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竹泉生女科集要

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Text ID
KR3ei019
Date
1925–1931
Dynasty
民國

Zhúquánshēng nǚkē jíyào 竹泉生女科集要

Master Bamboo-Spring’s Compilation of Essentials in Women’s Medicine by 竹泉生 (Zhúquánshēng, hào of a Republican-era physician of the Péng 彭 lineage)

About the work

A four-juǎn Republican-era systematic gynecology compendium by “Zhúquánshēng 竹泉生” (“Master Bamboo-Spring”), a hào used by an early-Republican Chinese-medicine physician of the Péng 彭 family. The work covers tiáojīng 調經 (menstrual regulation), tiáoxuè 調血 (blood regulation), bēnglòu 崩漏, wǔdài 五帶 (five-coloured vaginal discharges), zhǒngzǐ 種子, tāiqián, chǎnhòu, and an appended zhuózhèng 濁證 (vaginal-discharge / urological condition) section. The work’s distinguishing intellectual feature is its explicit Republican-era reformulation of classical Chinese gynecology: it opens with a qìhuà cìxù shuō 氣化次序說 (“Discussion of the Sequence of qì-transformation”) that rebuilds classical fùkē doctrine on a unified ontological foundation in which jīng 精 (essence-stuff), xuè 血 (blood), and qì 氣 are systematically related, and reinterprets the classical doctrine of yǐ xuè wéi běn 以血為本 (taking blood as fundamental) in light of late-Qing / early-Republican Chinese-medicine debate. The work also explicitly distinguishes zhuó 濁 from dài 帶, against the older tradition which had collapsed them.

Prefaces

The KR hxwd _000.txt carries two prefaces:

  1. Preface by 張贊臣 Zhāng Zànchén of Wǔjìn 武進 (1904–1993, the well-known Republican Chinese-medicine reformer, founder of the Yījiè chūnqiū shè 醫界春秋社 in Shanghai), dated Zhōnghuá mínguó èrshí nián jiǔyuè yīrì 中華民國二十年九月一日 = 1 September 1931. Zhāng praises the work for its concise organisation and clear doctrinal argument and ranks the author’s contribution beside that of 傅青主 Fù Qīngzhǔ.

  2. Preface by 嚴蒼山 Yán Cāngshān of Nínghǎi 寧海 (1898–1968, another major Republican Chinese-medicine reformer), dated mid-month of the 8th moon of Mínguó 20 = August 1931, “from the Hùjiāng Jiātíng yīyào gùwèn shè 滬江家庭醫藥顧問社” (Shanghai-based household-medicine advisory society). Yán situates the work between 武之望 Wǔ Zhīwàng’s Jìyīn gāngmù (most detailed) and the Yīzōng jīnjiàn·Fùkē xīnfǎ yàojué (most concise), and recommends it as a ferry-bridge (jīnliáng 津梁) for younger learners.

Abstract

The work was published in 1931 (Mínguó 20) in Shanghai. The author’s hào “Zhúquánshēng” (Master Bamboo-Spring) is the only personal-identifier preserved in the KR hxwd recension; the preface of Zhāng Zànchén calls the author “Péngzǐ” 彭子 (“Master Péng”), indicating a family name of Péng 彭, but the author’s personal name is not preserved here. The work is best dated to the late 1920s with publication in 1931.

The work belongs to the substantial corpus of late-Qīng / early-Republican Chinese-medicine reform literature — works that re-presented the classical Chinese-medicine tradition in modernised idiom in response to the early-Republican challenge to Zhōngyī posed by Western biomedicine. The author’s opening sentence — “Men and women are equally human; in food, clothing, daily life, and work, alike; in illness — external infliction or internal injury — and groaning on the sickbed, alike; so why need there be a separate Nǚkē?” — is a characteristic Republican-era rhetorical opening, marking the work as a modern gynecology against premodern essentialism, while ultimately affirming the necessity of a Nǚkē on the ground of female reproductive anatomy (“shēngzhí jīguān 生殖機關,” the reproductive organs — a 20th-century anatomical-modernist neologism).

The work was reprinted in the Zhōngyī gǔjí zhěnběn cóngkān and various subsequent collections.

Translations and research

  • Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014 — for the broader Republican-era Chinese-medicine context.
  • Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006. Seattle: Eastland Press, 2007 — situates Zhāng Zànchén and Yán Cāngshān (the prefacers) in the Republican-Shanghai TCM reform milieu.
  • No dedicated study of the Zhúquánshēng nǚkē jíyào located.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the latest texts in the entire KR3ei sub-division, dated firmly to the Republican period (1931). Its presence in the hxwd (Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū) series indicates that overseas Chinese-medicine library holdings preserved important Republican-era Chinese-medicine reform literature alongside the older imperial corpus. The work’s prefacers — Zhāng Zànchén (1904–1993) and Yán Cāngshān (1898–1968) — were both pivotal figures in the institutional defence and modernisation of Chinese medicine during the Republican period, particularly in their resistance to the 1929 余雲岫 Yú Yúnxiù proposal to abolish zhōngyī.

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