Sūn Wényuán yīàn 孫文垣醫案
Medical Case Records of Sūn Wényuán by 孫一奎 Sūn Yīkuí 孫一奎 (zì Wényuán 文垣, hào Dōngsù 東宿 and Shēngshēngzǐ 生生子, 1522–1619 / CBDB 1538–1600), of Xiūníng 休寧 in Huīzhōu 徽州 (Ānhuī).
About the work
A five-juǎn casebook of the great late-Míng Xīnān 新安 physician Sūn Yīkuí — also known under the alternative title Sūnshì yīàn 孫氏醫案 or Chìshuǐ xuánzhū 赤水玄珠醫案. The cases are extensive and richly documented and constitute one of the earliest substantial standalone Chinese casebooks: they pre-date the editorial mass-publication of the yīàn genre in the Qīng and stand together with the Yīàn of Wāng Jī 汪機 (KR3ep089 Shíshān yīàn) and the Yīàn of Xuē Jǐ 薛己 as the foundational late-Míng casebooks. Sūn was a major theorist of the mìngmén 命門 doctrine — the late-Míng synthesis that posits a “gate-of-life” between the kidneys as the deepest source of physiological yáng — and his casebook displays this doctrine in clinical action.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a long Sūn xù 孫序 (preface by a member of the Sūn family or a close associate) developing the classical shìjūnzǐ 士君子 / liángyī 良醫 theme: “The shì with the heart to save the age must rely on an art for governing the age in order to act it out — whether or not he has the opportunity is beside the point. Why? Because given the time, his mounting will be the carriage; the welfare and harm of the whole realm-within-the-bounds, hidden, will be his to bear, and he will view his patients’ afflictions as if they were itches and pains on his own body — until they are settled, he will not rest. This is the heart of the shìjūnzǐ who attains a position and thereby acts it out. Unfortunate is he who, not attaining the opportunity, his benefit does not reach things and his heart cannot be set forth: such a man of ambition often nourishes his Way and hides himself in medicine. So the ancients held that to save people and benefit things, those without a position cannot do it — but medicine alone, by saving the dying and supporting the living, makes its accomplishment, so that its practitioners can extend the heart-that-cannot-bear to the things and be of benefit to the Way.” The preface goes on to invoke the Nèijīng and the 179-house bibliographic register and to praise Sūn as one who has plumbed all of these to their depths.
Abstract
Sūn Yīkuí 孫一奎 (1522–1619 per most reference works, or 1538–1600 per CBDB 129699; the longer dating is more commonly accepted in modern scholarship and is used here) — Huīzhōu (Ānhuī) physician of the late Míng, native of Xiūníng 休寧. Together with Wāng Jī 汪機 (汪機) of Qímén 祁門 (the slightly earlier Xīnān master) and Fāng Yǒuzhí 方有執 (the Shānghán lùn commentator), he is one of the four great Xīnān physicians of the Míng. His principal theoretical work is the KR3e0099 Chìshuǐ xuánzhū 赤水玄珠 (a 30-juǎn systematic medical encyclopaedia); his theoretical contribution is the systematic articulation of the mìngmén doctrine as the basis of physiology, in advance of the more famous restatement by 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn (1563–1640).
The casebook was compiled by Sūn himself and was printed during his lifetime in the early seventeenth century; the composition window 1580–1620 reflects his mature clinical practice. The hxwd reprint follows the standard Wànlì 萬曆 / Tiānqǐ 天啟 era cutting. The case material is one of the principal sources for reconstructing late-Míng clinical practice in the Xīnān region — a regional medical lineage that, alongside the Sòng-Yuán-rooted Zhèjiāng tradition and the Sūzhōu tradition, forms the principal tripartite ground of late-Míng / early-Qīng Chinese clinical medicine.
Translations and research
For the Xīn-ān medical tradition and Sūn Yīkuí’s place within it see Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, ch. 6. Modern Chinese reference: Sūn Yīkuí, Sūn-shì yīàn, in Sūn Yīkuí yī-xué quán-shū 孫一奎醫學全書 (Beijing: Zhōng-yī Gǔ-jí Chū-bǎn-shè, 1999). Volker Scheid in Currents of Tradition discusses Sūn briefly.
Links
- Related entry: KR3ep092 Sūnshì yīàn (a parallel later anthology under the same title).
- Kanseki DB
- 孫文垣醫案