Sǎoyèzhuāng yīàn 掃葉莊醫案
Medical Case Records of the Sweep-Leaf Villa by 薛雪 Xuē Xuě 薛雪 (zì Shēngbái 生白, hào Yīpiáo 一瓢, 1681–1770), of Sūzhōu 蘇州.
About the work
A four-juǎn clinical casebook of the great mid-Qīng Sūzhōu physician and wēnbìng / shīrè 濕熱 theorist Xuē Shēngbái. The title — Sǎoyè zhuāng 掃葉莊 (“Sweep-Leaf Villa”) — is famous in the Sūzhōu medical literature as a sardonic Xuē-school dig at 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì: the studio name “Sweep-Yè-Leaf” (with 葉 yè punning on Yè Tiānshì’s surname) signalled Xuē’s lifelong rivalry with his Sūzhōu contemporary. The two physicians lived in adjacent neighbourhoods of Sūzhōu, were of comparable clinical reputation, and were locked in a generation-long rivalry that became a stock element of Sūzhōu medical legend.
The hxwd _000.txt is a header-marker only; the substantive text begins in _001.txt. The casebook is the principal documentary source for Xuē Shēngbái’s clinical practice as distinct from his theoretical works on damp-heat doctrine (the famous Shīrè tiáobiàn 濕熱條辨).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt is a header marker without preface; the prefaces are scattered through _001.txt and later files. No preface in _000.txt.
Abstract
Xuē Xuě 薛雪 (Shēngbái 生白, Yīpiáo 一瓢, 1681–1770, CBDB 438031) was the principal mid-Qīng theorist of shīrè 濕熱 (damp-heat) disorders, whose Shīrè tiáobiàn 濕熱條辨 (alternative title Shīrè bìng piān 濕熱病篇) is — together with 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì’s Wēnrè lùn — one of the two canonical mid-Qīng theoretical statements of the Sūzhōu warm-disease tradition. He came from a Sūzhōu literati family, was a jǔrén of 1721, and combined poetry, painting, and medical practice in the literati-physician (rúyī 儒醫) mode. His clinical fame in mid-eighteenth-century Sūzhōu was on a par with Yè Tiānshì’s, and the two are conventionally paired as the “YèXuē” pair of Sūzhōu warm-disease pioneers.
The casebook was probably compiled by Xuē himself or by his immediate disciples and was widely circulated in the late Qīng (excerpts appear in KR3ep020 Sānjiā yīàn hékè, and the alternate-title work KR3ep103 Yīpiáo yīàn 一瓢醫案 is another redaction of the same material). The composition window 1730–1770 reflects Xuē’s mature clinical decades through to his death year.
The work is the principal documentary source for the mid-eighteenth-century shīrè clinical practice and is a key text in the Sūzhōu warm-disease canon. The studio-name pun on Yè Tiānshì is itself an important piece of evidence for the social texture of mid-eighteenth-century Sūzhōu medical rivalry.
Translations and research
Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge — extensive treatment of Xuē Shēngbái and the Shī-rè tradition. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, pp. 196–203. Scheid, Volker. 2007. Currents of Tradition. Eastland Press.
Links
- See parallel Xuē casebook KR3ep103 Yīpiáo yīàn.
- For the YèXuē rivalry context, 葉桂 and KR3ep020.
- Kanseki DB
- 掃葉莊醫案