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麻疹專論

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Text ID
KR3ej058
Date
1940–1940
Dynasty
民國

Mázhěn zhuānlùn 麻疹專論

Specialised Treatise on Measles by 李聰甫 Lǐ Cōngfǔ (撰)

About the work

A Republican-era specialised monograph on measles (mázhěn 麻疹) by the prominent twentieth-century Chinese-medicine reformer Lǐ Cōngfǔ 李聰甫 (1905–1990), with a colophon dating its final compilation to mínguó èrshíjiǔ nián 民國二十九年 (= 1940) at Xīnhuà 新化 in Húnán 湖南. The catalog meta lists no author and dynasty 清; both are corrections required by the internal evidence: the work is unambiguously Republican (民國) and bears Lǐ Cōngfǔ’s authorship throughout. Catalog correction: the meta should be updated to author: 李聰甫 and dynasty: 民國, but per project rules the hxwd meta is preserved as-is and the correction noted here in prose.

Prefaces

The work’s “Bǔyí” 補遺 (Supplementary Materials) section opens with Lǐ Cōngfǔ’s response to a reader’s query — Mázhěn bù zài chū 麻疹不再出 (Why measles does not recur) — articulating his synthesis of classical tāidú 胎毒 (fetal poison) doctrine with the late-nineteenth-century concept of measles as an infectious disease (liúxíngbìng 流行病): measles is a hybrid disease, simultaneously a constitutional fetal-poison disorder and a seasonal time-epidemic. The blood-borne fetal poison lies dormant until tiānshí bùzhèng zhī qì 天時不正之氣 (unseasonal qì) provides the eliciting external agent, like a magnet-and-iron-filing analogy that Lǐ explicitly invokes: cítiě pòjiè tóngqì xiāng zhào zhī lǐ 磁鐵珀芥同氣相召之理. The same essay covers reception of the bāofù xíng nǎomóyán 包覆型腦膜炎 (“envelope-type meningitis”) and mángchángyán 盲腸炎 (appendicitis) categories of Western biomedicine, classifying them as jīngbìng 痙病 and chángyōng 腸癰 in classical Chinese terms — a hallmark of Republican-era zhōngxī huìtōng 中西匯通 (Chinese-Western medical synthesis) writing.

The work’s appendices include Lǐ’s published correspondence with Lù Shìè 陸士諤 (the Shanghai Xīnwénbào · Guóyī zhōukān 新聞報·國醫周刊 editor and prominent classical-medicine advocate) on the typhoid / appendicitis nosology, and Lǐ’s published essays from the Jiǔjiāng Mínguó rìbào 九江《民國日報》 from the 1935–1936 period.

Abstract

The principal treatise (the Mázhěn zhuānlùn proper) addresses Republican-era paediatric measles management. It is structured by phase (chūqí 初期 / zhōngqí 中期 / mòqí 末期 — early, middle, and late stages) with phase-specific prescriptions; this three-phase organisation is the work’s distinctive methodological feature, as praised by Chén Kěnjiē 陳懇皆 (the work’s bá 跋 postface author and a long-term friend of Lǐ) at Xīnhuà in 1940. The three-phase structure was Lǐ’s adaptation of classical fārè 發熱 → jiànxíng 見形 → shōumò 收沒 paediatric má periodisation (cf. KR3ej062 Zhěnkē lèibiān’s three-section frame), reformulated as a more programmatic clinical protocol.

The opening 1940 postface (by Chén Kěnjiē 陳懇皆 of Xīnhuà) frames the work biographically: Lǐ Cōngfǔ, originally of Huángméi 黃梅, had practised at Jiǔjiāng 九江 (Jiāngxī) until war-time displacement brought him to Xīnhuà. Confronted with daily child measles mortality, Lǐ resolved to complete the manuscript he had begun earlier; the work was first prefaced by zōngshī Zǐwēi 宗師子威 (presumably his early teacher) and Liǔ Mǐnquán 柳敏泉 (= the editor of Xīnwénbào · Guóyī zhōukān), with Chén Kěnjiē writing the postface. The work is dedicated to jiāhuì yīnghái 嘉惠嬰孩 — providing benefit to infants.

The work also contains Lǐ’s 1934 prophetic essay Wēnyìbìng zhī shèngxíng 瘟疫病之盛行 (On the Prevalence of Epidemic Diseases) published in the Jiǔjiāng Mínguó rìbào on the basis of the 1934 winter’s mild weather; Lǐ predicted that the 1935 summer would see widespread wēnyì epidemics, a prediction borne out by clinical experience. The essay applies the Sùwèn “Dōng shāng yú hán, chūn bì bìng wēn 冬傷於寒，春必病溫” doctrine in a re-reading: dōng shāng yú hán should be read as “the winter cold-period sustained injury by some other agent (wind, fire, dampness),” not as “[one] was injured by cold in winter” — a textually creative re-interpretation that Lǐ defends with citations to the Shānghán lùn 傷寒論 and to the Liùyuán zhèngjì dàlùn 六元正紀大論.

The work’s catalog meta date assignment is wrong: the hxwd meta lists no dynasty / no author, but the work is unambiguously Republican (Mínguó 民國 29 = 1940) and by Lǐ Cōngfǔ 李聰甫. notBefore: 1940 / notAfter: 1940 on internal evidence.

Lǐ Cōngfǔ 李聰甫 (1905–1990) was one of the most prominent twentieth-century Chinese-medicine theorists; he later headed the Húnán provincial Chinese-medicine institute, and his Lǐ Cōngfǔ yīlùn 《李聰甫醫論》 (Húnán Kēxué jìshù chūbǎnshè, 1979 and later) remains a standard reference work.

Translations and research

  • Wáng Zú-yuán 王祖源 and others, eds, Lǐ Cōng-fǔ yī-lùn 《李聰甫醫論》 (Hú-nán Kē-xué jì-shù, 1979; multiple subsequent printings) — Lǐ’s collected medical essays.
  • Volker Scheid, Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. Duke University Press, 2002 — twentieth-century zhōng-xī huì-tōng movement context.
  • Bridie J. Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. UBC Press, 2014 — Republican-era reform-tradition Chinese medicine.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the few Republican-era measles monographs preserved in the hxwd corpus, the others belonging predominantly to the late-Qīng tradition. The three-phase periodisation (chū / zhōng / mò) that Lǐ Cōngfǔ articulated here became influential in mid-20th-century Chinese-medicine paediatrics. The work’s incorporation of the explicit liúxíngbìng (infectious disease) framework and the magnet-iron-filing analogy demonstrates the Republican synthesis between classical tāidú doctrine and modern bacteriology / virology — characteristic of the Republican-era reform tradition.

The work’s classification of appendicitis as chángyōng 腸癰 and meningitis as jīngbìng 痙病, with full clinical case-presentations, is a textbook example of Republican-era biànbìng zhōngyī 辨病中醫 (Western-disease-category Chinese medicine) — anticipating the post-1949 jíbìng 疾病 nosological tradition by several decades.

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