花韻樓醫案

Huāyùnlóu yīàn 花韻樓醫案

Medical Case Records of the Flower-Rhyme Pavilion by 顧蔓雲 Gù Mànyún 顧蔓雲 (also written 顧鬘雲 Gù Mányún; female physician of Sūzhōu, mid-nineteenth century, zì unknown).

About the work

A single-juǎn gynaecological casebook by one of the very few women physicians whose clinical record survives from the Qīng period — Gù Mányún 顧鬘雲 of Wú 吳 (Sūzhōu), active in the Dàoguāng / Xiánfēng (道光、咸豐) decades of the mid-nineteenth century. The casebook is named for her Huāyùnlóu 花韻樓 (“Flower-Rhyme Pavilion”) consulting studio. It is the most important Qīng-period casebook specifically dedicated to fùkē 婦科 (gynaecology) authored by a woman.

Prefaces

The hxwd _000.txt opens with a substantive editorial preface attributed to the early-Republican publisher Qiú Jíshēng 裘吉生 (the editor of the Shàoxīng Yīyào xuébào 醫藥學報) and a co-editor: “What is a medical casebook? — Diagnosing illness and prescribing treatment, that is all. Casebooks fill the carts and prop up the roof-beams, but most of them treat the mixed syndromes of men and women together — those that specialise in women’s medicine are very few. Our [Sūzhōu] Wú region’s Gù Mányúnnǚshì 顧鬘雲女士 is a famous gynaecological clinician. In the DàoXián era [1820s–1860s], the shìdàfū of the Wú region all competed to invite her in consultation and looked up to her with admiration. She composed the Huāyùnlóu yīàn in one juǎn; alas, it was never cut and circulated, and those who knew of medicine could only sometimes refer to it, with the regret of wanting and not obtaining it. I have long held a manuscript copy of Mrs Gù’s casebook in my collection; the discussions of treatment are penetrating, the prescriptions even and good — truly the work of experience. Among the women physicians of our time it is genuinely rare to find an equal. I have repeatedly wished to have it cut to print for the research of gentlemen of the four-seas; but, deeply ashamed of my own slender means, I had not been able to fulfil this wish — to common-share it with my associates — and my heart was distressed. So I corresponded with Mr Qiú Jíshēng 裘吉生 of the Shàoxīng Yīyào xuébào shè 醫藥學報社, planning to have it cut to widely transmit it. Fortunately I obtained his consent. From now on, with the wind transmitting throughout the world, Mrs Gù’s [work]…” This preface establishes the early-Republican rescue-from-manuscript of an important mid-nineteenth-century gynaecological casebook by a female physician.

Abstract

Gù Mányún 顧鬘雲 (also written 顧蔓雲 Gù Mànyún) was a mid-nineteenth-century Sūzhōu woman physician, active in the Dàoguāng / Xiánfēng decades (1830s–1860s), specialising in fùkē 婦科 gynaecology. Her clinical reputation was sufficient that the Sūzhōu shìdàfū class — male elites — invited her into their households in consultation, an unusual position for a Qīng-period female practitioner. The casebook circulated only in manuscript until its early-Republican printing through the Shàoxīng Yīyào xuébào shè under Qiú Jíshēng 裘吉生’s editorial supervision. The composition window 1830–1880 reflects her conventional floruit (DàoXián era through to late Qīng manuscript circulation).

The work is one of the most important Qīng-period documents of female medical authorship and one of the very few surviving casebooks by a woman. Charlotte Furth’s A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665 (1999) treats the broader question of female medical authorship in late imperial China; Yi-Li Wu’s Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (UC Press, 2010) extends the analysis to Qīng fùkē practice and treats the broader context for Gù Mányún’s work. The casebook is principally documentary for the actual range and texture of mid-nineteenth-century women’s-medicine clinical practice in Sūzhōu.

Translations and research

Wu, Yi-Li. 2010. Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. University of California Press. Furth, Charlotte. 1999. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665. University of California Press — for the longer-period background of female medical authorship. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, ch. 7.

Links

• Qiú Jíshēng 裘吉生 (1873–1948) — the early-Republican Shàoxīng medical publisher who rescued many otherwise-lost manuscripts; see his Yīyào xuébào 醫藥學報 (founded 1908) and the Sānsān yīshū 三三醫書 collectanea.
• Kanseki DB
• 花韻樓醫案