Lǐ Guànxiān yīàn 李冠仙醫案
Medical Case Records of Lǐ Guànxiān by 李冠仙 Lǐ Guànxiān (Lǐ Wénróng 李文榮, zì Yúshū 餘墅 / Guànxiān 冠仙, c. 1772 – after 1860), of Dāntú 丹徒 (Zhènjiāng, Jiāngsū).
About the work
A single-juǎn casebook of the early-to-mid-nineteenth-century Dāntú 丹徒 physician Lǐ Guànxiān, written in a notably literary first-person narrative style that reads more like a clinical memoir than a typical fāngàn. Each case sets up a long context (relationship to the patient, prior failed treatments, the author’s reasoning, family resistance, eventual outcome) — making the text a particularly valuable historical source for early-nineteenth-century medical-cultural practice.
Prefaces
The 漢學文典 _000.txt opens directly with the first case (一、田展初內治效), dated Jiāqìng 14 (1809). No separate transmitted preface.
Abstract
Lǐ Guànxiān 李冠仙 (also written 李文榮; zì Yúshū 餘墅, hào Guànxiān 冠仙), of Dāntú 丹徒 (now Zhènjiāng, Jiāngsū), was a contemporary of 王九峰 Wáng Jiǔfēng (KR3ep076, KR3ep077) in the same locality. The opening case dates a clinical encounter to Jiāqìng jiǎyín (1809), giving a confident terminus ante quem for the author’s clinical maturity and a likely birth year around 1772.
The casebook is methodologically distinctive for its insistence on long-form narrative case-presentation and on public criticism of contemporaries’ errors — particularly the routine use of Sǎnfēng (dispersing-the-wind) drugs that over-disperse the yáng in fúxié presentations, and the routine use of cold-decongestant drugs in cases of dàiyáng (戴陽, “yáng-wearing”) false-heat. The first case is a paradigmatic dàiyáng presentation in a young woman, treated successfully against intense family resistance with Zhēnwǔ tāng (containing Fùzǐ).
The composition window 1809–1860 reflects Lǐ’s mature clinical decades through to a likely post-1860 compilation by his disciples.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- Contemporary Zhènjiāng / Dāntú casebooks: KR3ep076, KR3ep077 Wáng Jiǔfēng yīàn.
- Kanseki DB
- 李冠仙醫案