Mǎ Péizhī yīàn 馬培之醫案
Medical Case Records of Mǎ Péizhī by 馬培之 Mǎ Péizhī 馬培之 (Mǎ Wénzhí 馬文植, 1820–1903), of Ménghé 孟河 (Jiāngsū).
About the work
A single-juǎn surgical-and-internal casebook of Mǎ Péizhī — the most famous physician of the Ménghé 孟河 lineage and one of the leading clinicians of the late Qīng. The cases are organised by syndrome and unusually heavy in surgical and dermatological complaints — the Ménghé Mǎ family’s distinctive specialty — including huánggǔ dīng 黃鼓疔 and zǒuhuáng dīngdú 走黃疔毒 (forms of severe carbuncle / abscess), tóu dīng 頭疔, shétóu dīng 蛇頭疔 (whitlow / paronychia), suǒkǒu dīng 鎖口疔, tóu xuè zhì 頭血痣 (head haemangiomatous growths), gǔcáo fēng 骨槽風 (osteomyelitis-like presentation of the jaw), and similar surgical-external-medicine syndromes — alongside cases of internal-medicine type.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens directly with case records, with each entry headed by the syndrome name. No formal preface is preserved in source.
Abstract
Mǎ Péizhī 馬培之 (1820–1903, Mǎ Wénzhí 馬文植, zì Péizhī 培之) — the most famous representative of the Ménghé Mǎ family lineage and one of the four great Ménghé physicians (Mǎ, Fèi, Cháo, Hé). Of the four Ménghé families he was distinguished by his surgical specialism: the Ménghé Mǎs were the most prominent of all Qīng wàikē 外科 (external-medicine / surgical) lineages, with techniques transmitted across multiple generations. Mǎ Péizhī’s clinical fame was sealed by his summons to Běijīng in 1880 to treat the Empress Dowager Cíxǐ 慈禧太后, an episode preserved in court memoirs and used in the late-Qīng to canonise Ménghé medicine as the dominant clinical tradition of the realm.
The composition window 1850–1903 reflects his mature clinical decades; the casebook was compiled from his own and his disciples’ records and was printed in the early Republican era (1916, by Mǎ Liángcí 馬良慈 et al.) — the hxwd reprint follows that edition. The work is the principal late-Qīng witness to Ménghé surgical clinical practice and a key document of the family’s clinical-technical inheritance.
Translations and research
Scheid, Volker. 2007. Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006. Eastland Press. — extended treatment of Mǎ Péizhī and the Ménghé Mǎ family. Bridie Andrews and Volker Scheid, eds. 2020. Chinese Medicine and the Modern World — context. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, pp. 226–227, mentions Mǎ.
Links
- See related Ménghé clinical records: KR3ep005 Hé Dànān yīàn, KR3ep024 Dīng Gānrén yīàn.
- Kanseki DB
- 馬培之醫案