Dùnyuán yīàn 遯園醫案
Medical Case Records of the Retreat Garden by 蕭琢如 Xiāo Zhuórú (zì Bózhāng 伯章, 1860–1932), of Húnán.
About the work
A two-juǎn Republican-period casebook of the Húnán scholar-physician Xiāo Zhuórú, preface dated 1922 at the Shuǐkǒushān Mining Bureau (水口山礦局之東軒) where he was working in a non-medical official capacity. The text is distinguished by its strongly classicist 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (Shānghán lùn 傷寒論) orientation and its sharp rhetorical voice — atypical of the more eclectic late-Qīng / Republican JiāngZhè fāngàn tradition.
Prefaces
The _000.txt carries the zìxù dated gōngyuán yī jiǔ èr èr nián xiàlì rénxū shí yuè shuò (1 October 1922 in the western calendar, rénxū in the Chinese), signed Dùnyuán Xiāo Bózhāng 遯園蕭伯章 (Xiāo Zhuórú’s zì). The preface argues that “the famous physician is like the famous prime minister” and traces his own self-education through the Língshū 靈樞, Sùwèn 素問, Shānghán lùn 傷寒論, and Jīnguì 金匱, under his cross-cousin 彭厚生 Péng Hòushēng. He pronounces a famous adverbial verdict: 仲景而後無完醫 (“after Zhòngjǐng there has been no complete physician”) — the rhetorical signature of his classicist position.
Abstract
Xiāo Zhuórú 蕭琢如, zì Bózhāng 伯章, hào Dùnyuán 遯園 (the “Retreat Garden”), 1860–1932, of Xiāngxiāng 湘鄉 (Húnán). A late-Qīng / Republican scholar-official-physician who held official posts in Húnán mining and educational administration while maintaining a parallel clinical practice. He is one of the principal twentieth-century Shānghán classicists in the Húnán medical tradition, alongside the slightly older 劉孟雁 Liú Mèngyán and the slightly later 譚次仲 Tán Cízhòng.
The casebook is methodologically distinctive for its rigorous Shānghán liùjīng (six-channel) diagnostic framing — every case is explicitly oriented to one of the six classical channels with strict adherence to Zhāng Zhòngjǐng prescription-protocols, including unusually frequent use of Fùzǐ (Aconite) and Gānjiāng (dried ginger) for yángxū presentations that contemporary JiāngZhè-school physicians would have treated with light-cooling drugs. This positions Xiāo as a Húnán classical-formula school (經方派) ancestor, an important counter-current to the dominant late-Qīng 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng / Yè-school wēnbìng tradition.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- Contemporary Húnán classical-formula school casebooks; comparable Republican classicist works: KR3ep070 Jīngfāng shíyàn lù by 曹穎甫 Cáo Yǐngfǔ.
- Kanseki DB
- 遯園醫案