Yīxiào mìchuán 醫效秘傳
Esoteric Transmission of Medical Effectiveness by 葉桂 (Yè Guì, zì Tiānshì 天士, 1666–1745) — shù 述; edited by 吳金壽 (Wú Jīnshòu, zì Zǐmù 子木, fl. 1820s–1830s) — xiào 校
About the work
A three-juǎn digest of internal-medicine doctrine framed as guidance from 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì — Sūzhōu’s most celebrated 18th-century physician and the architect of the wēnbìng 溫病 current. The first two juǎn systematise Cold-Damage diagnosis and therapy (re-keyed to Yè’s clinical logic rather than to 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s six-channel sequence); the third extracts canonical passages on pulse and pathology. Edited and printed by 吳金壽 Wú Jīnshòu in Dàoguāng xīnmǎo = 1831 from a recovered manuscript.
Abstract
The work belongs to the broader posthumous Yè Tiānshì corpus — alongside the Línzhèng zhǐnán yīàn 臨證指南醫案 and the Wēnrè lùn 溫熱論 (KR3eg001) — none of which is autograph. The Yīxiào mìchuán circulated as manuscript for nearly a century after Yè’s death in 1745 before reaching print: Wú Jīnshòu’s preface, dated Dàoguāng xīnmǎo = 1831, records the manuscript’s chain of custody from 翁春岩 Wēng Chūnyán’s library through fellow-student 徐雪香 Xú Xuěxiāng to Wú himself. The companion preface by 張文燮 Zhāng Wénxiè confirms the same date.
The composition is therefore mediated through at least one and probably several intermediary student-redactors; the prose is plausibly closer to a disciple’s notes on Yè’s teaching than to Yè’s own composition. Modern philological work treats the work as part of the broader Yè-Tiānshì-school clinical literature without staking strong claims about Yè’s direct authorship of the received recension. The dating bracket of 1700–1831 here reflects this — post quem the earliest defensible date in Yè’s mature working life, ante quem the first printing.
The work was printed in 1831 alongside related case-record materials from Yè, 薛雪 Xuē Shēngbái, and 繆遵義 Miào Zūnyì, in the broader Sūzhōu yīshū publishing project of the early Dàoguāng era.
Translations and research
- Chao Yüan-ling, Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China. New York: Peter Lang, 2009 — chapter on the Sūzhōu medical lineages within which the Yè Tiānshì corpus circulated.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — extensive treatment of Yè’s Wēnrè lùn tradition.
- Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006. Seattle: Eastland, 2007.
- No standalone English translation located.