Tuīpéng wùyǔ 推篷寤語
Push-Awning Awakened Discourses (Medical Extracts) by 李豫亨 Lǐ Yùhēng (Yuánjiàn 元薦, fl. 1530s–1571), of Sōngjiāng 松江.
About the work
A single-juǎn extract of medical-relevant material from the late-Míng polymath miscellany Tuīpéng wùyǔ 推篷寤語 (originally 9 juǎn + 1 juǎn of correspondence on learning = 10 juǎn), composed by Lǐ Yùhēng during his 1570 boat-journey from Sūzhōu to Beijing for an appointment as Hónglúsì 鴻臚寺 officer. The full original work covers nine sections including Cèwēi 測微 (probing the subtle), Yuánjiào 原教 (origins of religion), Běnshù 本術 (foundations of technique), Huánzhēn 還真 (return to authenticity), Dìngyí 訂疑 (settling doubt), and Pìzhèng 毗政 (governance). The Republican editor — through whose hands the medical-relevant extract has been preserved — has selected the Yuánjiào 原教 and Běnshù 本術 sections as relating to medicine.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a Republican-period editorial preface, unsigned but in the editorial voice of 裘吉生 Qiú Jíshēng’s series of medical-historical compilations. The preface describes Lǐ Yùhēng’s polymath autobiography: a Sōngjiāng literatus who, “from youth, became infatuated with broad reading, started by following a teacher in writing poetry, then learnt prayer-rituals when his prayers worked, then learnt military strategy from his father (a HúGuǎng vice-commissioner who suppressed the Dàwéi 大溈 bandits in 1536), then jǔyè (examination essays), then calligraphy from 文徵明 Wén Zhēngmíng and the Wén-circle, then antiquities-and-paintings, then yǎngshēng (life-nurturing) Daoist practices, then medicine-divination-astrology” — a remarkable late-Míng cultivated polymath. He failed at the imperial examinations and finally entered office via the Hónglúsì appointment in Lóngqìng gēngwǔ (1570). The book was printed in Lóngqìng xīnwèi (1571).
Abstract
Lǐ Yùhēng 李豫亨 (CBDB 128023, zì Yuánjiàn 元薦, dynasty 19 = Míng), native of Sōngjiāng 松江 (Yúnjiān, now Shànghǎi). A late-Míng polymath of the Sōngjiāng cultivated-gentry milieu of the 文徵明 Wén Zhēngmíng circle. His Tuīpéng wùyǔ is a bǐjì-style miscellany covering literature, religion, divination, governance, and natural philosophy — including substantial medical-theoretical material that the Republican-period editor extracted as the present text.
The composition window is precisely 1570–1571 (the Lóngqìng gēngwǔ boat-journey through the Lóngqìng xīnwèi printing). The medical sections are theoretical-cosmological rather than clinical-case-record — a quasi-xúnyī (cultivated-amateur-physician) discourse on canonical-medical foundations and yǎngshēng (life-nurturing). The Republican-period preface argues that Lǐ’s work exemplifies the broad late-Míng cultivated-gentry medical sensibility that the early-twentieth-century reformers wished to recover against the contemporary tendency of Chinese-medical practitioners to “stick to one school’s words” (墨守一家言).
The text is in some sense out-of-genre for the KR3ep (medical case-records) division: it is a bǐjì miscellany rather than a casebook proper, and survives in the medical-relevant extract only because of 裘吉生 Qiú Jíshēng’s Republican-period editorial program.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located for the medical extract specifically.
Links
- Other late-Míng polymath miscellanies with medical sections.
- Kanseki DB
- 推篷寤語