Lìjí míngbiàn 痢疾明辨
Clear Discriminations on Dysentery by 吳士瑛 (Wú Shìyīng, zì Fǔtián 甫恬, of Chéngjiāng 澄江 = Jiāngyīn 江陰)
About the work
A late-Qīng clinical monograph on lì jí 痢疾 (dysentery) in 1 juǎn, composed in the intercalary 5th month of Xiánfēng 7 / dīngsì (= 1857). The work was kept in manuscript for over eighty years — the author would not print it — until 陳韶九 Chén Sháojiǔ obtained a clean copy in spring 1940 from 張宗耀 Zhāng Zōngyào (a Xīchéng 錫城 physician of Huáshù 華墅 lineage) and finally cut blocks for it in Mínguó 29 (1940). A second, earlier transcription by 吳文涵 Wú Wénhán (Mínguó 11 = 1922) is mentioned in the Wú xù attached to the work. The 1940 edition reproduces all three prefaces (Chén Sháojiǔ 1940, the author’s own 1857, Wú Wénhán 1922) together with Chén’s running 按 annotations.
The work is organized around the author’s own dictum that lì is not a category of 雜病 to be lumped with xièxiè 泄瀉 (diarrhea) but a 時邪 (seasonal-pathogenic) disorder produced by the conjunction of 暑 / 濕 / 熱 with retained food and shí lì zhī qì 時厲之氣. The work proceeds by 六經 differentiation (after 張仲景 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng) and then by four major rubrics: 邪陷 (sunken pathogen, sub-divided by channel and following 喻嘉言 Yú Jiāyán’s nìliú wǎnzhōu 逆流挽舟 method via Rénshēn bàidú sǎn 人參敗毒散), 秋燥 (autumnal dryness, treated with Báitóuwēng tāng and Huánglián ējiāo tāng with jiégěng), 時毒 (epidemic toxin, treated by aggressive tōngyīn tōngyòng purgation with rhubarb, huánglián, huángbǎi), and 滑脫 (slipping-loss, the only category in which warming-astringent therapy is permissible). Long sub-sections discuss women’s lì (胎前 tāi qián, 產後 chǎn hòu), pediatric lì, 噤口 (lockjaw lì), 五色痢, xiūxī recurrent lì, and xī-feces (wūlòu shuǐ 屋漏水) cases. Each topic is supported by case-histories drawn from Yú Jiāyán, 繆仲醇 Miù Zhòngchún, 葉天士 Yè Tiānshì, 陸養愚 Lù Yǎngyù, 舒進賢 Shū Jìnxián, 孫御千 Sūn Yùqiān, 姜體乾 Jiāng Tǐqián, and the author himself.
Abstract
The author signs himself “澄吳士英甫恬氏” in the zì xù — i.e. the name is “吳士英” with the wood-radical character, against the catalog meta’s homophonic “吳士瑛” with the jade-radical; the meta spelling has been retained in the frontmatter, but the jade-vs-reed slip should be flagged. The author identifies himself as a Chéngjiāng (= Jiāngyīn) physician, follower of Yú Jiāyán’s nephew Shū Jìnxián 舒進賢 by tradition, and of his older contemporary Jiāng Tǐqián 姜體乾 of Huáshù 華墅 by direct association. The 凡例-equivalent 自序 lays out the polemical posture of the work: he charges 李士材 Lǐ Shìcái and 王損庵 Wáng Sǔnyǎn with having identified the disease but missed its root; 吳本立 Wú Běnlì’s 痢症彙參 Lì zhèng huì cān with collecting opinions but failing to filter them; and 倪涵初 Ní Hánchū’s three formulas with having locked the field into a wrong template. The corrective is to read lì through the Shānghán lùn and to apply Yú Jiāyán’s nìliú wǎnzhōu method as the default opening move when the pathogen has descended through the sān yáng into the sān yīn.
Two complementary prefaces frame the work. Chén Sháojiǔ’s 1940 preface explains the transmission: he had read 王旭高 Wáng Xùgāo’s Yī shū in which a “miraculous yītāng of the Huáshù physician Jiāng Tǐqián” is mentioned; tracking down the source he found Wú Shìyīng as Jiāng’s contemporary and friend, and traced the manuscript through Zhāng Zōngyào of Xīchéng. The 1922 preface by Wú Wénhán (a Jìyáng hòuxué — i.e. a fellow Jiāngyīn man) supplies anecdotes about the author: Wú diagnosed a newly-delivered woman while drunk and prescribed an āntāi formula that turned out to suit twin births; he diagnosed a Zhènjiāng general’s daughter as pregnant rather than ill, only to be served the aborted fetus from a tray and to contract a xīnjí (heart illness) of his own as a result.
The 松陰樓論醫集 Sōngyīn lóu lùn yī jí of Wáng Xùgāo (post. 1881) does cite a Wú Fǔtián on dysentery, supporting the dating. The work does not appear in standard catalogs of Qīng medicine; it is listed in Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒng mù under the 1940 imprint. No CBDB record for the author.
Translations and research
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. London: Routledge, 2011, ch. 5 — for the Yú Jiāyán nìliú wǎnzhōu tradition in dysentery treatment which forms the polemical core of the Míngbiàn.
- Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996 — for the late-Qīng epidemiological context of lì and shí dú outbreaks.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The work transmits what amounts to the only sustained, theoretically-coherent Yú Jiāyán school treatise on dysentery — Wú self-consciously casts himself as the legitimate heir to nìliú wǎnzhōu. The frequent quoted “Shū Jìnxián” comments preserve fragments of a now-lost teaching tradition; whether Shū was a real historical nephew of Yú Jiāyán is uncertain — he is unattested elsewhere and may be a textual fiction by Wú to lend authority. The compiler Chén Sháojiǔ openly polemicizes against Western anti-bacterials in the 1940 preface: with this book to hand, he says, “the Western specific drugs for dysentery cannot claim the day”.
Links
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒng mù, no. 03372.
- Kanseki DB
- 痢疾明辨 jicheng.tw