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 Táng-Sòng 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
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- 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.