Yīxué dáwèn 醫學答問
Questions and Answers on Medicine by 梁玉瑜 (Liáng Yùyú, zì Yǒngcháng 詠常, c. 1830–c. 1894) — shù 述 recorded by 陶保廉 (Táo Bǎolián, 1862–1938)
About the work
A late-Qīng question-and-answer (dáwèn 答問) digest of internal-medicine doctrine, recording the Cantonese physician Liáng Yùyú’s responses to his disciple 陶保廉 Táo Bǎolián’s questions on diagnosis, formula selection, and clinical reasoning. The dialogic format — modeled on Confucian yǔlù 語錄 — preserves a pedagogically-oriented practitioner’s working knowledge from the late-19th-century Lingnan medical milieu.
Abstract
The work was redacted by Táo Bǎolián from the master’s oral teachings during their study together in the 1880s; first printed in Guāngxù dīngyǒu = 1897 in Lánzhōu, where Táo was accompanying his father 陶模 Táo Mó (then governor-general of ShǎnGān). The composition window of 1880–1897 here brackets the years of Liáng’s teaching activity through to publication.
The work is notable for its sharp critique of the contemporary Lingnan medical mainstream’s over-reliance on mild píngdàn 平淡 prescribing — Liáng presses for clinically more aggressive intervention where the syndrome demands it, in continuity with the much earlier polemical stance of 何夢瑤 Hé Mèngyáo’s Yī biàn (KR3eh005) a century earlier. The text is one of the few extant late-Qīng documentary witnesses to Lingnan internal-medicine clinical practice as transmitted through the master-disciple relationship.
Authorship is mediated through Tāo BǎoLín’s editing — the prose is the disciple’s, the doctrine the master’s. The 4-juǎn division is regular, but the boundary between Liáng’s positions and Tāo’s editorial framing is sometimes hard to establish.
Translations and research
- Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014 — late-Qīng regional physicians.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, 2011 — Lingnan medical regionalism.
- No standalone English translation located.