Yóushì hóuzhèng zhǐnán 尤氏喉症指南
Mr. Yóu’s Guide to Throat Disorders by 尤仲仁 Yóu Zhòngrén (Míng dynasty).
About the work
A one-juǎn Míng-period clinical compendium of throat diseases (hóuzhèng 喉症) and the foundational text of the Yóu-family throat-discipline of Sūzhōu, predecessor to and source-text of the better-known KR3em022 Yóushì hóukē mìshū 尤氏喉科秘書 by Yóu Zhòngrén’s descendant 尤乘 Yóu Chéng (hào Shēngzhōu 生洲, fl. Kāngxī era). The book is organised as an integrated triad of diagnostic theory (the canonical doctrine that the gullet 咽 belongs to the stomach on the left and the throat 喉 to the lung on the right, traversed by all twelve channels, with disease arising from concurrence of fēng, hán, shǔ, shī, zào, huǒ and yīnxū / shírè 陰虛 / 實熱 syndromic forms), nosology (around forty named throat-, mouth-, tongue-, and tooth-conditions: hóubì 喉痹, qiāngshí yǎhóu 嗆食啞喉, nèiwài hóuyōng 內外喉癰, shéjūn 舌菌, yádīng 牙疔, yáxuǎn 牙癬, mǎyá 馬牙, liánzhūé 連珠蛾, shíé 石蛾, suǒhóufēng 鎖喉風, báichánhóufēng 白纏喉風, qiānsī chánhóufēng 牽絲纏喉風, hóujūn 喉菌, hóuliú 喉瘤, hóuxuǎn 喉癬, hóuyōng 喉癰, shàngè yōng 上齶癰, chuīkǒu hóufēng 吹口喉風, hóudīng 喉疔, zǒumǎ yágān 走馬牙疳, jiǎnchún 繭唇, etc.), and a substantial powder/insufflation-and-decoction formulary (the zhēnjìn yào 真禁藥 / zhūhuángsǎn 珠黃散 / bāwèi kǒugān dān 八味口疳丹 / yùdān 玉丹 / jīndān 金丹 / Lóngxī sǎn 龍溪散 / yùyè shàngqīng wán 玉液上清丸, plus the diagnostic-method “Zhǔfāng” 主方 for each affected channel). The work culminates in a series of mnemonic gējué 歌訣 verse-summaries — for symptom presentation, treatment principle, and the channel-by-channel decoction formularies — that became standard pedagogical material in the Yóu-school’s transmission.
Prefaces
The recension transmits no separate preface; the text begins without paratextual front-matter. The body of the work opens directly with the canonical Yānhóu dàgāng 咽喉大綱 doctrinal preamble (the gullet-on-the-left / throat-on-the-right anatomy and the yīyīn yīyáng jié wèi hóubì dictum from the Sùwèn yīnyáng biélùn 陰陽別論) and proceeds through the Yānshé liǎngjīng 咽舌兩經 and Kànzhèng fánlì 看症凡例 organisational sections before reaching the disease catalogue.
Abstract
Yóu Zhòngrén 尤仲仁 has no entry in the CBDB and is otherwise undocumented in the standard biographical reference works; he is known only by the title-line ascription on this work and by the explicit acknowledgement of 尤乘 Yóu Chéng (fl. Kāngxī era, late 17th c.) — the author of the better-known KR3em022 Yóushì hóukē mìshū 尤氏喉科秘書 — that his own throat-discipline derives by family transmission from this ancestral compendium. Yóu Chéng was a disciple of the Sūzhōu physician 李中梓 Lǐ Zhōngzǐ (1588–1655) and active in the 1660s–1690s, which places the family-transmission date of the Yóushì hóuzhèng zhǐnán one or two generations before Yóu Chéng — i.e. in the late Míng. The defensible composition bracket is therefore 1500–1644 (late-Míng); a tighter sixteenth-to-early-seventeenth-century date would also be plausible.
The book’s principal substantive features are: (i) the integration of the xiánshēyānhóu 咽喉 channel anatomy with the twelve-channel pulse-and-presentation diagnostic logic that becomes standard in late-Míng / Qīng throat-medicine; (ii) the systematic separation of the kǒugān 口疳 / zǒumǎyágān / jiǎnchún gum-and-lip diseases from throat-disease proper, with separate insufflation formularies (the Bāwèi kǒugān dān) and the doctrinal placement of jiǎnchún under Zú Yángmíng wèi 足陽明胃 stomach-channel pathology with treatment via the Bāwèi wán 八味丸 plus Qīngliáng gānlù yǐn 清涼甘露飲 sequence; (iii) the canonical Yóu-school formulary triad of jīndān 金丹 / yùdān 玉丹 / zhēnjìn yào 真禁藥, with explicit xiāngpèi 相配 (proportioning) instructions for each — yùdān alone for mild presentations, yùdān combined with jīndān for moderate, jīndān alone for severe; (iv) the use of insufflation-powders compounded according to the same bēiběn 卑本 principle as the parent triad but extended for specific syndromes (the Wǔfú huàdú dān 五福化毒丹 for hóubì / hóuxuǎn held in the mouth and slowly dissolved; the Xiōnghuáng jiědú wán 雄黃解毒丸 for yǎbìfēng; the Xījiǎo jiědú wán 犀角解毒丸 for paediatric ékǒu and shādòu residual toxicity). The work serves throughout as the explicit textual source on which Yóu Chéng built his own KR3em022 mìshū.
The text’s strong mnemonic verse-component (the Zhèngzhì zǒnglùn gē 喉症總論歌, the Kànzhèng zhìfǎ gē 看症治法歌, the Biànzhèng yòngyào gē 辨證用藥歌, and the Yùdān pèifǎ gē 玉丹配法歌 / Jīndān pèifǎ gē 金丹配法歌 / Zhēnjìn yào pèifǎ gē 真禁藥配法歌 / Bāwèi kǒugān yào gē 八味口疳藥歌 / Zhūhuángsǎn pèihé gē 珠黃散配合歌) is a characteristic late-Míng jiāxué 家學 transmission technique, designed to preserve secret-formula compounding ratios within an unwritten lineage by encoding them in seven-character verses that an apprentice could memorise without exposing them to outside readers.
Translations and research
- No standalone Western-language translation or monographic study located.
- Modern reprint: 《尤氏喉症指南》 in 《海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書》 collection, 北京：人民衛生出版社. The text is also known in some manuscript traditions under variant titles (Yóushì hóukē 尤氏喉科) and is part of the textual cluster that also includes KR3em022 Yóushì hóukē mìshū 尤氏喉科秘書 by 尤乘.
- For the broader Sūzhōu Míng-Qīng throat-medicine context see the modern Chinese-language medical-history studies in Zhōnghuá yīshǐ zázhì.
Other points of interest
The work contains an unusually frank prognostic-taboo catalogue of “do-not-treat” signs: in addition to the standard yǎpófēng and juéyáng 厥陽 fatal indicators, it specifies that “if the upper-left front-tooth is lost, it cannot be treated” (because the kidney-essence is exhausted), and that several conditions in pregnant women — including shàng-tooth-loss and the so-called “hóudīng 喉疔 fatal-on-the-spot in women” — are categorically untreatable. These appear in the Zhìzhèng mìjué 治症秘訣 section and reflect the Míng-period transition from SòngYuán fāngshū prescriptive medicine to a more clinically-cautious / prognostically-discriminating Míng throat-discipline.
Links
- 尤氏喉症指南 (jicheng.tw 漢學文典)
- Kanseki DB
- Yóu Chéng’s KR3em022 Yóushì hóukē mìshū (the explicit descendant work).