Hóukē jiāxùn 喉科家訓
Family Instructions on Laryngology by 刁步忠 Diāo Bùzhōng and his son 刁質明 Diāo Zhìmíng (zì Shǒuyú 守愚).
About the work
A four-juǎn family-tradition throat-medicine handbook from Chóngmíng 崇明 (the Yangtze-estuary island, now a district of Shànghǎi), composed by 刁質明 Diāo Zhìmíng (zì Shǒuyú 守愚) on the basis of the manuscript notes of his father 刁步忠 Diāo Bùzhōng. The author’s own preface, dated 中華民國七年 (1918), describes the work as drawn from “his father’s transmission, supplemented by the doctrines of past and present and his own clinical observations of more than twenty years”; the published edition carries a 1924 (民國十三年) preface by his fellow-student 楊漢春 Yáng Hànchūn (principal of the Chóngmíng Sixth Lower Primary School) and a preface by his disciple 沈光漢 Shěn Guānghàn dated Dīngsì 丁巳 (1917), placing the manuscript’s substantive completion in 1917–1918 and its print publication in 1924. The work was issued by the Sānsān yīshè 三三醫社 (a Republican-era Chinese-medicine professional society).
Programmatically the work is organised under the rubric of xūshí 虛實 (vacuity vs. repletion) as its master clinical category — Diāo Zhìmíng’s preface insists that this is the bedrock of throat-clinical practice. The four juǎn cover (1) general theory and yùnqì 運氣 (cyclical qì) reasoning, (2) needling and external manipulation including tōngguān 通關 (gate-opening) acupuncture and diàotán 釣痰 (phlegm-extraction), (3) the syndromology of báihóu 白喉 (diphtheria) and hóushā 喉痧 (scarlet-fever-type throat-rash) — the principal contagious throat-diseases of the early-Republican period — and (4) additional formulary.
Prefaces
Three prefaces are preserved at the head of the work:
(i) Yáng Hànchūn xù by 楊漢春, dated Mínguó shísān nián xiàzhèng shíyī yuè (民國十三年夏正十一月, late 1924). Yáng — principal of the Chóngmíng Sixth Lower Primary School and a long-time neighbour of the Diāo family — recalls that Diāo Zhìmíng was originally his fellow-student under 高夫子 “Gāo fūzǐ”; that the elder Diāo (Bùzhōng) had died seventeen years earlier (i.e. ca. 1907); that he himself had suffered from chronic hóué 喉蛾 (tonsillitis) and had been kept clear of recurrence for eight years by Diāo’s secret pellet (mìwán 秘丸); and that he had urged Diāo to release the family manuscript for public benefit rather than keep it secret.
(ii) Shěn Guānghàn xù by 沈光漢, dated 丁巳歲次仲秋朔日 (autumn 1917). Shěn, a disciple of Diāo Zhìmíng, describes the master’s reorganisation of the family manuscript: deletion of obsolete passages and the addition of a yùnqì 運氣 (cyclical-qì) front-section, an external-procedure section centred on the tōngguān zhēnxué 通關針穴 (gate-opening acupoints), and a separate book each on báihóu and hóushā, to bring the family tradition into a complete four-juǎn form.
(iii) Zìxù 自序 (author’s preface), dated Mínguó qī nián liù yuè shíyǒu qī rì (民國七年陰曆六月十七日, July 1918), signed Jiāngsū Chóngmíng wàishā zhōngyī Diāo Zhìmíng Shǒuyú shì zìtí yú Yánshòu yīshì 江蘇崇明外沙中醫刁質明守愚氏自題於延壽醫室. Diāo names his clinic the Yánshòu yīshì 延壽醫室 (Hall of Extended Life) and identifies Wàishā 外沙 (the outer-sandbank district of Chóngmíng) as his place of practice. He places xūshí (vacuity / repletion) as his governing clinical category. The author’s grandson 孫繼沖 Sūn Jìchōng then appended a brief verse-postface dated Mínguó shísān nián shíyī yuè zhī wàng (mid-November 1924) at the Yánshòu yīshì.
Abstract
Date: The composition window is fixed by the prefaces. The manuscript was completed by mid-1918 (author’s preface) and printed in 1924 (Yáng Hànchūn’s preface, and the grandson’s verse-postface). The work is de facto an early-Republican production but the catalog assigns it to Qīng on the basis that the family tradition reaches back to Diāo Bùzhōng (active in the late Qīng, died ca. 1907 on Yáng’s chronology). The Qīng dynasty assignment is retained here from the catalog; the terminus a quo of 1918 (author’s preface) and terminus ante quem of 1924 (printing) reflect the received recension. Diāo Bùzhōng’s underlying manuscript notes would predate his death ca. 1907 (i.e. late-Qīng Guāngxù era).
Authorship: the catalog meta records Diāo Bùzhōng 刁步忠 as the author. The author of the redacted four-juǎn received text is, however, the son Diāo Zhìmíng 刁質明 (zì Shǒuyú 守愚), who explicitly identifies himself in the zìxù and credits his father’s transmission as the substrate. Both are entered in the frontmatter; person notes are written for both. Neither has a CBDB entry.
The work is one of the more carefully organised early-Republican Chinese-medical hóukē compilations and a useful witness to the late-Qīng / early-Republican transition in throat-medicine, particularly for its dedicated coverage of báihóu 白喉 (diphtheria) — the great late-Qīng throat-epidemic disease that prompted a substantial dedicated literature including 鄭宏綱 Zhèng Méijiàn’s KR3em017 Chónglóu yùyuè 重樓玉鑰 and 張紹修 Zhāng Shànwú’s Báihóu zhìfǎ juéwēi 白喉治法抉微.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
For the báihóu literature in which this work participates see Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014), chapter on the late-Qīng báihóu epidemic; for the hóushā tradition see 陳耕道 Chén Gēngdào’s Yìshā cǎo 疫痧草.