Wángshì yīàn xùbiān 王氏醫案續編
Medical Case Records of Wáng, Continuing Series by 王士雄 Wáng Shìxióng (Mèngyīng 孟英, 1808–1868), compiled by his disciple 張鴻 Zhāng Hóng.
About the work
An eight-juǎn continuation of the Wángshì yīàn trilogy, documenting Wáng Mèngyīng’s clinical practice during and after the Tàipíng war years (1850–1864) when he was displaced from Hángzhōu to Shànghǎi. The text was compiled by Wáng’s disciple Zhāng Hóng 張鴻.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a bá (跋, postface), unsigned but in Wáng’s voice. The postface is a famous extended polemical defense of Wáng’s clinical methodology against the criticism that “Mèngyīng’s case-records demonstrate excessive use of cooling-cleansing prescriptions and inadequate use of warming-tonifying prescriptions, so his clinical method is biased.” Wáng responds with a memorable analogy from the Zǔshì jiāxùn: “Fire is fierce; the people behold it and fear it; therefore few die of it. Water is weak; the people accept it and play with it; therefore many die of it.” So with drugs: people fear cooling-cleansing prescriptions but accept warming-tonifying prescriptions, even though the actual lethal rates are the opposite of intuition. Wáng then gives a moving family-history of relatives killed by mistaken wēnbǔ prescribing — uncle, mother’s-side cousin, first son, second son — and asserts that for his third son’s zhìlì (滯痢, stagnant dysentery), he turned decisively against contemporary pediatric warming-tonifying practice and used xījiǎo (rhinoceros-horn) cooling instead, saving the child.
Abstract
The text is methodologically significant for its sustained doctrinal-polemical voice and its open documentation of Wáng’s family medical experience as evidence for his clinical position. The cases preserve detailed records of wēnbìng / shīrè (warm-disease and damp-heat) presentations through the Tàipíng-war epidemic period in Hángzhōu and Shànghǎi, making the text an important source for the medical history of the Tàipíng war.
The composition window 1850–1864 brackets the war period documented in the cases. The compilation by Zhāng Hóng was completed in the late 1860s, after Wáng’s death in 1868. Wáng’s disciple Zhāng Hóng 張鴻 is otherwise of obscure biographical record.
Translations and research
Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. Routledge. Hinrichs and Barnes 2013, pp. 224–226.