續名醫類案

Xù míngyī lèiàn 續名醫類案

Continuation of the Categorised Case Records of Famous Physicians by 魏之琇 Wèi Zhīxiù 魏之琇 (zì Yùhuáng 玉璜, hào Liǔzhōu 柳州, 1722–1772), of Hāngzhōu (Zhèjiāng).

About the work

A sixty-juǎn (in the longer recension) anthological casebook continuing the great Míng anthology Míngyī lèiàn 名醫類案 of Jiāng Guàn 江瓘 — the foundational Míng yīàn lèi 醫案類 anthology — by gathering the cases of the famous physicians of the period from the late Míng to the mid-Qīng (Jiāng Guàn’s coverage broke off in the late Jiājìng 嘉靖 era of 1521–1567). Wèi Zhīxiù worked privately on the compilation for some thirty years; it was completed in his lifetime but only printed posthumously through the editorial efforts of his disciples and friends. The compilation organises cases by syndrome (rather than by author), in the encyclopaedic lèishū 類書 mode, with each syndrome-category opening with a brief theoretical introduction and proceeding through cases drawn from across the Qīng and earlier corpus.

The KR3ep catalog records two parallel entries for this work: KR3ep017 (the present entry; 37 source files) and KR3ep018 (a single-file Sìkù běn 四庫本 — the imperially-commissioned Sìkù quánshū recension, in 36 juǎn). The hxwd reprint of KR3ep017 follows the longer pre-Sìkù recension recovered from a Japanese collection. The two recensions differ substantially in size and arrangement: the Sìkù edition is shorter and more rigorously edited, while the hxwd recension preserves additional case material.

Prefaces

The hxwd _000.txt opens with 附《柳州遺稿》序 (“Appendix: Preface to the Liǔzhōu yígǎo 柳州遺稿”) — a preface to the posthumous poetry collection of Wèi Zhīxiù (whose hào was Liǔzhōu 柳州), composed for his friend Bào Yǐwén 鮑以文 who first cut the poems. The preface is a substantial biographical document and the principal source for Wèi’s life: “Mr Wèi’s Liǔzhōu poetry, collected as the Lǐngyún jí 嶺雲集, has been cut by my friend Mr Bào Yǐwén for circulation in the world. The collection had just come out when people were transmitting it eagerly and reciting it; thereupon he made a single trip to Lǐngbiǎo [Guǎngdōng / Guǎngxī], crossed a year and returned, eased and free in the local region for more than ten years, and Liǔzhōu departed the world. Mr Bào, with Mr Hú Cānglái 胡滄來 and Mr Xiàng Jīnmén 項金門, again cut his self-edited later collection, requesting that I supply a head-piece. Reading it through, I sighed sorrowfully and said: Liǔzhōu’s life-attainments were achieved with great difficulty. He lost his father young, was poor with no inherited resources, and earned his keep by ten-fingered toil in the streets and markets. Then he served as a clerk in a pawnshop for nearly twenty years, exhausting his service, and at night by the fire-basket lamp he would read books — for which his fellow-employees hated him; so he would unroll the scrolls and recite them silently, and they cursed even the lamp-light. He then squatted in the inside of the curtain, screening the light to read, until the oil was gone. Without a teacher’s transmission, he probed and explored by sheer firmness of thought; with long-accumulated learning, advancing by degrees, he attained at last to a thorough penetration. His family was originally in medicine, and he applied himself in addition to the QíHuáng books inherited from his forebears, again reaching the deep recesses. Resigning his clerkship he hung out a doctor’s gourd…” This biographical preface — pre-the-casebook proper — is the principal source for Wèi’s poverty-to-eminence trajectory.

Abstract

Wèi Zhīxiù 魏之琇 (Yùhuáng 玉璜, hào Liǔzhōu 柳州, 1722–1772; CBDB has no securely matched entry) — Hāngzhōu (Zhèjiāng) physician of the mid-Qīng who came to medicine through a difficult autodidactic trajectory documented in the preface above. He worked as a pawnshop clerk for nearly twenty years before transitioning to full-time medical practice. His principal works are this Xù míngyī lèiàn and the Liǔzhōu yígǎo poetry collection. The casebook was completed before his death in 1772; the composition window 1745–1772 reflects his thirty-year compilation period (begun in the early Qiánlóng era after the establishment of his medical practice).

The work is the largest Qīng yīàn anthology and is the single most important source for the case-record literature of the early-to-mid Qīng: every major physician of the period whose cases survive is represented in it. After Wèi’s death the manuscript circulated in private copies until Wáng Mèngyīng 王孟英 (= 王士雄) of the next generation prepared an edited and corrected version, which was the basis of the imperially-commissioned Sìkù admission (KR3ep018). The work was widely reprinted across the late Qīng and is repeatedly cited as the principal source-of-record for clinical lineage by later casebook prefaces (the prefaces of KR3ep003 and KR3ep006 both invoke the Xù míngyī lèiàn as one of the canonising anthologies of the genre).

Translations and research

Cullen, Christopher. 2001. “Yi’an 醫案 (case statements): the origins of a genre of Chinese medical literature.” In Elisabeth Hsu, ed., Innovation in Chinese Medicine. Cambridge UP. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, ch. 6–7. Grant, Joanna. 2003. A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the ‘Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories’. RoutledgeCurzon. — contextualises the yīàn tradition.

Links

• See parallel KR3ep018 for the Sìkù recension.
• Modern Chinese edition: Wèi Zhīxiù, Xù míngyī lèiàn, ed. Huáng Hànrú 黃漢儒 et al., Rénmín Wèishēng Chūbǎnshè (multiple editions).
• Kanseki DB
• 續名醫類案