūjú typeset, and modern editions — and was preserved in the Zhēnběn yīshū jíchéng 珍本醫書集成 collectanea. It remains an important late-Qīng reference but is overshadowed in the modern TCM curriculum by the more doctrinally rigid Wēnbìng tiáobiàn and Wēnrè jīngwěi.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge, 2011 — context on late-Qīng wēn-bìng integrationism.
- Liù-yīn tiáo-biàn jiào-zhù 六因條辨校注. Jinan: Shāndōng kēxué, 1982 — modern critical edition.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal late-Qīng exemplar of hánwēn (cold-warm) doctrinal integration, an approach that recovered some currency in the 20th-century TCM textbooks that sought to reconcile the Shānghán and wēnbìng canons.