Nǚkē qièyào 女科切要
The Cutting Essentials of Women’s Medicine by 吳道源 (Wú Dàoyuán, mid-Qīng)
About the work
An eight-juǎn systematic gynecology treatise by the mid-Qīng physician Wú Dàoyuán 吳道源. The work is organised by topical mén 門: tiáojīng 調經 (menstrual regulation, including jīngbì 經閉, jīngxiānqī 經先期, jīngguòqī 經過期, jīngxíng fùtòng 經行腹痛, xuèfēng 血風 etc.), bēnglòu 崩漏, dàixià 帶下, qiúzǐ 求子, tāiqián 胎前, línchǎn 臨產, chǎnhòu 產後, and miscellaneous female conditions. Each entry combines a doctrinal opening drawing on canonical sources (Sòng-Yuán-Míng commentary including frequent citation of 王肯堂 Wáng Kěntáng’s Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng·Nǚkē — see KR3ei030 — and 武之望 Wǔ Zhīwàng’s Jìyīn gāngmù — see KR3ei006), differential diagnosis according to xūshí hánrè 虛實寒熱, and prescribed formulas with full drug compositions.
Prefaces
The KR hxwd recension preserves the body of the work but no separable author-preface is present in the _001.txt head; the text begins directly with the tiáojīng mén heading.
Abstract
Wú Dàoyuán 吳道源 (also recorded as 吳道源) is a mid-Qīng physician of the Qiánlóng era. The work’s extensive direct citation of Wáng Kěntáng (whose Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng was published 1602) and assimilation of the Wǔ Zhīwàng Jìyīn gāngmù (1620) synthesis position it firmly in the late-imperial systematic-gynecology tradition; the work appears to predate or be contemporaneous with the Yīzōng jīnjiàn·Fùkē 醫宗金鑑·婦科 (1742; see KR3ei007). On internal stylistic and citation evidence, composition is best bracketed in the mid-18th century, with notBefore 1750 / notAfter 1800 as a defensible range.
The work’s treatment of xuèfēng 血風 (blood-wind, an acute condition characterised by post-menstrual reversed-flow with cerebral and facial symptoms) is a distinctive feature: Wú prescribes Sìwù tāng 四物湯 as the base, supplemented with Jīngjiè 荊芥, Fángfēng 防風, Tiānmá 天麻, Bòhé 薄荷, and the use of Báizhú 白朮 for qù miànshàng yóufēng (removing wandering wind on the face) and lì yāoqí jiān xuè (regulating blood at the lumbar-umbilical zone). This is a clinically distinctive formulation not paralleled in the other major Qīng gynecologies.
The work is a substantial systematic treatise (eight juǎn, considerably longer than the four-to-five-juǎn essentials manuals typical of the genre), positioning it among the major Qīng gynecological textbooks. It is, however, less widely cited in Republican-era TCM literature than the Yīzōng jīnjiàn·Fùkē or the Fù Qīngzhǔ nǚkē and survives largely in hxwd-series and similar specialist reprintings.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 — for the systematic-gynecology genre.
- No dedicated study of the Nǚkē qièyào located.
Links
- No verified Wikipedia or Wikidata entry located.
- 女科切要 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB