Yòukē tuīná mìshū 幼科推拿秘書
Secret Book of Paediatric Massage by 駱如龍 Luò Rúlóng (撰)
About the work
A late-seventeenth-century paediatric massage (tuīná 推拿) manual in five juǎn by Luò Rúlóng 駱如龍 (sobriquet Qiánān 潛庵 — Lurking-Hermitage Master). The work bears no surviving preface in the hxwd recension (the source file begins directly with juǎn 1 and contains no _000.txt frontmatter); the conventional dating is 1691 (Kāngxī 30), making this work approximately contemporaneous with KR3ej067 Xiǎo’ér tuīná guǎngyì (1676) and KR3ej069 Xiǎo’ér tuīná fāngmài huóyīng mìzhǐ quánshū (1691 first printing). The three together define the early-Qīng paediatric tuīná canon.
Prefaces
No preface or self-attribution survives in the hxwd recension; the work begins with the Bǎoyīng fù 保嬰賦 introductory rhapsody.
Abstract
The Yòukē tuīná mìshū opens with the Bǎoyīng fù 保嬰賦 (Rhapsody for the Protection of Infants), a versified statement of the work’s programme. The opening lines articulate the tuīná doctrine: Tuīná jiào yì 推拿較易 (paediatric massage is comparatively easier than decoction-medicine), yǐ qí shǒuzú, liánluò zàngfǔ, nèiyìng wàitōng 以其手足，聯絡臟腑，內應外通 (because the hand and foot are connected to the internal organs, internal pathology manifests externally and can be addressed there). The diagnostic scheme is gender-differentiated: nán zuǒ nǚ yòu, wéi zhǔ kàn zhī 男左女右，為主看之 (boys’ left hand and girls’ right are read primarily). The therapeutic system uses 40+ xué 穴 (acupressure points), some yīn and some yáng, with 13 fundamental shǒufǎ 手法 (hand techniques).
The work continues with a Bǎoshēng gē 保生歌 (Life-Preservation Song) — including the famously cited principle yào dé xiǎo’ér ān, cháng dài jī yǔ hán 要得小兒安，常帶飢與寒 (“to keep a child healthy, keep them slightly hungry and slightly cold”), a classic late-Qīng paediatric maxim against indulgent over-feeding and over-clothing.
The Biànzhèng lùn 變蒸論 (On Biànzhèng Transformative Fevers — the classical paediatric doctrine that children undergo a 32-day cycle of constitutional transformation, accompanied by mild fevers, with ten cycles bringing the child to zàngfǔ qì zú organ-vitality completion) follows, with cautions against treating these fevers as pathological.
The body of the work covers paediatric assessment (shìfǎ 視法 — visual assessment by facial color and form; miànbù chásè 面部察色 — Five-Organ correlation; shěnyīn 審音 — voice assessment; qiēmài 切脈 — pulse-taking via the three-position fēngqìmìng finger-vein assessment unique to paediatric medicine), and then a comprehensive disorder-by-disorder catalogue with tuīná treatment protocols, the Xiǎo’ér tuīná zǒngjué gē 小兒推拿總訣歌 (Master-Verse of Paediatric Massage), and an exhaustive shǒufǎ (hand-technique) descriptive section.
The work’s distinctive feature is its systematic rather than encyclopedic organization: it presents the doctrine as an integrated programme rather than as a collection of separate techniques. The Bǎoyīng fù + Bǎoshēng gē + Biànzhèng lùn + clinical sections + technique sections forms a unified pedagogical structure unique to this work.
CBDB has no entry for Luò Rúlóng; biographical detail is unavailable beyond the work itself.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language scholarship on this specific work located.
- For paediatric tuī-ná generally: Marnae Wilson, Paediatric Tuina (Singing Dragon, 2019), and the secondary literature surveyed under KR3ej067.
Other points of interest
The Yòukē tuīná mìshū is the most theoretically systematic of the early-Qīng paediatric tuīná manuals. Its integrated Bǎoyīng fù + clinical-system + technique-system organization became a model for later Qīng tuīná texts. The yào dé xiǎo’ér ān, cháng dài jī yǔ hán maxim, drawn from the Bǎoshēng gē, is one of the most quoted paediatric proverbs in the late-imperial Chinese medical tradition.
The Biànzhèng doctrine that the work transmits — that children undergo a 32-day developmental fever cycle with ten biàn and three zhēng across the first ~1.5 years of life — has its origin in the Sòng paediatric tradition (Qián Yǐ’s Xiǎo’ér yàozhèng zhíjué) and was the standard paediatric developmental-physiology doctrine throughout the late-imperial period.