Tánlì fǎmén 痰癧法門
A Dharma-Gate to Phlegm-Node Disorders by 李子毅 (Lǐ Zǐyì, míng Qìngshēn 慶申, fl. late Qīng – Republican, of Chǔběi 楚北)
About the work
A specialised Republican-era treatise on tánlì 痰癧 (phlegm-node disorders, neck and axillary masses, scrofulous lumps), compiled by Lǐ Zǐyì from a three-generation family lineage and dated in his own preface to Mínguó 7, fourth month, eleventh day = 11 April 1918. The work documents both a household-medical jiāchuán 家傳 tradition and a clinical encounter with early-Republican biomedical hygiene; its author writes with explicit awareness of the contemporary epidemiological apparatus (“各國有醫療警察”). One of the very few Republican-era wàikē monographs to bridge a regional family-lineage practice with print culture.
Abstract
The zìxù 自序 dated Mínguó 7 (1918) tells the family transmission story: Lǐ’s great-grandfather Yuǎnfēnggōng 遠峰公 learned the scrofula / phlegm-node treatment from a Húnán physician while travelling in that province; the technique passed through three generations (grandfather → father Yúquángōng 魚泉公 → Lǐ himself). After his father’s death in Guāngxù bǐngxū (1886), his grandmother charged him to perpetuate the family practice. Lǐ laments that countless sufferers die untreated or become consumptive (láozhài 癆瘵) for lack of care, and offers the family method publicly as a fāngbiàn fǎmén 方便法門 (a Buddhist-coloured term for an “expedient gateway”) — hence the title. He acknowledges that secondary literature should improve on his work.
The text distinguishes six varieties of phlegm-node disorder — fēng tán 風痰, rè tán 熱痰, qì tán 氣痰, luǒlì 瘰癧, jīn lì 筋癧, and tán lì 痰癧 — each with separate etiology and treatment. The distinctive therapeutic feature is a moxa / dēnghuǒ 燈火 protocol applying small oil-soaked rush burns to specified acupoints (hégǔ 合谷, zhǒubì 肘臂, jiāntóu 肩頭, jiáchē 頰車, yìfēng 翳風 above; nèitíng 內庭, xiàngǔ 陷谷, shāngqiū 商邱, shēnmài 申脈, xīyǎn 膝眼, wěizhōng 委中, shǔxī 鼠鼷 below) supplemented by oral decoctions. The work closes with a fù 附 on the Republican-era epidemic of yángméi chuāng 楊梅瘡 (syphilis) treated with a tǔfúlíng 土茯苓-based formula, and a fù hóué jié jué 附喉蛾捷訣 on throat-tonsil emergencies. Lǐ’s clinical case histories are unusually candid: he records patient noncompliance and treatment failures alongside successes.
Lǐ Qìngshēn (zì Zǐyì), of Chǔběi Zhǎnshuǐ 楚北斬水 (northern Húběi), reports being orphaned of his father in 1886; given the work’s 1918 date, his birth must have been in the early 1870s (estimated). Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
- Reprinted in 《中國醫學大成》 series (Cáo Bǐng-zhāng 曹炳章 ed., 1936).
- Discussed briefly in studies of Republican-era Chinese medicine and in Angela Ki Che Leung’s general work on contagion.
- No substantial Western-language monographic study located.
Other points of interest
The text is a rare documentary witness to the Republican-era persistence of a household jiāchuán surgical specialty in regional Húběi, the kind of lineage-transmission knowledge that the new TCM colleges of the same period (cf. KR3ek034) were beginning to displace. Lǐ’s awareness of “yīliáo jǐngchá 醫療警察” (Western-style medical police / hygiene inspectors) is itself an unusual datum for the contemporary medical-modernity discourse.
Links
- (none located beyond reprint editions)
- Kanseki DB
- 痰癧法門