Jiěwéi yuánsǒu 解圍元藪
A Marsh of Original Sources for Lifting the Siege [of Leprosy] by 沈之問 (Shěn Zhīwèn, zì Liángzhāi 良齋, fl. Jiājìng, 明)
About the work
A four-juǎn Míng monograph on fēng 風 / lài 癩 — the family of chronic skin-and-nerve disorders that includes what later medicine calls leprosy (máfēng 麻風 / dàfēng 大風) — and one of the earliest dedicated Chinese treatises on this disease cluster. Composed in the Jiājìng reign (1522–1566), at a date that cannot be more tightly pinned from internal evidence. Together with Xuē Jǐ’s KR3ek038 Lìyáng jīyào (1554), it is one of the two principal Míng monographs on leprosy; together they constitute the central documentary corpus for Angela Leung’s reconstruction of the Ming-period Chinese reconceptualisation of lài / dàfēng / máfēng as a transmissible disease.
Abstract
There is no separate _000.txt (no front-matter preface file) in the Kanripo digitisation; the text opens with juǎn 1 Fēnglài lùn 風癩論, an opening discourse that functions as a preface. Shěn surveys the Chinese textual tradition on fēng and lài from the Língshū and Sùwèn, through Cháo Yuánfāng’s 巢元方 Zhū bìng yuánhòu lùn 諸病源候論, to the TángSòng lineage. He situates fēng and lài on a continuum: nèizhù yuē fēng, wàizhuó yuē lì 內駐曰風，外著曰癘 — “when [the pathogen] is fixed within, we call it fēng; when it manifests outwardly, lì”.
The four juǎn divide as follows: theory and etiology (transmission via fēngshuǐ yīnyáng 風水陰陽, lineage / contact transmission yuánliú chuánrǎn 源流傳染, miasmic qìhuì gǔzhù 氣穢蠱疰, faulty self-care bǎoyǎng shīdù 保養失度, and emotional-stagnation gǎnmào jīyù 感冒積鬱); a taxonomy of 36 fēng across the six visceral systems — dà máfēng 大麻風, shépí fēng 蛇皮風, tuōgēn fēng 脫跟風, yúlín fēng 魚鱗風, xiémèi fēng 邪魅風, xuè fēng 血風 attributed to the xīn jīng 心經; ézhǎng fēng 鵝掌風, gǔchuí fēng 鼓槌風, xuèbì fēng 血痹風, cígāo fēng 糍糕風, tòng fēng 痛風, diān fēng 癲風 to the gān jīng 肝經; and parallel sets for pí, fèi, shèn, wèi; and finally concrete therapeutic formulae.
Shěn’s distinctive contribution is his contagion theory and his detailed accounts of intra-family transmission — both inherited (via fùmǔ jīngxuè 父母精血, parental essence-blood) and contact (via qìhuì 氣穢, miasmic exhalations). The text is cited extensively in Angela Leung’s Leprosy in China (2009) as a key Míng witness to the Chinese conceptual rewriting of leprosy into a transmissible disease with both heritable and contact-based routes. The composition window adopted here (1522–1566) brackets the Jiājìng reign — internal evidence does not permit tighter dating.
Shěn Zhīwèn’s lifedates are not documented; he is otherwise unknown to the standard bibliographies. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
- Leung, Angela Ki Che. Leprosy in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009 — the standard English-language treatment; Jiě-wéi yuán-sǒu is one of her central Míng sources.
- Modern Chinese punctuated editions in 中國醫學大成 and 中醫古籍 series.
- Chinese-language histories of medicine on Míng dermatology / contagion.
Other points of interest
Shěn’s 36-fēng taxonomy organised by viscera channel is a distinctive Míng systematisation that informs the later KR3ek041 Fēngmén quánshū of Xiāo Xiǎotíng (Qīng) and the Edo Japanese Bairai shinsho of 片倉元周 KR3ek048. The work is a key early-modern conceptual link between Chinese, Japanese, and (via Republican-era translation) Western medical thinking on leprosy.