Méishòutáng fāngàn xuǎncún 眉壽堂方案選存
Preserved Selections of the Méishòu Hall Case-and-Prescription Records cases by 葉桂 Yè Guì 葉桂 (Tiānshì 天士, 1666–1745); selected and edited by 郭維浚 Guō Wéijùn 郭維浚 (early-nineteenth-century Sūzhōu editor).
About the work
A two-juǎn selection of Yè Tiānshì cases drawn from manuscript sources outside the standard Línzhèng zhǐnán KR3ep010 tradition, named for the Méishòutáng 眉壽堂 (“Hall of Eyebrow-Longevity”) studio in which Yè Tiānshì kept some of his consultation notes (or alternatively the studio of the editor Guō Wéijùn). The compilation was made by Guō Wéijùn in the early Dàoguāng era and was edited together with Wú Jīnshòu 吳金壽 吳金壽 as part of the same editorial cluster that produced the KR3ep020 Sānjiā yīàn hékè. The selection is more sharply focused on cases not preserved in the printed Yè canon and is a primary supplement to the Línzhèng zhǐnán tradition.
Prefaces
The hxwd directory for KR3ep023 contains two files (_000.txt and _001.txt); the _000.txt is essentially a header marker (the file is short) and the text proper begins in _001.txt. No substantive preface in _000.txt.
Abstract
For Yè Tiānshì’s biographical and clinical background see 葉桂. Guō Wéijùn 郭維浚 was an early-nineteenth-century Sūzhōu editor and physician active in the same Wúzhōng medical-publishing milieu as Wú Jīnshòu (compare KR3ep020); his biographical data are otherwise thin, but his clear identification as the compiling editor of this anthology and the catalog meta’s joint attribution “葉桂 撰，郭維浚編” together establish the editorial line. The composition window 1720–1745 reflects Yè’s mature clinical practice from which the underlying cases are drawn (the editorial compilation took place after Yè’s death and was first published in the 1830s).
The work is one of several recoveries and re-editions of Yè Tiānshì cases that proliferated in the early-to-mid nineteenth century after the Línzhèng zhǐnán had been established as the canonical Yè casebook. Together with KR3ep009 Wèikèběn Yèshì yīàn, KR3ep013 Xúpī Yè Tiānshì wǎnnián fāngàn zhēnběn, KR3ep027 Yè Tiānshì yīàn jīnghuá, KR3ep063 Yè Tiānshì Cáo Rénbó Hé Yuáncháng yīàn, and KR3ep079 Yèshì yīàn cúnzhēn, it constitutes the post-Línzhèng zhǐnán Yè-supplement tradition. Each of these supplements offers different selections from the underlying Yè clinical archive, with varying degrees of editorial intervention.
Translations and research
For Yè Tiānshì and his case-record tradition see Hanson 2011 and Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, pp. 196–203.