Yángyī dàquán 瘍醫大全
Complete Compendium of Ulcer Medicine by 顧世澄 (Gù Shìchéng, also Gù Chéng 顧澄; zì Liànjiāng 練江; hào Jìngzhāi 靜齋, fl. Qiánlóng, 清) — third-generation hereditary physician of Wúhú 蕪湖 (Ānhuī), practising in Yángzhōu 揚州.
About the work
A forty-juǎn surgical encyclopedia, the most comprehensive single Qīng wàikē reference and the largest pre-modern Chinese surgical compendium overall. Compilation completed in Qiánlóng 25 (1760), additional prefaces added in 1762 and 1773 (the printing date). Gù was the third generation of a hereditary medical family, preserving his grandfather Nínghuá 寧華’s and father Qīngyán 青岩’s secret prescriptions alongside his own and an exhaustive citation of the prior surgical literature. The work was conceived as a wàikē counterpart to the imperial KR3ek009 Yīzōng jīnjiàn (1742) and was financially sponsored by fellow Huái-region physicians.
Abstract
Three prefaces frame the work in the Kanripo digitisation: that of Wāng Lìdé 汪立德 (1773), the author’s own zìxù dated Qiánlóng yǐmào (1760), and that of Qiáo Guāngliè 喬光烈 (1762), plus a fifteen-item fánlì 凡例. Gù explicitly describes the work as inspired by the imperial Yīzōng jīnjiàn compilation effort and conceived as a defining wàikē synthesis bridging nèijīng doctrinal foundations, pulse-doctrine, channel topography, and topographically organised surgical cases.
The forty juǎn divide as follows: juǎn 1–7, classical theory, pulses, channels, principles of inner pattern; juǎn 8–35, topographically ordered ailments from crown to sole, each with woodcut illustration, classical formula, master commentary, and family secret recipes; juǎn 36–40, paediatric and obstetric surgery, including a smallpox section drawn from Niè Jiǔwú 聶九吾 and Zhū Chúnhè 朱純嘏, trauma (knife / fire / falls), animal bites and toxic ingestions, with a closing Hán mén 寒門 (cold-damage gateway) capsule for emergency reference. Every lesion is illustrated, making the work the largest single-author illustrated Chinese surgical compendium.
The methodological centre of the work is its systematic completion of the nèiwài jiānzhì programme inaugurated by Chén Zìmíng’s KR3ek012 Wàikē jīngyào (1263), codified by Chén Shígōng’s KR3ek014 Wàikē zhèngzōng (1617), and given imperial sanction in the Yīzōng jīnjiàn (1742). Where Chén Shígōng pulled the wàikē tradition toward operative surgery and Wáng Hóngxù’s KR3ek017 Quánshēng jí (1740) pulled it sharply toward internal tonification, Gù Shìchéng’s synthesis sits comprehensively in the middle. The Yángyī dàquán remained the standard Qīng wàikē desk reference into the Republican period.
Gù’s lifedates are not documented; he speaks of forty-plus years of practice in his 1760 preface, suggesting birth in the early 18th century.
Translations and research
- 葉川 ed., 《瘍醫大全》, 人民衛生出版社, 1987 (repr. 1994) — the standard punctuated edition.
- Annotated edition by 凌一揆 et al., 學苑出版社.
- 中華典藏 and ctext.org digital editions.
- No full Western-language translation located. Brief treatment in Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine, Routledge 2011.
Other points of interest
The work has been valued by historians of Chinese surgical iconography for its over one thousand woodcut lesion illustrations — among the largest single illustrated corpora in pre-modern Chinese medicine.