Érkē yàolüè 兒科要略
Essentials of Paediatrics by 吳克潛 Wú Kèqián (撰)
About the work
A Republic-era (1934) systematic textbook of paediatrics in nine chapters and roughly 100,000 characters, compiled by 吳克潛 Wú Kèqián (1898–1991) from teaching notes accumulated over six-plus years of teaching paediatrics at three successive Shànghǎi TCM colleges (Shànghǎi zhōngyī zhuānmén xuéxiào, Shànghǎi guóyī xuéyuàn, Shànghǎi zhōngguó yīxuéyuàn). The work is unusual among the Kanripo paediatric corpus in being a self-consciously modern, syllabus-organised college textbook rather than a traditional treatise, and its catalog entry — author absent because the jicheng.tw metadata silently elides it — must be corrected against the author’s own preface.
Prefaces
The author’s own preface (1934) opens with the proposition that all childhood disorders, like adult disorders, reduce to wàigǎn 外感 (externally contracted) and nèishāng 內傷 (internally damaged) categories, with the additional difficulty that paediatric diagnosis cannot rely on patient self-report. He describes his teaching trajectory at the three Shànghǎi schools, the initial draft as the lecture text Shā dòu jiǎngyì 痧痘講義 covering only eruptive fevers, and the subsequent expansion over five teaching cycles into the present nine-chapter work. He frames the book as both a household reference and a college-level textbook, and explicitly disclaims engagement with eugenics (yōushēngxué 優生學), a topic conspicuous in early-1930s medical discourse. Dated mínguó niànsān nián chángxià 民國念三年長夏 (high summer 1934), Hǎishàng jìlú 海上寄廬.
Abstract
Wú’s Érkē yàolüè belongs to the wave of Republican-period Chinese-medicine textbooks composed for the new urban TCM colleges of Shànghǎi, alongside works by 惲鐵樵 Yùn Tiěqiáo, 秦伯未 Qín Bówèi, 張山雷 Zhāng Shānléi and 陸淵雷 Lù Yuānléi. The text is organised in nine chapters covering: (1) the pre- and peri-natal period including the doctrine of tāijiào 胎教 (prenatal influence), (2) infant constitution, (3) general paediatric pathology, (4) diagnostic principles in paediatrics, (5) therapeutic principles, (6) chapters on common paediatric disorders (digestive, respiratory, jīngfēng 驚風 convulsive seizures), (7) eruptive-fever specialty (shā 痧, zhěn 疹, dòu 痘), (8) chronic-syndrome paediatrics (gān 疳), and (9) a closing chapter on hygiene and nurture. The work’s evidentiary frame interleaves Chinese-medical paediatric tradition (錢乙 Qián Yǐ, the Wàn-family, 陳復正 Chén Fùzhèng) with selective borrowings from Western paediatrics. The jicheng.tw recension preserves this 1934 edition with original chapter divisions and the author’s preface.
Translations and research
- Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014 — the standard English-language monograph on Republican-period TCM modernisation; situates the Shànghǎi college tradition in which Wú Kèqián taught.
- Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014 — context for Republican TCM education.
- No specialised modern study of the Érkē yàolüè located.