Wàikē quánshēng jí 外科全生集
Collection on Preserving Life through External Medicine by 王洪緒 (Wáng Hóngxù, míng Wéidé 維德, hào Línwū sànrén 林屋散人 / Línwū shānrén 林屋山人 / Dìngdìngzǐ 定定子, c. 1669 – c. 1749); with 馬培之 (Mǎ Péizhī, 1820–1903) commentary in the standard late-Qīng recension.
About the work
A polemical four-juǎn surgical manual (originally one juǎn, expanded by Mǎ Péizhī in 1883 to four) — and the founding text of the so-called 全生派 quánshēng pài surgical school. Self-prefaced in Qiánlóng 5 (1740), when Wáng was 72 suì. The work opposes the operative-surgical lineage of Chén Shígōng KR3ek014 Wàikē zhèngzōng (1617) by reducing the entire surgical pathology to a single yīnyáng differential — red = yōng 癰 = excess heat; white = jū 疽 = deficiency cold — and arguing that all surgical lesions can be resolved by internal therapeutics keyed to that distinction, without recourse to knife, needle, cautery, or corrosive shēngdān / jiàngdān. Wáng’s signature formulae — Yánghé tāng 陽和湯, Xīhuáng wán 犀黃丸, Xǐngxiāo wán 醒消丸, Xiǎojīn dān 小金丹, Zǐlóng wán 子龍丸 — remain core prescriptions of Chinese surgical practice to this day.
Abstract
Six paratextual items in _000.txt: (1) Pān Wěi 潘霨 (Wúxiàn) postscript praising the work’s clarity; (2) Huáng Hóng 黃鋐 (zì Zǐrén 子仁) 1841 (Dàoguāng xīnchǒu) preface, recounting how following the book cured his granddaughter’s vertebral abscess; (3) Wáng Hào 王浩 (Jīngmén) 1841 preface on textual collation, listing variant readings between the Qín Lìfú and Huáng Zǐrén copies; (4) Tāng Jìshàng 湯紀尚 1883 (Guāngxù 9) preface introducing the 馬培之 commentary; (5) Wú Héng 吳恆 (zì Zhòngyīng 仲英) 1883 second preface explaining how Mǎ Péizhī, summoned to court in 1876, came to annotate the book; (6) Wáng’s own 自序 (1740) with a 12-item fánlì 凡例, plus Wú Héng’s chóngdìng fánlì of 1883.
Wáng’s central polemical claim is stated programmatically in the fánlì: yōngjū wú sǐ zhèng 癰疽無死症 — “there is no fatal case of yōngjū if properly distinguished.” Pulse-diagnosis is dispensable, since colour alone reveals the yīnyáng polarity; thereafter the treatment is straightforward: yánghé tāng for yin abscesses, xīhuáng wán for yang abscesses, and so on. The work proscribes routine use of knife, needle, cautery, and corrosive preparations (except for dīng 疔, where Wáng concedes that lancing may be required). Disease coverage includes the full standard surgical inventory plus throat disease, hemorrhoids, scrofula, and jiédú 結毒 (the venereal-ulcer / tertiary-syphilis cluster).
The 1740 editio princeps in one juǎn is extant in the Beijing TCM University library; the four-juǎn recension transmitted in the Kanripo digitisation is the 1883 reorganisation by Mǎ Péizhī (then the leading Mènghé physician, cf. KR3ek008), whose commentary supplied a long-overdue corrective to Wáng’s neglect of pulse-diagnosis and constitutional differentials. The Líng Línwū / Wú Héngróng debate over whether pulse-diagnosis is dispensable in surgery is the central methodological controversy provoked by this text.
The catalog meta lists Wáng’s dynasty as 清; CBDB row 280941 (apparent match in name but listed as Míng) is not the same person. Conventional lifedates 1669–1749 are widely cited but rest on internal evidence (the 1740 preface gives his age as 72 suì); birth therefore c. 1669, with death after the 1740 preface but before the next generation of his students. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
- 史宇广 ed., 《外科證治全生集》, 中國中醫藥, Beijing 1983 — annotated edition with Mǎ Péi-zhī’s commentary.
- 嚴洪臣 et al., 《外科全生集辨注》, Beijing 1983.
- 上海科技出版社, 1959 (repr.) — standard punctuated edition.
- Scheid, Volker. Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006, 2007 — places the quán-shēng pài in the Mèng-hé / Wú-mén dialectic.
- Hanson, Marta. Speaking of Epidemics, 2011 — brief references to the quán-shēng yīn-yáng colour scheme.
- 《全國中醫外科教材》 (1950s onward) canonised Wáng’s formulae as the core of modern PRC TCM surgery.
- No standalone Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
The 1740 editio princeps was one juǎn; later editions are continually re-organised. The Kanripo digitisation follows the 1883 MǎPéizhī recension in 4 juǎn. Compare KR3ek001 Wàikē zhèngzhì quánshū (1831), which presents itself as a regional Sìchuān expansion of the Quánshēng jí doctrine, and KR3ek010 Wàikē yījìng (1883), a contemporary late-Qīng quánshēng pài synthesis from Jiāngyīn.