Wàikē zhèngzhì quánshū 外科證治全書
Complete Book on the Diagnosis and Treatment of External Medicine by 許克昌 (Xǔ Kèchāng, zì Lúnshēng 倫聲, fl. late Qiánlóng – Dàoguāng, 清) — author/compiler; building on the unfinished draft of 畢法 (Bì Fǎ, zì Cānglín 蒼霖, d. before 1808).
About the work
A five-juǎn late-Qīng surgical synthesis assembled by Xǔ Kèchāng — a Hézhōu 和州 National-Academy student (國學生) and lifelong practitioner — out of more than twenty years of personal clinical experience combined with the unfinished two-juǎn draft (《外科證治》) left by his friend Bì Cānglín, who died young. First printed in Dàoguāng 11 (1831) at the urging of the salt-tax commissioner Chéng Huáijǐng 程懷璟; reprinted by 屠仁守 in Tóngzhì 4 (1865) at Chéngdū and again in Tóngzhì 6 (1867) by Yì Chóngjiē 易崇階. The work is the most explicit late-Qīng popularisation of the Wáng Hóngxù 全生派 yīn / yáng surgical doctrine (cf. KR3ek017 Wàikē quánshēng jí), supplemented with new sections on internal causes, strange diseases, gǔ-poisoning and antidotes.
Abstract
Xǔ’s own preface (zì jì 自記) gives the genealogy of the work: he had studied with the Dōngtái physician Zhōu Shūxuān 周舒軒 for over a decade, edited Zhèng Xībīn’s 鄭西賓 Dòuzhèng bìdú 痘證必讀, and reconstructed Gěng Rénzhāi’s 耿仁齋 Mákē míngjìng 麻科明鏡 from a damaged copy. He then took up Bì Cānglín’s unfinished surgical manuscript and, after twenty-odd years of clinical testing, expanded it into a five-juǎn whole. Juǎn 1–3 catalogue ailments site-by-site from head to feet; juǎn 4 covers conditions with no fixed location, internal-causes (nèijǐng, wàiyīn), strange diseases (qízhèng), gǔ-poisoning (gǔzhèng), and poisonings (zhòngdú) with first-aid prescriptions; juǎn 5 gathers general treatment methods. The methodological centre of gravity is the quánshēng yīnyáng differential between yōng 癰 (yang, hot, painful, surface) and jū 疽 (yin, cold, hard, deep) inherited from Wáng Hóngxù’s Wàikē quánshēng jí (1740); Xǔ extends Wáng’s relatively narrow framework by integrating site-based topical knowledge.
A signature feature is Xǔ’s explicit polemic against the routine use of shēngjiàng yào 升降藥 (caustic salt-mercury preparations used by ordinary surgeons to extract pus). He treats these as “tyrannic medicines” (bà jì 霸劑) which damage already-depleted qì and blood in chronic cases, and recommends his milder píngān bǐng 平安餅 and zhēntóu sǎn 針頭散 (for removing necrotic tissue) together with xiàngpí sǎn 象皮散 and liùhé sǎn 六和散 (for regrowth) — restating, in clinical terms, the quánshēng school’s preference for bǔ qìxuè over surgical violence. The Tóngzhì-period 重刻凡例 also stresses the Sìchuān regional reception: at Chéngdū “Wáng’s Quánshēng jí is taken as the standard text on external medicine — this book is more comprehensive than the Quánshēng jí, and surpasses it where the Quánshēng jí is silent.”
The composition window adopted here (1808 — twenty-some years before the 1831 editio princeps — to 1831) reflects Xǔ’s own statement that he tested the methods “for twenty-odd years” before publication.
Translations and research
- 1961 punctuated edition: 《外科證治全書》, 人民衛生出版社.
- No standalone Western-language translation or monographic study located.
Other points of interest
The text reproduces a number of folk-medical recipes (treatments for snake-bite, mad-dog bite, opium overdose, food poisoning, etc.) under zhòngdú in juǎn 4 — a non-trivial corpus of early-19th-century lay therapeutics worth attention from social historians of late-imperial medicine.