Yīquán chūbiān 醫權初編
First Compilation on the Balance of Medicine by 王三尊 Wáng Sānzūn 王三尊 (early-Qīng physician, fl. early eighteenth century).
About the work
A three-juǎn medical-theoretical and case-record work in which the title-word yīquán 醫權 (“the balance / weighing-stick of medicine”) signals the author’s aim of properly weighing the rival doctrinal authorities of Chinese medical history against each other. The chūbiān 初編 (“first compilation”) form indicates that a xùbiān 續編 (continuation) was planned (and indeed Wáng’s Yīquán xùbiān 醫權續編 also survives independently). The opening of the hxwd _000.txt is the appended re-cutting preface to Kē Qín’s 柯琴 Shānghán lùn yì 傷寒論翼, indicating that this hxwd recension bundles related material with the casebook proper.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a long Fùlù chóngzǐ “Shānghán lùn yì” xù 附錄重梓《傷寒論翼》序 (appended re-cutting preface to Kē Qín’s Shānghán lùn yì): “The visibility-and-obscurity of treasure-objects each has its time — like the jade of Jīngshān 荊山 and the sword of Féngchéng 豐城, sunk and buried for many days, when their time comes there must be a Biàn Hé to raise the cry of injustice, suffering both feet cut off without backing away, calling out qū 屈 and contending; Léi Huàn 雷煥 stooped to take the post of Féngchéng magistrate, descending into the prison to lift up the sunken thing and bring it out, finally making the whole age recognise it as treasure and so achieving an immortal name. How much more the books that rescue the dropsical fatality of the common people — the true treasures of this human world — how could they finally be obscured and not made visible? The Shānghán book came from Zhòngjǐng — Heaven above pitied the common people, specially selected this profound and bright sagely physician, to rescue the people from premature death; it should be like the sun shining on the heavens, vigorously running and never resting — how could it have been so long lost across generations, dropping away in silence without transmission? Shūhé 叔和 of the Jìn 晉 obtained it from oral transmission, presumptuously mixing it with his own compositions, misquoting the classical text, composing a xùlì 序例 that misled posterity, so that we have the ten-thousand-year lament of fish-eye-mixed-with-pearl. Later worthies — Fāng Zhōngháng 方中行 and others — relied on…” The preface is a programmatic late-Qīng critical-philological statement of Shānghán studies, in the wake of Kē Qín’s (柯琴, 1662–1735) major commentary tradition. The bundling of this preface at the head of the casebook signals Wáng Sānzūn’s strongly Shānghán-orientation.
Abstract
Wáng Sānzūn 王三尊 was an early-Qīng physician active in the early eighteenth century. Biographical data are thin: his exact dates are not securely established, but the Yīquán chūbiān preface dates 1717 / Kāngxī 56 in the standard reference works, with the xùbiān a few years later. His clinical-doctrinal stance is Shānghán-school against the wēnbìng tendency of the Sūzhōu Yè-school contemporaries; he is one of the early-eighteenth-century witnesses to the persistent Shānghán / wēnbìng tension in Qīng medical doctrine. The work is preserved in hxwd through manuscript copies of the original Kāngxī printing. The composition window 1717–1721 reflects the preface date and the conventional date of the xùbiān.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. The work is treated briefly in modern Chinese surveys of the Qīng Shāng-hán commentary tradition (e.g. Qián Chāochén 錢超塵, Shāng-hán lùn wén-xiàn tōng-kǎo 傷寒論文獻通考, 1993).
Links
- For Kē Qín’s Shānghán lùn yì see the broader Qīng Shānghán commentary tradition in KR3ed catalog entries.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫權初編