Nèishāng jí yào 內傷集要
Collected Essentials on Internal Damage by 蔡貽績 (Cài Yíjī, zì Nǎiān 乃庵, of Yōuxiàn 攸縣, Húnán)
About the work
A 6-juǎn practical handbook on nèi shāng 內傷 (internal damage), printed in the early summer of Dàoguāng guǐwèi (1823) when the author was seventy-two. The work is the second half of a programmatic pair: the author had earlier (Jiāqìng dīngchǒu = 1817) printed 傷寒瘟疫抉要 Shānghán wēnyì jué yào on externally-contracted disease, and now adds 虛勞失血集要 Xūláo shīxuè jí yào on internal depletion and blood-loss, the two halves being recombined under the umbrella title Nèishāng jí yào and sponsored to print by friends 劉錫祺 Liú Xíqí, 楊廣先 Yáng Guǎngxiān, 鍾昌言 Zhōng Chāngyán, and 蔡磻溪 Cài Pánxī.
The work proceeds through fixed expository registers — 經旨 (classical principles), 脈法 (pulse signs), 病源 (etiology), 證治 (syndrome and treatment), 方法 (formulas) — applied successively to xū sǔn 虛損, 失血, and a battery of related complaints (盜汗, 遺精, 噎膈, 噫氣, 痰飲, 嘔吐, 腹滿, 反胃, 泄瀉, 瀉痢, 噯氣, 嘈雜, 黃疸, 水腫, 寒熱, 多寐, 不寐, 健忘, 怔忡, etc.). Marginal sigla key the reader: △ for pulse points, □ for symptoms, — for channels and collaterals.
Abstract
The work’s history is laid out in the zì xù 自序 of Dàoguāng 3 (1823). Cài Yíjī describes himself as having been a sickly child whom the physician 陳學周 Chén Xuézhōu repeatedly saved; on Chén’s encouragement, after qualifying as a dìzǐyuán 弟子員 he turned to medical study, working through the Líng shū and Sù wèn and the fāng shū tradition. A first product was Yī xué zhǐ yào 醫學指要 (= KR3eb006), printed in Jiāqìng rénshēn (1812) with the patronage of one 陳顧廬 Chén Gùlú. A second project — outwardly-contracted and internally-caused disease, paired — was prepared next; the Shānghán wēnyì jué yào half was printed in Jiāqìng 22 (1817) with funds raised by 易麗昭 Yì Lìzhāo and others, but resources ran out and the Xūláo shīxuè jí yào half stayed in the author’s box. In 1823 a fresh subscription enabled the unprinted half to be cut and bound with the first to form the present combined Nèishāng jí yào.
The 凡例 declares the work to be a focused exposition of xū sǔn and shī xuè extended by analogy to other inner-damage syndromes; it expressly refuses to separate male and female cases beyond the matter of parturition, on the grounds that “without distinction yet with distinction, with distinction yet without — the realization is not far”. The treatment-philosophy follows the standard late-Míng / Qīng wēnbǔ mainstream (薛己 Xuē Jǐ, 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn, 李中梓 Lǐ Zhōngzǐ, 喻嘉言 Yú Jiāyán are all quoted), with frequent appeal to 張仲景 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng on pulse and the Sù wèn on etiology.
The catalog meta supplies no dates for the author. From his prefaces — born in the late Qiánlóng era, seventy-two suì in 1823 — his birth falls in the early 1750s; no death-date is recoverable from the work itself. No CBDB record. The corrected entry already supersedes an earlier statement on the person note that the work was lost; that note has been updated.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is not noticed in the major Anglophone surveys of Qīng yī àn literature and is absent from Paul Unschuld, Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine (1990). It appears in the standard Chinese reference works (Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒng mù 中國中醫古籍總目, no. 03338) but without a dedicated study.
Other points of interest
Cài Yíjī’s medical project is unusually well-anchored autobiographically: across the three prefaces in Yī xué zhǐ yào, Shānghán wēnyì jué yào, and the present Nèishāng jí yào, the funding subscribers are all named, making the work a small case-study in the patronage networks supporting medical printing in late-Qiānlóng / Jiāqìng / early-Dàoguāng Húnán.
Links
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒng mù 中國中醫古籍總目, Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2007, entry 03338.
- Kanseki DB
- 內傷集要 jicheng.tw