Dàfāngmài 大方脈
The Greater Pulse-Prescribing [Internal Medicine] by 何彤園 (Hé Tóngyuán, zì Tuōwú 拙吾, late-Qiánlóng to Jiāqìng)
About the work
A twelve-juǎn family-transmitted comprehensive internal-medicine handbook, organised in three parts: shàng piān 上篇 — diagnostics by pulse; zhōng piān 中篇 — treatment of diseases by syndrome category; xià piān 下篇 — health-cultivation and regimen. The compiler explicitly follows the editorial rubric of the imperial Yīzōng jīnjiàn 醫宗金鑑 (see KR3eh004): each subspecialty announced with a thematic pǐntí 品題, formulae appended to symptom presentation, and selected experiential prescriptions from earlier authorities collated by category. The title’s Dàfāngmài 大方脈 is the Qīng technical term for the adult-internal-medicine specialty, distinguishing it from paediatric (xiǎofāngmài 小方脈) and external (wàikē 外科) medicine.
Abstract
The catalog meta lists no author, but the surviving prefaces clearly identify the compiler as Hé Tóngyuán 何彤園 (also written 何彤元), respectfully referred to in the family preface as Tóngyuángōng 彤園公 and addressed by 何敦 Hé Dūn’ān (his grandnephew) in the Xiánfēng 5 = 1855 preface. Hé Tóngyuán is described there as having read in his youth, set his heart on benefiting others, failed at the examinations, and turned to medicine; in old age he compiled the present work as a family-school manual.
The work was published only posthumously by Hé’s descendants 何靜安 Jìng’ān (grandson) and 何星浦 Xīngpǔ (grand-nephew) in 1855, with Hé Dūn’ān’s preface; Hé Tóngyuán himself belongs to a generation or more earlier — likely late-Qiánlóng or Jiāqìng. Specific lifedates are not recoverable from current biographical sources; the bracket of 1820–1855 here reflects an outer estimate of mature working years to publication.
The Dàfāngmài belongs to the genre of late-Qīng family-pedagogical internal-medicine compendia which deliberately style themselves on the imperial Yīzōng jīnjiàn — a literate-officials’ medical practice transmitting the imperial textbook’s editorial logic into the household-physician practice that supplied much of the late-Qīng’s actual medical care.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located. The text is preserved in modern digital editions at jicheng.tw and cloudtcm.com but lacks dedicated critical study.