Yǎnkē chǎnwēi 眼科闡微
An Elucidation of Subtleties in Ophthalmology by 馬化龍 Mǎ Huàlóng (zì Yúncóng 雲從, c. 1630–1705), of Yìdū 益都 (modern Qīngzhōu 青州, Shāndōng).
About the work
A four-juan early-Qīng ophthalmological compendium structured around the four-character series yuán–hēng–lì–zhēn 元亨利貞 (drawn from the opening hexagram Qián of the Yìjīng 易經). Juan 1 (yuán 元) carries a 總論 general discussion in thirty-two short essays on diagnosis, the doctrine of the wǔlún bākuò 五輪八廓 (Five-Wheels-Eight-Quadrants) topology of the eye, the distinction of “deficiency” and “repletion” types of redness and pain, and the principles governing the use of “cooling” drugs. Juan 2 (hēng 亨) treats elderly eye disorders and internal-organ-rooted blindness, much of it transmitted from a Jiāngzuǒ 江左 colleague named 張熊飛 Zhāng Xióngfēi from whom Mǎ received a separate manuscript on geriatric ophthalmology. Juan 3 (lì 利) presents an extensive formulary of decoctions, powders, eye-drops and the elaborate fired-mineral preparations (gānshí 甘石, qiūshí 秋石, xuánmíng fěn 玄明粉) characteristic of the late-imperial Sūnzhēnrén 孫真人 Mìjué 秘訣 ophthalmology lineage. Juan 4 (zhēn 貞) is a substantial pediatric ophthalmology supplement, including a treatise on post-smallpox eye complications (dòuhòu mùzhèng 痘後目症) citing 傅仁宇 (cf. KR3em010 Shěnshì yáohán) and 翟玉華 Zhái Yùhuá.
Prefaces
The work opens with a 跋 bá (postface) by 張瑋 Zhāng Wěi of Guānzhōng 關中, dated guǐwèi 癸未 mèngchūn (early spring 1703), praising Mǎ Yúncóng as “originally a Confucian scholar, who in middle age obtained the shénfāng 神方 [divine prescriptions] of Sūnzhēnrén 孫思邈 and thereby achieved fame in ophthalmology across the eastern seaboard, restoring the sight of countless patients over fifty years.” Zhāng Wěi recounts his own multi-year course of treatment under Mǎ — a typical patient-as-witness preface — and contrasts Mǎ’s slow, root-treating method with the quick-fix charlatanry of common eye doctors. Mǎ’s own programmatic remark closes juan 1: “The above thirty-two sections have been worked out from the Sūnzhēnrén Mìjué 孫真人秘訣 over fifty years of clinical experience, set down here as common-language essays (súlùn 俗論) to guide the misled, so that patients may judge their own use of medicines, and together climb into the realm of brightness — not betraying the meaning by which the Zhēnrén transmitted these prescriptions.” A separately preserved preface by 王用汲 Wáng Yòngjí (zì Chángrú 長孺) of Huátíng 華亭 is dated Kāngxī xīnsì 康熙辛巳 (1701), recording how Mǎ as a youth himself suffered eye disease, received the Sūnzhēnrén Yǎnkē mìjué from a Wáng Fùwǎn 王孚萬 of Jiāngzuǒ, treated himself successfully, and turned his Confucian energies to ophthalmic practice.
Abstract
The dating is anchored: Wáng Yòngjí’s preface dates the manuscript to 1701, Zhāng Wěi’s postface to 1703, with publication shortly thereafter (the standard reference date is 1704, Kāngxī 43, when the woodblock-printing was completed at the expense of Mǎ’s brother-in-law 王懋功 Wáng Màogōng — named in the postface). The Kanripo meta does not record dynasty or author; both are restored here from the prefatorial evidence and confirmed against modern reference works. The catalog meta’s silence on the author is corrected: the work is by Mǎ Huàlóng 馬化龍, zì Yúncóng 雲從, of Yìdū 益都 (Shāndōng), c. 1630–1705 — a Confucian who turned to medicine after his own affliction. The zì “Yúncóng” appears throughout the postface in place of his míng, a common late-imperial convention.
Doctrinally Mǎ is conservative-eclectic. He follows the wǔlún 五輪 / bākuò 八廓 anatomical taxonomy inherited from the KR3em003 Mìchuán yǎnkē Lóngmù lùn tradition (the “Lóngshù” 龍樹 / Nāgārjuna lineage) and the pseudo-Sūn-Sī-miǎo KR3em011 Yínhǎi jīngwēi, but argues against indiscriminate “cooling” therapy, ascribing many failures to premature use of hánliáng 寒涼 drugs that “freeze the cloud-shades onto the eye.” His signature contribution is the doctrine that all eye disease originates in the liver and lung, that “the cloud-shades (yúnyì 雲翳) on the white and black of the eye are merely the apex; their root grows on the liver and lung themselves” — and that surgical gōugē 鉤割 (hooking-and-cutting) is therefore futile until the underlying zàng are addressed. His preferred regimens are the herbal-decoction Qiānghuó shèngfēng tāng 羌活勝風湯, the zhūgānfǔ 豬肝脯 pork-liver delivery vehicle, and a tightly controlled set of point-applied powders (Báiyù dìng 白玉錠, Sǎowù dān 掃霧丹, Zhìbǎo dān 至寶丹, Yuánlíng dān 元靈丹, Sàibǎo dān 賽寶丹) the recipes for which appear in juan 3.
The text is transmitted here via the jicheng.tw 漢學文典 digital corpus and survives in multiple Qīng and Republican-era xylographic editions. It is the principal independent ophthalmological treatise of the early Qīng and is regularly cited together with 傅仁宇 Shěnshì yáohán (KR3em010) and 黃庭鏡 Huáng Tíngjìng’s Mùjīng dàchéng (KR3em006) as one of the three pillars of the late-imperial ophthalmological canon.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation or monographic study located.
- Modern Chinese editions are widely available; the recent annotated edition by Lǐ Jīngwěi 李經緯 and Lín Zhāogēng 林昭庚 (eds.), Zhōngyī yǎnkē míngzhù jíchéng 中醫眼科名著集成 (Beijing: Huaxia, 1997), includes a punctuated and annotated text.
- For the lineage context see the entry on Mǎ Huàlóng in Zhōngguó yījí dàcídiǎn 中國醫籍大辭典 (Shanghai: SSTP, 2002), and the section on early Qīng ophthalmology in Lǐ Jīngwěi 李經緯, Zhōngyī shǐ 中醫史 (Haikou: Hǎinán, 2007).
Other points of interest
Mǎ’s repeated insistence that the work issues from “the Mìjué of Sūnzhēnrén” — a separate, never-printed-in-his-lifetime ophthalmological prescription book that he claims to have received from a certain Wáng Fùwǎn — places Yǎnkē chǎnwēi in self-conscious relation to the pseudepigraphic Sūn Sīmiǎo eye-medicine corpus (cf. KR3em011 Yínhǎi jīngwēi). Mǎ presents his own four juan as the “common-language” elucidation (chǎnwēi, “elucidating the subtle”) of an esoteric Sūn Sīmiǎo master-text that he himself, rather coyly, declines to print in full. The 跋 ends with the rationale that publication is undertaken by the author’s brother-in-law 王懋功 Wáng Màogōng, “who joyfully provided silver from his purse to print it widely for the empire, that those who diagnose their own disease may print their own prescriptions and immediately obtain marvellous effects” — a striking statement of early-Qīng book-as-public-health ideology.