Wú Jūtōng yīàn 吳鞠通醫案
Medical Case Records of Wú Jūtōng by 吳塘 Wú Táng 吳塘 (zì Pèihéng 配珩, hào Jūtōng 鞠通, 1758–1836).
About the work
A four-juǎn posthumous casebook of Wú Táng — the Huáiyīn 淮陰 physician whose Wēnbìng tiáobiàn 溫病條辨 (1798) is the canonical Qīng-period synthesis of warm-disease (wēnbìng 溫病) doctrine and the principal heir to Yè Tiānshì’s 葉天士 (= 葉桂) clinical innovations in this domain. The cases are organised by complaint and prominently document the early-nineteenth-century wēnbìng therapeutic repertoire — yínqiào sǎn 銀翹散, sāngjú yǐn 桑菊飲, the Sānrén tāng 三仁湯 series, and the systematic deployment of the sānjiāo biànzhèng 三焦辨證 (triple-burner pattern differentiation) framework. The casebook records Wú’s own clinical reasoning in the first person and provides the empirical underpinning for the theoretical claims of the Wēnbìng tiáobiàn; for the Jiāngnán medical world it functioned as the chief witness to the legitimacy of the wēnbìng school’s clinical claims.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with an editorial preface that begins with a programmatic history of the yīàn genre: “Medical case records began with the Míng. The Sìkù quánshū records the Yīàn of Xuē Jǐ 薛己 and Chén Jué 陳桷 of the medical class, but copies are rare; only 江瓘 Jiāng Guàn’s 江瓘 Míng yī lèi’àn 名醫類案 (KR3e0075) of the Míng and 魏之琇 Wèi Zhīxiù’s 魏之琇 Xù míng yī lèi’àn 續名醫類案 (KR3ep017) of our dynasty were cut by Mr Bào of Chángtáng in Qiánlóng, with a recut in Tóngzhì. Jiāng cites ancient and modern formularies and appends evaluative remarks, with much pattern-differentiation; Wèi gathers still more abundantly but cannot escape the burden of disorder. As for Yú Jiāyán’s 喻昌 Yùyì cǎo 寓意草 KR3ep012, he records his own clinical experiments without calling the work a ‘medical case-record’; Yè Tiānshì’s Línzhèng zhǐnán KR3ep010 is widely current in Wú and Yuè, treated by petty practitioners with shallow learning as a regulation-code, but it contains much that is forged by the disciples and is not all from Tiānshì’s hand — so the pure and the spurious mingle, and the literalist application of it has misled posterity” (paraphrased). The preface then proclaims Wú Táng’s significance: “Mr Wú Jūtōng of Huáiyīn made his name as a physician across the great river south and north; his composed Wēnbìng tiáobiàn is the loyal remonstrant of 吳有性 Wú Yòukě 吳又可 above and the precursor that opened the road for 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng below.” This editorial preface frames the casebook in the heroic-genealogical mode characteristic of Jiāngnán warm-disease school self-representation.
Abstract
Wú Táng 吳塘 (Pèihéng 配珩, Jūtōng 鞠通, 1758–1836; CBDB 70543) was born in Huáiyīn (Jiāngsū) and lost his father to febrile illness in his twentieth year; this prompted his decision to leave examination preparation for medicine. He studied for nineteen years before practising publicly. His central work, KR3e0046 Wēnbìng tiáobiàn 溫病條辨, was finished in 1798 (Jiāqìng 3) and exists in his own 1813 printing; the present casebook is a posthumous compilation derived from his own case-notes and from those preserved by his disciples and family, presenting the empirical substrate of the Tiáobiàn’s theoretical claims. The internal dating runs from the 1790s through the 1830s, bracketed by Wú’s mature practice and his death in 1836.
The casebook is the principal source for reconstructing Wú’s actual clinical method as distinct from the systematised theory of the Tiáobiàn: cases of wēnbìng proper, but also of zhōngfēng 中風 (stroke / wind-strike), xūláo 虛勞 (consumptive depletion), tányǐn 痰飲 (phlegm-rheum), gēyē 膈噎 (dysphagia), gynaecological and paediatric cases. It is — together with the cases preserved in the Línzhèng zhǐnán yīàn KR3ep010 of Yè Tiānshì and the Wángshì yīàn KR3ep083 series of Wáng Mèngyīng — one of the three indispensable casebook sources for the late-Qīng Jiāngnán warm-disease tradition.
Translations and research
For Wú Táng’s place in the wēnbìng tradition see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011); on the casebook genre specifically see Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the ‘Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories’ (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), and Christopher Cullen, “Yi’an 醫案 (case statements): the origins of a genre of Chinese medical literature”, in Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge UP, 2001). Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, pp. 196–203, treats the warm-disease school context.
Links
- Wikidata: Wu Jutong Q15914032.
- ctext.org has the Wēnbìng tiáobiàn but not the casebook.
- Kanseki DB
- 吳鞠通醫案