Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng · Shānghán 證治準繩·傷寒
Standards of Diagnosis and Treatment — Cold Damage by 王肯堂 (Wáng Kěntáng, zì Yǔtài 宇泰, hào Niànxī jūshì 念西居士)
About the work
The Shānghán division of Wáng Kěntáng’s six-part Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng 證治準繩 (cf. the consolidated KR3e0078), here transmitted separately in 8 juǎn from the Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (hxwd) corpus. The author’s self-preface, dated Wànlì sānshíèr nián gēngzǐ chóngyáng (Double Ninth 1604), records that the Shānghán book was drafted in a single autumn — begun on the first day of the 8th lunar month and finished on Double Ninth (9/9) — after his classmate 姜仲文 Jiāng Zhòngwén sent a copyist to obtain it. The 凡例 attributes the architecture to 婁全善 Lóu Quánshàn’s 醫學綱目 Yī xué gāng mù: the liù jīng 六經 main illnesses first, then hé bìng / bìng bìng / post-hàntùxià 壞病, then seasonally-aberrant disorders, then women’s and children’s. Within each entry 張仲景 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s own formulation comes first, then the post-Hàn supplementary methods (成無己 Chéng Wújǐ, 趙嗣真 Zhào Sìzhēn, 張兼善 Zhāng Jiānshàn, 李杲 Lǐ Dōngyuán, 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī, 王好古 Wáng Hǎicáng, 羅天益 Luó Tiānyì, etc.), each tagged by a one-character siglum keyed in the 凡例.
Abstract
Composed in the early autumn of Wànlì 32 (1604), only a few weeks before Wáng would also draft Yángyī zhǔnshéng and after his earlier Zázhèng zhǔnshéng and Lèifāng of 1597–1598. The self-preface lays out the author’s critical posture: medicine before Zhāng Zhòngjǐng was diagnosis without prescriptions; Zhòngjǐng is to HuángQí what Confucius is to YìWén (FúXī and Wénwáng). To this lineage the Yìshuǐ school stands as LiánLuò and the Jīnhuá school as GuānMǐn. Wáng’s particular polemic is against 陶華 Táo Huá’s Liù shū 六書: he charges that contemporary practitioners use Táo as a pillow-treasure while never reading Zhòngjǐng. The 凡例 follows up programmatically: Wáng restores the 王叔和 Shūhé 叔和 division of sān yáng / sān yīn but tries to rescue conditions that Shūhé had assimilated by default to the tàiyáng and juéyīn chapters, insisting that “tàiyáng bìng” denotes specifically mài fú, tóu xiàng qiáng tòng, wù hán and not a residual catch-all. He likewise insists that Shānghán fǎ can treat zá bìng but not the reverse, and warns repeatedly against thoughtless 汗下 of patients whose underlying problem is nèi shāng xū láo.
The work circulated independently as well as bundled in the larger Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng. The Sìkù editors (tíyào preserved at KR3e0078) judged the whole corpus the medical-school’s standard reference (醫家之圭臬). The hxwd version reproduced here is the Shānghán section transmitted as a separate book; juan division (8 juǎn) corresponds to the 8 zhì 帙 mentioned in the self-preface.
Wáng Kěntáng’s dates (1549–1613) are settled by Míng shǐ j. 221 (his official biography under his father 王樵 Wáng Qiáo) and confirmed in CBDB.
Translations and research
- Chao Yuan-ling 趙元玲, Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China: A Study of Physicians in Suzhou, PhD diss., Columbia University, 1995 — situates Wáng within the late-Míng rúyī milieu.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. London: Routledge, 2011 — for the late-Míng shānghán-versus-wēnbìng fault line that Wáng’s work helps fix.
- Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006. Seattle: Eastland Press, 2007.
- Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the “Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories”. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003 — comparative context for Wáng Kěntáng’s case-mentality.
- No standalone English translation of the Shānghán zhǔnshéng located.
Other points of interest
The preface contains an extended philological excursus on dùliànghéng 度量衡 conversion in classical pharmacology (citing 陳無擇 Chén Wúzé and 吳綬 Wú Shòu on the Kāiyuán-coin standard) — historically valuable as evidence for how Míng physicians were thinking about HànTáng dose-equivalents two centuries before the Qīng kǎozhèng turn. Wáng’s pragmatic solution: cut the canonical Hàn doses to roughly one tenth.
Links
- Wáng Kěntáng — Wikipedia (Chinese)
- KR3e0078 — the integrated Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng in 120 juan.
- Kanseki DB
- 證治準繩·傷寒 jicheng.tw