Quánguó míngyī yànàn lèibiān 全國名醫驗案類編
Topically Arranged Compendium of Verified Case Records by Renowned Physicians from across the Nation edited by 何廉臣 Hé Liánchén (1861–1929), of Shàoxīng 紹興 (Zhèjiāng).
About the work
A fourteen-juǎn Republican-period nationwide compendium of verified clinical case-records solicited from physicians across China, edited by the great Shàoxīng / Yuèzhōng medical reformer Hé Liánchén. The work represents the most ambitious Republican-period attempt to document and standardise contemporary clinical practice through a nationally-distributed case-collection project — an institutional precursor to the modern “evidence-based” case-report literature in Chinese medicine.
Prefaces
Preface not preserved in the hxwd source; the _000.txt file is absent and the text opens directly with the first volume’s first case under 第一卷 風淫病案 — Diseases of Wind-Excess.
Abstract
Hé Liánchén 何廉臣 (1861–1929), of Shàoxīng 紹興 (Zhèjiāng), was the principal Republican-period editor of the Yuèzhōng salvage-and-modernisation publishing project at the Shào-xīng-based Shàozhōu yīyào yánjiūsuǒ (Shàozhōu Medical Society) and the SānSān yībào 三三醫報 (a Republican-period medical journal). The Quánguó míngyī yànàn lèibiān was published by Hé in the 1920s as a nationwide solicited-collection compilation, with cases organised by syndrome category.
The case-records follow a strictly formalised structure: patient identification (病者: name, age, address), disease name (病名), etiology (原因), symptom-complex (證候), diagnostic findings (診斷: pulse-and-tongue, examination details), therapeutic principle (療法), prescription (處方), and follow-up consultations (復診 / 三診 / 四診…) with revised prescriptions. The first case (周小農 of Wúxī, treating a 4-year-old with màofēng jiājīng — wind-stroke with sudden-fright) is an excellent specimen of the standardised case-format.
The contributors include the major Republican-period clinicians from across the country — 周小農 Zhōu Xiǎonóng (Wúxī), 王芸如 Wáng Yùnyú (Bīnjiāng), 丁甘仁 Dīng Gānrén (Shànghǎi), and many others. The text is therefore not a single-author casebook but a Republican-period collective medical-knowledge production project, making it the principal early-twentieth-century systematic record of regional Chinese-medical practice.
The composition window 1920–1929 brackets the editorial period through Hé’s death in 1929.
Translations and research
Andrews, Bridie. 2014. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. UBC Press — substantial treatment of Hé Lián-chén and the Republican-period reform. Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin. 2014. Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity. University of Chicago Press — discusses the Yuè-zhōng salvage project.
Other points of interest
The standardised case-record format introduced by this compilation became a model for twentieth-century Chinese-medical case-publication practice. Modern Chinese-medical journals continue to use a similar structural skeleton for their case-reports.
Links
- Contemporary Republican-period casebooks: KR3ep070 Jīngfāng shíyàn lù (Cáo Yǐngfǔ), KR3ep024 Dīng Gānrén yīàn, KR3ep059 Wáng Zhòngqí yīàn.
- Kanseki DB
- 全國名醫驗案類編