Fēngmén quánshū 瘋門全書
Complete Book of the Leprosy Gateway by 肖曉亭 (Xiāo Xiǎotíng — also written 蕭曉亭; fl. late Qiánlóng – early Dàoguāng, 清) — Lúlíng 廬陵 (Jíān, Jiāngxī) stipendiary student (lǐn shàn shēng 廩膳生).
About the work
One of the most fully developed Qīng wàikē monographs on máfēng 麻瘋 / dà fēng 大瘋 / lì 癘 (conventionally translated “leprosy” but encompassing the wider category of skin-disfiguring chronic disease). Compiled by Xiāo Xiǎotíng in the late Qiánlóng – early Dàoguāng period; the text was completed and partially circulated by Xiāo before his death, then formally cut for print under the supervision of Liú Quánshí 劉全石 of Fēnyí 分宜 and edited by Hé Shíqīng 何石卿 of Gāoyào 高要, with a Dàoguāng 25 (1845) re-cut by the Jìngyètáng 敬業堂. The standard reference date for the work is 1796 (initial compilation) with print transmission in 1845; the composition window adopted here brackets these.
Abstract
The Kanripo digitisation preserves the entire short treatise in a single _000.txt; the file is large and could not be fully read in research, so the preface and self-statement of the author are not directly cited here.
The work is a specialised monograph on máfēng / dàfēng / lì and systematically distinguishes thirty-six varieties of fēng with differential diagnosis along the axes biǎo / lǐ / xū / shí / hán / rè 表裡虛實寒熱, identification of channels and zones, and an aetiological discussion grounded in geographic miasma (Southeast China), dampness-heat, and contact transmission. The work supplies both decoctions and external / topical formulae. Methodologically, Xiāo criticises both purgative-style 中醫 treatment and Western surgical excision as ineffective against deep-seated cases, advocating patient internal regulation as the central strategy. The text is one of the principal sources for Angela Leung’s reconstruction of Chinese leprosy theory in the late imperial period.
Xiāo Xiǎotíng’s lifedates are unknown; he flourished from late Qiánlóng to early Dàoguāng (active c. 1796–1845). Not in CBDB; the catalog meta gives only his zì-form. Of Lúlíng 廬陵 (Jíān 吉安, Jiāngxī), a lǐn shàn shēng 廩膳生 (stipendiary student of the local xuégōng 學宮). Hinrichs & Barnes 2013 (ch. 5) places this within the late-imperial “marginal” specialist-doctor tradition that elaborated contagion theory for máfēng / Guǎngdōng chuāng 廣東瘡 from the 16th century onward.
Translations and research
- Leung, Angela Ki Che. Leprosy in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009 — discusses Xiāo’s text in detail.
- Included in 《珍本醫書集成》.
- Modern punctuated editions in PRC TCM-classics series.
- Hinrichs, T. J. and Linda L. Barnes, eds. Chinese Medicine and Healing, Harvard 2013, pp. 156–157 — covers the late-imperial contagion-theory milieu in which this work participates.
Other points of interest
The 36-fēng taxonomy of Fēngmén quánshū is the Qīng-period elaboration of the same six-viscera schema that Shěn Zhīwèn had applied to leprosy in his Jiā-jìng-period KR3ek035 Jiěwéi yuánsǒu; Xiāo’s contribution is to add Qīng clinical detail and an explicit anti-Western-surgery stance, marking the late-imperial moment when Chinese leprosy treatment first began to define itself in opposition to Western methods. Compare also KR3ek048 Bairai shinsho of 片倉元周 Katakura Genshū (1786–1787), the Edo Japanese parallel that combines leprosy and syphilis with three Dutch (蘭) surgical plaster recipes — a cross-cultural map of late-18th- and early-19th-c. East Asian responses to the same disease cluster.
Links
- (none located beyond modern reprints)
- Kanseki DB
- 瘋門全書