Zhuānzhì máshā chūbiān 專治麻痧初編
Initial Compilation Devoted Exclusively to Measles and Eruptive Fever by 凌德 Líng Dé (撰)
About the work
A late-Qīng paediatric-specialty treatise in six juǎn by Líng Dé 凌德 (style Chìtíngzǐ 赤霆子) of Hángzhōu 杭州 (Zhèjiāng), dated by his own signed preface Guāngxù gēngyín 光緒庚寅, i.e. winter, tenth month of 1890. The title’s máshā 麻痧 is the Jiāngnán regional term for mázhěn / zhěnzǐ 麻疹 (measles and related eruptive fevers); the work explicitly distinguishes máshā from yìshā 疫痧 (epidemic shā, i.e. scarlet-fever-like throat-eruptive fever) and from hóushā 喉痧 (throat-shā), which Líng argues had been wrongly conflated by his contemporaries.
Prefaces
Líng’s self-preface, Zhuānzhì máshā shùgǔbiān xù 《專治麻痧》述古編敘, is a remarkable bibliographic essay. He opens with the proverb níng zhì shí nánzǐ, mò zhì yī fùrén; níng zhì shí fùrén, mò zhì yī xiǎoér 寧治十男子，莫治一婦人；寧治十婦人，莫治一小兒 (“better to treat ten men than one woman; better to treat ten women than one child”) and then catalogs over seventy paediatric and dòuzhěn (smallpox-eruptive) works he has personally consulted, from the Lúxìn jīng 《顱囟經》 and Qián Yǐ’s Xiǎo’ér yàozhèng zhíjué 《小兒藥證直訣》 through SòngYuánMíng paediatric classics — Yòuyòu xīnshū 幼幼新書, Huóyòu xīnshū 活幼心書, Tòuzhěn xīnfǎ / Huóyòu xīnfǎ, Yīngtóng bǎiwèn 嬰童百問, etc. — down to recent Qīng works including Yè Tiānshì’s Yòukē yàolüè, Chén Fēixiá’s Yòuyòu jíchéng, and Xià Zhuóxī’s Yòukē tiějìng. He explicitly singles out as yáng Mò 楊墨 (heretical, like Yáng Zhū and Mò Dí) the Bǎochì quánshū 保赤全書 of Guǎn Chēng 管檉, the Dòuxué zhēnchuán 痘學真傳 of Yè Dàchūn 葉大椿, and the Dòukē zhèngzōng 痘科正宗.
The preface’s principal polemic targets what Líng calls a confusion epidemic in his own day: physicians of his region, following Chén Jìngyán 陳靜岩’s Yìshā cǎo 疫痧草, Jīn Bǎosān 金保三’s Hóukē zhěnmì 喉科枕秘, and Zhāng Xiǎoshān 張筱衫’s Shāhóu zhèngyì 痧喉正義 (KR3ej019 adjacent tradition), have come to mistake true measles (máshā) for chòudúzhīshā 臭毒之痧 (foul-poison shā) and to mistreat eruptive-fever throat involvement as if it were ordinary hóukē 喉科 throat disease, prescribing Zǐjīndìng 紫金錠, Hónglíngdān 紅靈丹, Bīngpéngsǎn 冰硼散 and similar warming-aromatic / pungent-cooling specifics that, in Líng’s view, are not merely useless but actively dangerous against true eruptive fever. He describes the misdiagnosis as yěhú tánchán 野狐譚禪 (“a wild fox preaching Chán Buddhism”) and signs off with characteristic vehemence: bù róng bù biǎo ér chì zhī 不容不表而斥之 (“cannot but expose and denounce this”).
Abstract
The work itself is in six juǎn, comprising Líng’s own treatment programme for measles and measles-related eruptive fevers, drawing on his synthesis of the 70+ predecessor works named in the preface. It is the most self-consciously bibliographically anchored of the late-Qīng Hángzhōu measles monographs and represents the regional reform tradition’s reaction against the má/shā nosological confusion that had developed in the Jiāngzhè area. The chūbiān 初編 (“first compilation”) in the title suggests Líng planned a sequel; whether one was completed is unclear from the hxwd recension.
Líng Dé 凌德 (style Chìtíngzǐ 赤霆子, fl. late Guāngxù) was the same Hángzhōu physician who also authored the Nǚkē zhézhōng zuǎnyào 女科折衷纂要 (KR3ei024); both works are characteristic late-Qīng zhézhōng 折衷 (synthetic-reconciliation) compositions, though the Zhuānzhì máshā chūbiān draws more narrowly from the indigenous paediatric tradition rather than incorporating Western anatomical material.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language scholarship on the Zhuānzhì máshā chūbiān located.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. Routledge, 2011 — for the late-Qīng shā/zhěn nosological reform context.
Other points of interest
The preface’s list of 70+ paediatric and dòuzhěn titles is itself a significant document for the bibliography of late-imperial Chinese paediatrics. Líng’s polemic identification of three textual traditions — Chén Jìngyán, Jīn Bǎosān, Zhāng Xiǎoshān — as the source of the máshā / yìshā confusion is also a marker of how late-Qīng physicians explicitly positioned their texts relative to one another.