Yī biàn 醫碥
A Mounting-Stone for Medicine by 何夢瑤 (Hé Mèngyáo, zì Bàozhī 報之, hào Xīchí 西池, 1693–1764)
About the work
Hé Mèngyáo’s seven-juǎn internal-medicine textbook, completed during his retirement at Nánhǎi 南海 (Guǎngdōng) and printed in Qiánlóng 16 = 1751. Juǎn 1 sets out the theoretical foundations (zàngfǔ 臟腑, channels, yīnyáng, water-fire, cold-heat, supplementation-and-draining); juǎn 2–4 the differential diagnosis of zábìng 雜病 syndromes drawing synthetically on 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng, 劉完素 Liú Wánsù (河間), 李杲 Lǐ Gǎo (東垣) and 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī; juǎn 5 the four examinations (sìzhěn 四診, originally compiled separately for the medical staff Hé trained at Sīēn 思恩); juǎn 6–7 prescriptions and materia medica notes. The title’s biàn 碥 (“mounting-block, stepping-stone”) is Hé’s deliberately humble figure for the work’s role: a footstool for those climbing into the chariot of medical learning.
Abstract
The text is the founding doctrinal monograph of the Qīng-era Lǐngnán internal-medicine tradition, and is the principal exhibit for the great early-Qiánlóng controversy in southern Chinese medicine — the hánwēn zhī zhēng 寒溫之爭 (cold-vs-warming dispute). Hé writes against the prevailing Lǐngnán enthusiasm for 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn’s Jǐngyuè quánshū and its warming-and-tonifying (wēnbǔ 溫補) cinnamon-and-aconite (guìfù 桂附) prescription policy, which he held to be epidemiologically catastrophic when applied indiscriminately to the southern subtropical climate, where excess heat and yīn-deficiency were the dominant clinical presentations. His own prescription policy follows Liú Wánsù’s cooling-fire schema and Zhū Dānxī’s yīn-nourishing methods, and the work’s polemical edge is sharpened by his three prefatorial colleagues — 趙林 Zhào Lín, 辛昌五 Xīn Chāngwǔ and Hé himself — who all frame it as “yīyī” 醫醫, medicine for the physicians, the corrective treatise the contemporary Lǐngnán medical world urgently needed.
The substantive doctrinal contribution is Hé’s articulation of qì-as-the-fundamental-thing: “Yī yán yīnyáng, jù qì ěr” 醫言陰陽，俱氣耳 (when medicine speaks of yīn and yáng, both are simply qì) — a line that explicitly resists the Confucian moralised mapping of yīnyáng onto petty-man and gentleman, in favour of a clinically usable doctrine in which both yīn and yáng can be either correct or pathogenic and either supplemented or drained as the case requires.
The composition history is partly recoverable from Hé’s preface and the prefaces of his colleagues: drafting began in his magistracy at Sī’ēn 思恩 (Guǎngxī) where he treated an epidemic outbreak, continued during his prefectship at Liáoyáng 遼陽 in the northeast, and was completed after his retirement back to Nánhǎi. The 1751 first printing was funded by a circle of Hé’s friends (medicine never paid him); subsequent reprints — Qīng and Republican — were many.
Translations and research
- Yī biàn punctuated edition by 鄧鐵濤 Dèng Tiětāo et al., Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, 1994.
- 劉小斌 Liú Xiǎobīn et al., Lǐngnán yīxué shǐ 嶺南醫學史, Guǎngzhōu: Guǎngdōng kēxué jìshù chūbǎnshè, 2005 — extensive treatment of Hé Mèngyáo as the founder of the Lǐngnán internal-medicine tradition.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — treats the cold-vs-warming controversy in the southern Chinese medical schools.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The Hé Mèngyáo–Yīzōng controversy is one of the few Qīng-period medical-doctrinal disputes that produced a clearly defined regional-school identity in clinical practice; the Yī biàn’s influence on Cantonese physicians ran continuously into the Republican period and is still appealed to in modern Lǐngnán-school TCM circles. Hé’s 1751 self-preface, with its reference to Zhū Xī’s géwù (investigating-things) discourse and to the Daoist polarity xīn sǐ zhī ài / 哀莫大於心死, is one of the most quoted opening prefaces in the Qīng medical literature.