Guǎng wēnyì lùn 廣瘟疫論
Expanded Treatise on Warm-Epidemic Disorders by 戴天章 (Dài Tiānzhāng, zì Línjiāo 麟郊, 1644–1722)
About the work
The principal early-Qīng extension of 吳有性 Wú Yǒuxìng’s Wēnyì lùn (KR3eg004), in 4 juǎn plus a 1-juǎn prescription supplement, composed by Dài Tiānzhāng (Dài Běishān 戴北山) of Shàngyuán 上元 (modern Nánjīng), completed Kāngxī 14 (1675). The book is Dài’s working clinicisation of Wú’s pestilential-qi doctrine: where Wú had established the theoretical framework, Dài provides the systematic diagnostic-and-therapeutic apparatus that allowed wēnyì doctrine to function as a usable clinical method.
Abstract
Dài was a thoroughly classical jīngzǐbǎijiā scholar who turned to medicine without ever holding office above the xiángshēng level. The Guǎng wēnyì lùn circulated initially only in manuscript in the Dài family’s Cúncún shūwū 存存書屋 and was not directly printed by Dài himself.
Around the early Qiánlóng era a pirated edition appeared under the false title Wēnyì míngbiàn 瘟疫明辨, attributed to 鄭奠一 Zhèng Diànyī of Shèxiàn 歙縣. Dài’s grandson 戴祖啟 Dài Zǔqǐ reprinted the authentic family text in Qiánlóng 43 (1778), with a colophon explaining the pirated-edition story, to correct the record. The book was later abridged and supplemented by 陸懋修 Lù Màoxiū (1864) and again by 何廉臣 Hé Liánchén (1909) — see KR3eg006 for the resulting Chóngdìng Guǎng wēnrè lùn.
The doctrinal core is Wú Yǒuxìng’s pestilential-qi framework, but Dài’s specific contribution is the systematic differential diagnosis of internally-developing warm-heat disease and the apparatus of five-concomitants and ten-mixed-conditions (五兼十夾 wǔjiān shíjiá) — the way warm-epidemic disease can present in concomitance with five other clinical conditions (shānghán, shāngshǔ, shāngshī, shāngzào, shāngfēng) and in mixed pattern with ten further (qì, xuè, tán, yǐn, shí, jiǔ, yū, jīng, xū, láo). This wǔjiān shíjiá schema became the standard later-Qīng analytical method for warm-disease syndrome differentiation.
The text contains substantial clinical case-records and a developed prescription apparatus, especially for the latent-qi (fúqì) form of warm-disease — Dài’s contribution here is more elaborated than Wú Yǒuxìng’s and is the doctrinal foundation for the later Qīng latent-qi current (柳寶詒 Liǔ Bǎoyí, KR3eg003; 劉吉人 Liú Jírén, KR3eg028).
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge, 2011 — treats Dài extensively within the early-Qīng wēn-yì tradition.
- Guǎng wēn-yì lùn jiào-zhù (Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, modern editions).
- Hinrichs and Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing. Harvard Belknap, 2013, pp. 204–206.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The pirated-edition story (the appearance of the work under the false title Wēnyì míngbiàn attributed to Zhèng Diànyī) is one of the more interesting Qīng medical-textual fraud cases; it shows how a still-unprinted text could be appropriated in the 18th-century commercial-publishing market.