張聿青醫案

Zhāng Yùqīng yīàn 張聿青醫案

Medical Case Records of Zhāng Yùqīng by 張聿青 Zhāng Yùqīng 張聿青 (1844–1905, native of Wúxī 無錫, Jiāngsū; míng Nǎixiū 乃修, zì Yùqīng 聿青).

About the work

Twenty juǎn — the longest of the Qīng-end Jiāngnán casebooks — compiled posthumously from the master’s clinical archives by his disciples (principally Wú Wéntāo 吳文涛 and others), and prefaced by a long programmatic colophon (跋) that opens the hxwd _000.txt. The cases are organised by complaint and are remarkable for their explicit prescription-reasoning, the very high seasonal-epidemic concentration appropriate to late-nineteenth-century Shànghǎi practice, and the systematic deployment of the Sūzhōu / Ménghé synthesis of 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì warm-disease theory with 薛雪 Xuē Shēngbái’s damp-heat theory.

Prefaces

The hxwd _000.txt opens with a detailed colophon (跋) by the disciple-compiler, in which the yīàn genre is again given a foundational history. The opening sentences are unusually frank: “Medical case-records began with the historical biographies and were appended to the various philosophical schools, in order to record clinical successes and exhibit doctrine. Coming down to recent times, they have been mostly cut as standalone collections — Yú Jiāyán 喻昌, Xú Hóngxī 徐洄溪 徐大椿, Wáng Mèngyīng 王士雄, all summarised their essentials in adjudicating expositions. As for cutting complete case-and-prescription archives, only Yèshì’s Línzhèng zhǐnán 葉氏臨證指南 KR3ep010 qualifies. Yè was naturally clear and astute, with transcendent insight, and his treatment cases offer much that can be drawn upon — but the shallow and stereotypical material also opened the door to the simplifying conveniences of later mediocre practitioners, and the ear-eaten parrot-types now treat it as their zhǎngzhōng zhū 掌中珠 (palm-jewel) and zhěnzhōng mì 枕中秘 (pillow-secret), so the late naming of the ‘Yè school’ is half praised and half blamed.” The disciple records that Zhāng Yùqīng himself, embarrassed by the formulaic excesses of contemporary “Yè-school” practice, “thrice bought and thrice burned” his own case-files, intending instead to write a systematic theoretical treatise during a hoped-for retirement. “Heaven did not grant him years; he did not realise his ambition, and the work remained absent. He pursued the Way without spare time to expound it — a genuine matter for regret.” The casebook is therefore explicitly framed as an editorial recovery of the master’s clinical thought against his own ambivalence about the casebook form.

Abstract

Zhāng Yùqīng 張聿青 (míng Nǎixiū 乃修, zì Yùqīng 聿青, 1844–1905) — late-Qīng Jiāngnán physician, native of Wúxī (Jiāngsū), active principally in Shànghǎi from the 1880s onward, where he was one of the leading clinicians of the foreign-concession period. He stands at the synthesis of the Sūzhōu warm-disease school (Yè Tiānshì 葉天士, Xuē Shēngbái 薛雪) and the Ménghé lineage of clinical pragmatism. His students Dīng Gānrén 丁甘仁 (丁甘仁) and Cáo Yǐngfǔ 曹穎甫 (曹穎甫) carried the line into the Republican-era Shànghǎi medical schools and made the Zhāng Yùqīng yīàn a foundational classroom text. The casebook was compiled by his disciples in the years following his death; the hxwd reprint follows the early-Republican Shànghǎi printing.

The casebook is unusually rich in seasonal-epidemic cases (warm-disease, damp-heat, fēngwēn 風溫, shīwēn 濕溫, fúshǔ 伏暑, summer-autumn dysentery, late-summer cholera-like presentations), as expected for a Shànghǎi practitioner of the 1880s-1900s, and is the principal late-Qīng witness to the clinical maturation of the wēnbìng / shīrè school in its urban-modern moment. Together with the Dīng Gānrén yīàn KR3ep024 and the Wángshì yīàn series KR3ep083–KR3ep086, it forms the late-Qīng Shànghǎi-Ménghé clinical canon. Modern Chinese medical historiography ranks it among the most influential post-Yè Tiānshì casebooks.

Translations and research

Scheid, Volker. 2007. Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006. Eastland Press. — for the Wúxī / Ménghé context and Zhāng’s place in the late-Qīng Shànghǎi medical world. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, ch. 8, treats this generation extensively.

No dedicated European-language monograph on this casebook located.

Links

• Modern Chinese reference: Huáng Yīngzhì 黃英志 ed., Zhāng Yùqīng yīàn 張聿青醫案, Rénmín Wèishēng Chūbǎnshè, 1963 (the standard scholarly edition).
• Kanseki DB
• 張聿青醫案