Sānjiā yīàn hékè 三家醫案合刻
Joint Edition of the Case Records of Three Masters edited by 吳金壽 Wú Jīnshòu 吳金壽 (zì Zǐmù 子木, early-nineteenth-century Sūzhōu publisher-physician).
About the work
A three-juǎn anthology, one juǎn each for the cases of three early-to-mid-nineteenth-century Sūzhōu / Wúzhōng physicians, compiled and printed by Wú Jīnshòu in the early Dàoguāng 道光 era (the conventional dating is 1831). The “three masters” of the title are conventionally identified as:
- Yè Tiānshì 葉天士 (葉桂, 1666–1745), whose cases are drawn from previously uncirculated manuscript sources (rather than from the standard Línzhèng zhǐnán KR3ep010).
- Xuē Shēngbái 薛生白 (= 薛雪 Xuē Xuě, 1681–1770), whose damp-heat-focused Sǎoyè zhuāng yīàn 掃葉莊醫案 KR3ep035 is excerpted.
- Miào Sōngxīn 繆松心 (= Miào Zūnyì 繆遵義, 1710–1793) 繆遵義 — Sūzhōu physician and editorial successor of Yè Tiānshì’s clinical tradition.
The compilation thus offers a Sūzhōu-tradition self-portrait of three successive generations of post-Yè warm-disease practice, edited by a Wú Jīnshòu who was both a physician and a publisher in Sūzhōu in the early Dàoguāng era.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a series of appended letters (Fù kān shūzhá 附刊書札) — personal correspondence between Wú Jīnshòu and various medical authorities of the period, in elegant epistolary prose: “Since I parted from your yǎfàn 雅範 (‘elegant model’), it has been like drinking pure liquor; since the parting I often recollect your pure fragrance — no less than the feeling of dōngyě yúnlóng 東野雲龍 [the parted friends Hán Yù and Mèng Jiāo]. I think of you, sir, who ‘far traces the Línglán 靈蘭’ [i.e. the Língshū and Nèijīng], who ‘recently has been searching out zázhù’ [miscellaneous writings] — you have specially opened a longevity-realm for the people and are truly a ‘compassionate-vessel’ [cíháng 慈航] for saving the world. Your younger brother [Wú] has many acquaintances in this Way; never has he encountered one as thorough as you, sir — I salute you to the utmost.” The correspondence touches on Wú Jīnshòu’s own Wēnyì 瘟疫 manuscript (perhaps a draft of his Wēnrè zànbù 溫熱贊補 or related wēnbìng works) and on the editorial preparation of this very compilation. The epistolary front matter is unusual in the Qīng casebook genre and gives a rare direct glimpse of the social practice of medical-editorial collaboration in early-Dàoguāng Sūzhōu.
Abstract
Wú Jīnshòu 吳金壽 (zì Zǐmù 子木) — early-nineteenth-century Sūzhōu physician and publisher, active in the 1820s–1830s. He is best known as the editor of the Sānjiā yīàn hékè, the principal anthology of Sūzhōu post-Yè Tiānshì clinical practice, and as a friend and correspondent of the leading Jiāngnán physicians of his generation. He also edited and published a number of other Sūzhōu medical works of the early Dàoguāng era, including KR3ep023 Méishòutáng fāngàn xuǎncún 眉壽堂方案選存 (a further Yè Tiānshì compilation, edited with Guō Wéijùn 郭維浚).
The conventional 1831 date for the compilation is established by the colophons preserved in the standard Dàoguāng edition. The composition window 1831–1833 reflects the editorial work and the first printing. The anthology was widely reprinted across the late Qīng and was instrumental in canonising the Sūzhōu warm-disease school as a unified textual lineage.
The work is the principal documentary basis for understanding the Sūzhōu-tradition self-image in the early-Dàoguāng moment, just before the great Tàipíng disruption of the 1850s-60s, and it is the principal vehicle through which the otherwise scarce Miào Zūnyì 繆遵義 cases entered circulation. Together with KR3ep023 (which shares a Yè Tiānshì compilation under Wú Jīnshòu’s editorial hand) it documents the most active phase of early-Dàoguāng Sūzhōu medical publishing.
Translations and research
Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge — for the Sūzhōu warm-disease context. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, ch. 7.