Xièyì xīnlùn 瀉疫新論
A New Treatise on Purging-Epidemic by 高島久貫 (Takashima Hisanuki, Edo-period Japan)
About the work
A 19th-century Japanese kanpō 漢方 monograph on cholera-like diarrhoeal epidemic disease, framed under the Japanese term sha-eki / xièyì 瀉疫 (“purging-epidemic”) rather than the Chinese huòluàn 霍亂. The work responds to the cholera pandemics that reached Japan in Bunsei 5 (1822) and again in Ansei 5 (1858) — the same Asian-cholera waves that prompted 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng’s Huòluàn lùn (KR3eg040) in China.
Abstract
The Japanese kanpō tradition received both 吳有性 Wú Yǒuxìng’s Wēnyì lùn and the Qīng wēnbìng canon as resources for clinical reasoning, but Edo-period and Bakumatsu-period Japanese physicians developed their own distinctive responses to the disease that erupted in 1822 and 1858. Takashima’s Xièyì xīnlùn is one of the more substantial Bakumatsu-period Japanese contributions to this literature.
The work was later transmitted to China and was included in 湯本求真 Yumoto Kyūshin’s Huáng Hàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), the principal channel by which Edo / Bakumatsu Japanese kanpō warm-disease and epidemic-disease texts re-entered the Republican-era Chinese medical literature.
The text pairs with KR3eg022 (秋吉質 Akiyoshi Tadashi’s Wēnyì lùn shīpíng), KR3eg025 (源元凱 Minamoto Genkai’s Wēnbìng zhī yánjiū), and KR3eg046 (池田瑞仙 Ikeda Zuisen’s Dòukē biànyào) as the four principal Edo / Bakumatsu-period Japanese contributions to the collection.
Translations and research
- Huáng Hàn yī-xué cóng-shū 皇漢醫學叢書, ed. 湯本求真 Tāngběn Qiúzhēn. Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936.
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge, 2011 — Sino-Japanese context.
- No standalone English translation located.
Links
- Huáng Hàn yīxué cóngshū via the present collection.
- 瀉疫新論 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB