Chǎnyùn jí 產孕集
Collection on Pregnancy and Childbirth by 張曜孫 (Zhāng Yàosūn, 1808–1863, zì Zhòngyuǎn 仲遠, hào Fùshēng 復生)
About the work
A two-juǎn obstetrical manual by Zhāng Yàosūn — Yánghú 陽湖 literatus, cí-poet of the Chángzhōu school, and physician — composed in the Dàoguāng era. The work is organised under the standard huáitāi (pregnancy) / línchǎn (parturition) / chǎnhòu (post-partum) tripartite scheme, with appendices on the neonatal first-aid (chūdàn jiùhù) and on maternal-side fertility-medicine (tāiyuán). Its theoretical stance combines the Zhāng Jièbīn warm-supplementing orthodoxy (inherited via Zhāng’s father Zhāng Qí 張琦) with Dānxī gynecological pharmacology, and is unusual among the popular obstetrical literature in its self-aware citation of earlier authorities — Zhū Dānxī, Chén Shìduó, Fèi Bóxióng, Yè Tiānshì, the Yī tōng, Xuē Jǐ — by name.
Abstract
Zhāng Yàosūn (CBDB 55133, 1808–1863) was a member of the celebrated Yánghú Zhāng family — nephew of the great prose- and cí-master Zhāng Huìyán 張惠言, son of the physician-cí-poet Zhāng Qí 張琦. Jǔrén of 1835. The text of the Chǎnyùn jí is undated in the surviving hxwd recension; on internal evidence (citation of Fèi Bóxióng’s Yī fāng lùn, c. 1840; Zhāng’s own clinical-experience anecdotes) the composition can be placed in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, before his revised Chóngdìng chǎnyùn jí (KR3ei060). Composition window set to 1830–1850.
The work is notable for several distinctive doctrinal features:
- Active rejection of the Dáshēng biān “natural-childbirth” pure-quietism. Zhāng (citing Yè Tiānshì) holds that the Dáshēng biān protocol of “lie down and sleep, do not bear down, mother’s force is unnecessary” is wrong when applied to weakened or hypothermic women — these require active pharmacological support, not stoic waiting.
- The “two collapse modes” for post-partum xuèyùn (blood-fainting): one xuèbēng (excess) requiring blood-anchoring; one qìtuō (deficiency) requiring great-doses of rénshēn. Zhāng repeatedly insists that the failure to distinguish these has killed many women. His clinical case-anecdotes (a Hangzhou consort of his cousin Zhāng Bǎozhī 寶芝, a granddaughter-in-law in 1894 — but these clearly refer to post-Zhāng-Yào-sūn cases added in later editions) provide concrete demonstrations.
- Strong reliance on Shēnghuà tāng as the post-partum master-formula, with extensive jiājiǎn variations.
The catalog meta gives only Zhāng Yàosūn as author. The work has a companion Chóngdìng chǎnyùn jí 重訂產孕集 (KR3ei060) which is Zhāng’s own revised redaction.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010 — discusses Zhāng Yào-sūn’s family medical tradition and his place in the late-Qīng obstetrical literature.
- Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century. Stanford University Press, 1997 — for the Yáng-hú Zhāng family literary culture.
- No standalone English translation located.
Other points of interest
The Chǎnyùn jí is one of the small group of literati-authored obstetrical works of the late Qīng — alongside Yán Chúnxǐ’s Tāichǎn xīnfǎ (KR3ei058) and Wáng Kěntáng’s Tāichǎn zhèngzhì (KR3ei064) — that combine genuine clinical experience with literary self-consciousness, in contrast to the bulk of the popular obstetrical literature.
Links
- 海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書 (Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū).
- 產孕集 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB