Yīzōng jīnjiàn · Dòuzhěn xīnfǎ yàojué 醫宗金鑑·痘疹心法要訣
Golden Mirror of Medicine — Essential Verses on the Heart-Method of Smallpox by 吳謙 Wú Qiān (奉敕撰) and the Yīzōng jīnjiàn imperial editorial committee
About the work
The smallpox-and-eruptive-fever section of the imperial-commissioned Yùzuǎn Yīzōng jīnjiàn 御纂醫宗金鑑 (KR3e0090, 90 juǎn, completed Qiánlóng 14 = 1749). The Dòuzhěn xīnfǎ yàojué 痘疹心法要訣 (Essential Verses on the Heart-Method of Smallpox-and-Eruption), in eight juǎn (originally juǎn 56–63 of the parent compendium), was compiled c. 1742 under the chief editorship of 吳謙 Wú Qiān (zì Liùjí 六吉, Tàiyīyuàn yuànpàn 太醫院院判) and his co-editor 劉裕鐸 Liú Yùduó. It is the canonical Qīng state-orthodox treatise on paediatric smallpox-and-eruptive-fever therapy, and the largest single section of the Jīnjiàn parent compendium devoted to a single disease category — reflecting the central importance of smallpox in eighteenth-century Chinese paediatric mortality.
Prefaces
The received front-matter is empty; the substantive content is in the body of the work. The Yīzōng jīnjiàn parent compendium carries the imperial preface and Wú Qiān’s editorial fánlì; these are at the head of the parent work and not separately reproduced.
Abstract
The Yīzōng jīnjiàn · Dòuzhěn xīnfǎ yàojué is the most authoritative Qīng-period smallpox-and-eruption (dòuzhěn) treatise. Its eight juǎn are organised around the canonical dòuzhěn clinical phases: (juǎn 1–2) dòuchuāng 痘瘡 (smallpox) general doctrine and the four-phase clinical course — fārè 發熱 initial fever, jiàndiǎn 見點 papular eruption, qǐzhǎng 起脹 vesicular swelling, guànjiāng 貫漿 pustular filling, huíshōu 回收 scab-formation; (juǎn 3–4) detailed phase-specific symptom-patterns and prescriptions; (juǎn 5) variolation (zhòngdòu 種痘) — the Jīnjiàn presents the four standard variolation techniques (dòuyī fǎ 痘衣法 clothes-method, dòujiāng fǎ 痘漿法 lymph-method, hànmiáo fǎ 旱苗法 dry-scab-method, shuǐmiáo fǎ 水苗法 wet-scab-method); (juǎn 6–7) measles (mázhěn 麻疹) and other eruptive fevers; (juǎn 8) miscellaneous dòuzhěn complications. The work was the canonical reference text for imperial-medical-academy variolation training from 1749 onward and is the principal documentary source for the eighteenth-century Chinese variolation tradition that Edward Jenner later modified into Western smallpox vaccination. The Dòuzhěn xīnfǎ canonicalised the post-Wàn-Quán smallpox doctrine and codified variolation as state-sanctioned imperial-medical orthopraxy.
Translations and research
- 張嘉鳳 Zhāng Jiāfèng (Chia-Feng Chang), Aspects of Smallpox and Its Significance in Chinese History. SOAS PhD, 1996.
- 梁其姿 Liáng Qízī (Angela Ki Che Leung), “Variolation and Vaccination in Late Imperial China, ca 1570–1911,” in History of Vaccine Development, ed. S. Plotkin (Springer, 2011), 5–18 — the standard English-language survey, drawing extensively on the Yīzōng jīnjiàn variolation chapter.
- Hinrichs and Barnes (2013) — context.
- Yīzōng jīnjiàn dòuzhěn xīnfǎ yàojué jiàoshì 醫宗金鑑痘疹心法要訣校釋 — standard modern punctuated edition (Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè).
Other points of interest
The Jīnjiàn variolation chapter (in juǎn 5) is one of the principal documentary sources for the eighteenth-century Chinese smallpox-inoculation practice that Western observers including Pierre Martial Cibot and others reported to Europe. The shuǐmiáo 水苗 (wet-seed) and hànmiáo 旱苗 (dry-seed) techniques described in the Jīnjiàn are the technological background to the Jenner cowpox-vaccination procedure that displaced human-pox variolation in the nineteenth century. The Chinese variolation tradition, codified by the Jīnjiàn, was demonstrably effective (mortality from variolation was reported in the 1–2% range against 20–30% from natural smallpox infection).