Jìngbìng yǔ nǎomóyán quánshū 痙病與腦膜炎全書
Complete Book on Convulsive Diseases and Meningitis by 劉裁吾 (Liú Cáiwú, 民國)
About the work
A Republican-era Sino-Western integrationist monograph that maps the indigenous Chinese-medical category of jìngbìng 痙病 (convulsive disease — including conditions presenting with stiffness, opisthotonus, convulsion, neck rigidity) onto the Western diagnostic category of meningitis (nǎomóyán 腦膜炎). The work belongs to the broader Republican-era project of translating Chinese-medical disease categories into Western clinical-diagnostic vocabulary — paralleling 吳瑞甫 Wú Ruìfǔ’s Zhōngxī wēnrè chuànjiě (KR3eg021) in the same project for warm-disease.
Abstract
Jìngbìng 痙病 is a Chinese-medical category going back to the Jīnguì yàoluè 金匱要略, encompassing the syndromes of gāngjìng 剛痙 (rigid convulsion) and róujìng 柔痙 (soft convulsion), with primary presentations of stiffness, neck rigidity, opisthotonus, and convulsion. The Western diagnostic category of meningitis — inflammation of the meninges, with primary presentations of high fever, headache, vomiting, neck stiffness, photophobia, and neurological deterioration — overlaps significantly with the indigenous jìngbìng category, though the two are constructed from different aetiological frameworks (qi-channel disturbance versus microbial inflammation).
The book systematically maps the two diagnostic categories onto each other, presenting the Chinese-medical syndrome-discrimination apparatus alongside the Western clinical-diagnostic features, and supplying a Chinese-medical prescription apparatus for the meningitis presentations. The book belongs to the Republican-era moment in which Chinese physicians were producing Sino-Western translation handbooks as institutional defence of the Chinese-medical tradition against arguments for its abolition.
Dating is approximate. Author and detailed publication data are not preserved in the readily accessible sources.
Translations and research
- Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin. Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity. UChP, 2014 — context on Republican-period Sino-Western integration in medicine.
- Andrews, Bridie. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. UBC Press, 2014.
- No substantial dedicated secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the more specialised products of the Republican-era Sino-Western integration project — paired with Wú Ruìfǔ’s KR3eg021 (warm-disease) and 何廉臣 Hé Liánchén’s KR3eg034 (damp-warm seasonal epidemic) in the same collection.