Huòluàn ránxī shuō 霍亂燃犀說
Burning the Rhinoceros-Horn — A Treatise on Cholera by 許志 (Xǔ Zhì, 清)
About the work
A late-Qīng monograph on cholera-like disease (huòluàn 霍亂) in 1 juǎn. The title borrows the literary topos ránxī 燃犀 (burning rhinoceros-horn) — a metaphor for illuminating hidden mysteries, from the Jìn shū 晉書 account of 溫嶠 Wēn Jiào lighting a rhinoceros-horn torch to see underwater monsters in the Niúzhǔ rapids — to figure the work’s project of bringing analytical clarity to a disease the Chinese-medical tradition was still understanding.
Abstract
The text is part of the cluster of mid-to-late-Qīng monographs responding to the cholera pandemics that reached China from the 1820s. The principal Chinese-medical responses to cholera are:
- 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng, Huòluàn lùn (1838) / Suíxījū chóngdìng huòluàn lùn (1862) — see KR3eg040. Heat-aetiology argument.
- 田宗漢 Tián Zōnghàn, Yījì fúyīn lùn (1854) — see KR3eg014. Latent-yīn analytical category.
- 許志 Xǔ Zhì, Huòluàn ránxī shuō (the present text).
The text’s date is not preserved precisely. Lifedates of the author are not preserved (see 許志 person note); the work is conventionally placed in the late Qīng on doctrinal grounds.
The work’s central contribution is the application of wēnbìng doctrinal analysis to the cholera presentation, with prescription apparatus consistent with the southern wēnbìng mainstream.
Translations and research
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge, 2011, ch. 6 — context on Chinese-medical cholera response.
- Hinrichs, T. J. and Linda L. Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing. Harvard Belknap, 2013, pp. 203–204.
- MacPherson, Kerrie L. “Cholera in China, 1820–1930.” In Elvin and Liu (eds.), Sediments of Time. Cambridge UP, 1998.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The huòluàn / fúyīn / ránxī trilogy of mid-Qīng cholera-response texts is one of the more compact and historically interesting clusters in the collection — three distinct doctrinal-clinical analyses of the same epidemic phenomenon, all from the southern wēnbìng school.