Zhōngxī wēnrè chuànjiě 中西溫熱串解
Combined Chinese-Western Explication of Warm-Heat Disorders by 吳瑞甫 (Wú Ruìfǔ, míng Xīhuáng 錫璜, 1872–1952)
About the work
A Republican-era Sino-Western integrationist treatise on warm-disease, composed by the Xiàmén physician Wú Ruìfǔ at the Huíchūnlú yīyuàn 回春廬醫院 in Xiàmén, completed Mínguó 9 (1920). The preface signs “中華民國九年三月閩同安吳錫璜瑞甫氏識於廈門回春廬醫院”. The book systematically translates the Qīng wēnbìng doctrinal apparatus into the categories of Western medicine — temperature-measurement, infectious-disease aetiology, neurological symptom-description — while preserving the wēnbìng prescription apparatus as the operational basis of clinical treatment.
Abstract
Wú Ruìfǔ’s authorial position is one of programmatic Sino-Western integration: “applying Chinese methods where Chinese is appropriate, Western where Western is appropriate” (宜於中則中，宜於西則西). This is implemented across the book by topical chapters that pair Chinese-medical and Western-medical analyses of the same clinical phenomena.
The chapter sequence (from the surviving table of contents): textual examination of the term wēnrè 溫熱; use of the thermometer in warm-disease diagnosis (熱度表檢溫熱法); the thermometer as an aid to syndrome differentiation; key features of warm-disease; clinical signs and symptoms; the aetiology of fever and chills; severity and progression of febrile disease; deficiency-heat versus excess-heat aetiology; delirium and coma (神昏譫語) — diagnostic interpretation; warm-disease, warm-epidemic, warm-toxin as the equivalent of Western “severe / mild fevers”; cold-heat differentiation; supplementary remarks on 雷豐 Léi Shàoyì (continuation of KR3eg002); commentary on 戴天章 Dài Línjiāo’s (Dài Tiānzhāng’s) five-concomitants-and-ten-mixed-conditions (五兼十夾) framework (extending KR3eg023); tongue-diagnosis methodology.
Doctrinally, Wú’s principal authority within the Chinese tradition is 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng; his Wēnrè jīngwěi (KR3eg008) is treated as the foundational wēnbìng synthesis. The Western-medical material is drawn from late-Qīng / early-Republican Chinese translations of European medical textbooks, particularly on internal medicine and neurology.
The work is one of the more substantial and clinically integrated Sino-Western wēnbìng texts of the early Republican period. It pairs methodologically with Wú’s Zhōngxī nèikēxué 中西內科學 (Chinese-Western Internal Medicine, 10 juǎn) and Zhōngxī màixué 中西脈學.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge, 2011, esp. ch. 6 — context on the Republican-era Sino-Western integrationist project.
- Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin. Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity. UChP, 2014 — chapter on the Republican-period TCM-versus-Western-medicine debate.
- Scheid, Volker. Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. Duke UP, 2002.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
Wú’s clinical practice and writings reached the southern-Fújiàn diaspora communities of South-East Asia, where his Sino-Western integrationist approach had its strongest reception. The book is the principal warm-disease text of the Mínnán 閩南 medical tradition.