Jiēgǔ shǒufǎ 接骨手法
Bone-Setting Manual Manipulations Anonymous (transmitted text).
About the work
A short verse-form (七言歌訣) traumatology manual on the manual reduction of dislocations and fractures, transmitted anonymously and preserved as a single brief volume (ca. 4,000 characters) in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū 海外回流中醫善本古籍叢書 (漢學文典) collection. The text steps systematically through the principal joints — shoulder, mid-arm, wrist, suǒzǐgǔ 鎖子骨 (clavicle), bèiliáng gǔ 背梁骨 (vertebrae), ribs, hip (túnbì gǔ 臀髀骨), knee, ankle, jaw (xiàhái 下頦) — and describes the position of the operator and assistants, the direction of pull, and the diagnostic test for successful reduction (the joint “snaps quietly into place,” jīrán shēng 嘰然聲). It is one of the bare-bones, hands-on, lineage-transmitted manuals that defined late-imperial folk zhènggǔ practice.
Prefaces
There is no formal preface. The closing colophon-couplet, however, provides the only internal historical clue: “this formula has been transmitted now for over a hundred years; the Wōkòu raiders burned [the books] to ash, leaving no complete edition” (此訣傳來百有年，倭寇燒燼無遺編); the author “today briefly sets down those tricks I have personally verified — though they are in vulgar speech they are truly heart-transmitted; if posterity will train in them generation after generation, both the saving of others and one’s own livelihood will be secured” (吾今略舉其驗過，雖為俚語實心傳; 若使後人能世習，濟人利己兩周全). This places the redaction after the major Jiājìng-period Wōkòu 倭寇 (Japanese-pirate) coastal raids of the 1550s–1560s and identifies the composition as a deliberate post-disaster reconstruction of an older Jiāngnán bone-setting tradition.
Abstract
The colophon’s reference to Wōkòu raids that destroyed earlier copies establishes a terminus a quo of approximately the mid-sixteenth century; the “transmitted for over a hundred years” clause suggests a lineage origin still earlier, but the received recension’s terminus ante quem cannot be more closely fixed than the late-Qīng cut-off of the 漢學文典 source-recensions. The date bracket adopted here (1550 — late Wōkòu disturbances — to 1800) is conservative; specialists in late-imperial military medicine may well wish to tighten it.
Structurally the work is entirely in seven-character verse, designed for memorisation by lay practitioners working without book-access. It opens with the general principle (“In bone-setting, the manipulations come out of the hands; one must first know whether the dislocation is a ‘come-out-of-socket’ (出臼) or a ‘broken-bone’ (折骨)” 接骨一道手中出，須看出臼與折骨), then walks joint-by-joint through:
- Shoulder dislocation — patient kneels straddle-fashion against the operator; one hand pulls the lower arm, the other pushes the displaced humerus down into the socket; if this fails, splint with bamboo tubes top and bottom and “draw down with the strength of an archer drawing a bow.”
- Mid-arm dislocation — compare against the sound arm; the operator holds the upper arm while the assistant pulls the forearm straight, with a slight inward rotation.
- Wrist — diagnose by the position of the prominent gāogǔ 高骨 (radial styloid).
- Clavicle (suǒzǐgǔ 鎖子骨) — has no socket, so cannot be re-seated; press flat, pad with cotton, wrap mulberry-bark dressings.
- Vertebrae — patient sits on the floor, a cloth is passed under the chest and the body is suspended; the operator palpates and presses the spine flat.
- Ribs — palpate to find the displaced segment, listen for the snap, dress with cotton.
- Hip — diagnose by symmetry when the patient sits on a level surface.
- Knee — special procedures for the patella.
- Jaw (xiàhái 下頦) — operator stands behind the patient, supports the head, inserts the thumbs into the patient’s mouth onto the lower molars, and pulls down-and-up; if the joint goes back in with the characteristic jīrán shēng 嘰然聲 “do not let go for a moment until you have confirmed it has truly seated.”
The text contains essentially no internal-medication content — it is purely a shǒufǎ (manual-manipulation) manual, complemented in practice by the parallel powdered-drug, dressing, and decoction texts of the same tradition (cf. KR3el001, KR3el003). It is one of the principal surviving witnesses to the pre-Yīzōng jīnjiàn folk bone-setting verse-handbook tradition that the imperial Zhènggǔ xīnfǎ yàozhǐ (KR3el015) later canonised in expanded form.
Translations and research
- No standalone Western-language translation or monographic study located.
- Background on the folk bone-setting verse-manual tradition: Hinrichs and Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard, 2013), pp. 326–328.
- Modern reprint: included in 《海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書》 (北京：人民衛生出版社, 2003 ff.), the principal vehicle through which this and several other anonymous shāngkē manuscripts have re-entered Chinese-language circulation.
Other points of interest
The text’s bone-setting verse on the jaw dislocation — the operator’s thumbs in the patient’s mouth, the down-and-then-up rotation — is essentially identical to the “Hippocratic” technique standard in modern orthopaedic emergency practice; it is among the oldest east-Asian written attestations of the manoeuvre.