Yānhóu màizhèng tōnglùn 咽喉脈證通論
Comprehensive Treatise on the Pulse Signs and Symptoms of Throat Diseases edited and published by 許槤 Xǔ Lián (Xǔ Shānlín 許珊林, 1787–1862).
About the work
A single-juǎn Qīng laryngology treatise that the bibliophile-official 許槤 Xǔ Lián of Hǎiníng 海寧 (alternate place-name 海昌 Hǎichāng), Zhèjiāng, recovered as a manuscript, collated against several variant copies, and brought to press in Dàoguāng 5 (1825). The framing fiction is that the text descends from “a strange Sòng-dynasty monk” (Sòng yì sēng 宋異僧) who left a manuscript in a satchel at the Qiānfósì 千佛寺 in Hángzhōu; Xǔ himself, in his preface, openly rejects the Sòng attribution and dates the underlying composition to the YuánMíng period (see below). The book is organised under a 總論 zǒnglùn (general discussion of vital-energy pathology in the throat and pulse-based differentiation), a section on通治用藥 tōngzhì yòngyào (general therapeutics), a 用藥禁忌 yòngyào jìnjì (drug contraindications), a 丸散方藥 wánsǎn fāngyào (pill and powder formulary), and then eighteen named throat-syndromes (shíbā zhèng 十八證) — suǒhóu 鎖喉, zhòngshé 重舌, qìyōng 氣癰, rǔé 乳蛾, nòngshé 弄舌, chánhóu 纏喉, yǎzhàng 啞瘴, gǔcáo 骨槽, xuánqí 懸蜞, lànhóu xiǎn 爛喉癬, rèfēng hóuxiǎn 熱風喉癬, ruòzhèng hóuxiǎn 弱證喉癬, hóubì 喉閉, qiàngshí 嗆食, fāyí 發頤, xuányōng 懸癰, hóujūn 喉菌, and yáyōng 牙癰 — each with aetiology, prognostic indicators, and prescriptions. Xǔ’s most distinctive editorial intervention is the contraindications chapter, which forbids the routine 甘桔湯 Gānjié tāng (licorice-platycodon decoction) on the ground that throat disease is uniformly huǒdú shàngshēng 火毒上升 and requires descending and purgative rather than ascending and tonifying methods.
Prefaces
The book carries four prefaces (two by Yáo Yàn 姚晏 of Wúxīng 吳興, one by his elder brother 姚衡 Yáo Héng, written from Guǎngzhōu in閏-month of Dàoguāng 21 / 1841), 許槤 Xǔ Lián’s own preface dated 海昌許槤撰 in the sixth month of Dàoguāng 5 / yǐyǒu 乙酉 (1825), and a postface by 姚覲元 Yáo Jìnyuán of Guī’ān 歸安 dated Tóngzhì 13 (1874). The Yáo brothers liken the throat to a strategic mountain-pass (xiǎnyào zhī qū 險要之區) and argue from the Nèijīng (《內經》) and Língshū 《靈樞》 Yōngjū piān 癰疽篇 that classical medicine treated throat disease only as an organ-channel obstruction, not as an eighteen- or thirty-six-syndrome nosology; the present treatise’s eighteen-syndrome scheme is therefore a much later, post-classical scholastic development. Xǔ’s own preface explicitly debunks the Sòng-monk attribution: he points out that the work mentions miánhuā chuāng 棉花瘡 (cotton-flower pox, i.e. syphilis-like venereal sores), a disease that “first entered China in the Yuán” (此疾元時始入中國), so a genuine Sòng author could not have described it; he concludes that, even if not Yuán, the text is no later than “a master hand of the YuánMíng interval” (亦不出元明間一巨手耳). Xǔ tells us he had collected four or five manuscript copies, all corrupted by reckless emendation, and “spent several months’ labour, as if untangling a snarled silk-skein” before fixing a clean text. 姚覲元’s postface explains that the Guǎngzhōu blocks of Dàoguāng 21 were lost in the JiāngZhè rebellions (JiāngZhè kòuluàn 江浙寇亂, i.e. the Tàipíng war), and that he recut the work in Tóngzhì 13 (1874) from a surviving early impression preserved in his late father’s book-trunks.
Abstract
The cataloguer’s label “Qīng” with a single author 許槤 is best understood as Xǔ Lián as collator-editor, not as composer: Xǔ in his own preface explicitly disclaims authorship and treats himself as the recoverer and stemmatic editor of an anonymous YuánMíng manuscript tradition. The composition window for the underlying text cannot be later than Dàoguāng 5 (1825), the date of Xǔ’s preface and first printing, and on Xǔ’s own internal-evidence argument (the mention of miánhuā chuāng) cannot be earlier than the Yuán; for cataloging the frontmatter conservatively brackets the received recension at 1825–1841, the first and last datable editorial events, with the prose stating the inferred YuánMíng date of the underlying material. The 1841 Dàoguāng reissue at Guǎngzhōu (the Yǔchūnguǎn 雨春館 imprint of the fǔshǐzhě 撫使者 yamen) is the version transmitted through the jicheng.tw (漢學文典) digital corpus used here.
許槤 Xǔ Lián (字 Shūxià 叔夏; hào Shānlín 珊林 and Lètián sǎnrén 樂恬散人; studio 紅竹草堂) was a classical philologist, Shuōwén jiězì commentator, calligrapher, and Qīng provincial administrator — jǔrén 1820 (Jiāqìng 24, not 1819), jìnshì 1833 (Dàoguāng 13, not the Jiāqìng 1805 figure given in some popular accounts), serving as a Zhílì magistrate and prefect of Píngdù 平度 in Shāndōng — who is not listed in the standard biographical record as a medical writer. CBDB has two entries for the name 許槤: id 56034 (1787–1862), which is this Hǎiníng philologist, and id 341392 with an index year of 1803, which is a separate individual. CBDB lifedates 1787–1862 are followed here. Xǔ’s connection to throat medicine is real but editorial: his Hǎiníng preface narrates that he received an early manuscript “from a fellow-townsman whose family had practised this art for generations” (得喉科書一冊於其鄉之世業是醫者) and that he and his friend 楊星泉 Yáng Xīngquán (himself a working physician, Yǔfù yě 俞附也) collated and emended several corrupt copies before sending the text to press. The attribution should therefore be read as edited by 許槤 rather than written by 許槤; calling him a yīzhě 醫者 would misrepresent his career, and the catalog meta is best understood in that spirit.
The most influential idea in the book, repeatedly cited by later Qīng laryngologists (cf. KR3em030 Chóngdìng nángmì hóushū, KR3em033 Hóukē dàchéng, KR3em034 Hóukē jīnyuè quánshū), is the contraindication of 甘桔湯 (licorice-and-Platycodon) in throat disease: licorice tonifies and does not drain fire, platycodon raises herbs upward and so drives phlegm and fire higher, both worsening huǒdú shàngshēng 火毒上升. Xǔ extends the same logic to forbid shēngmá 升麻 (which “draws clear qì of the stomach upward, and might be thought to substitute for rhinoceros horn, but in fact carries phlegm-fire upward into the throat”), bànxià 半夏 (whose dry-warm action aggravates lung-fire), and lǎojiāng 老薑 (acrid-warm dispersion adding fire to fire). The closing eighteen-syndrome catalogue is the work’s other defining feature, and the source from which the figure shíbā zhèng enters later laryngology textbooks.
Translations and research
- No standalone modern Western-language critical edition or monographic study located.
- For the broader Qīng laryngology genre into which this text fits, see Hinrichs and Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard, 2013), Part IV (Late Imperial China).
- Modern reproductions: the text is transmitted here via the jicheng.tw (漢學文典) digital corpus; a modern punctuated edition is included in 《中華醫書集成·喉科卷》 and various twentieth-century 喉科專輯 compilations.
Other points of interest
The textual stemma reconstructable from Xǔ’s preface is unusually transparent for a Qīng popular medical work: he names the four or five corrupt manuscript witnesses he collected, a printed Hézhōng 禾中 (Jiāxīng 嘉興) edition that he judges even more corrupt than the manuscripts, and his own contemporary collaborator-physician 楊星泉; he treats the Sòng-monk yuánběn 原本 attribution preserved on the title-page as an editorial fiction kept only “to transmit doubt as doubt” (疑以傳疑). The Dàoguāng 21 (1841) Guǎngzhōu reissue, sponsored by the brothers 姚晏 / 姚衡 of Wúxīng, and the Tóngzhì 13 (1874) re-cutting from preserved original-impression sheets by 姚覲元 (Yáo Héng’s son), make the work one of the better-documented small-print laryngology titles of the nineteenth century.