Yīpiáo yīàn 一瓢醫案
Medical Casebook of the Master of the One Gourd by 薛雪 Xuē Xuě (zì Shēngbái 生白, hào Yīpiáo 一瓢, 1681–1770), of Sūzhōu 蘇州; compiled by 吳金壽 Wú Jīnshòu (fl. 1820s–1830s).
About the work
A single-juǎn high-Qiánlóng casebook of the great Sūzhōu shīwēn 濕溫 (humid-warm-disease) theorist Xuē Xuě, compiled posthumously by the Sūzhōu medical editor and publisher Wú Jīnshòu as part of his early Dàoguāng-era yīshū (medical-book) recovery project. Xuē is the literary, classicist counterweight to 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì in the standard pairing of high-Qiánlóng Sūzhōu medicine: where Yè is the unparalleled clinician, Xuē is the unparalleled scholar. The Yīpiáo yīàn is the principal record of Xuē’s clinical practice and complements his theoretical work in KR3ea041 Yījīng yuánzhǐ and his foundational 濕熱病篇 (also known as Shīrè tiáobiàn 濕熱條辨).
Prefaces
No preface is preserved in the hxwd source. The _001.txt file in the present edition contains only the bibliographic header; the body text is transmitted under separate editions (most accessibly via the standard modern reprints of Xuē’s collected medical works).
Abstract
Xuē Xuě 薛雪 (1681–1770), zì Shēngbái 生白, hào Yīpiáo 一瓢, of Sūzhōu 蘇州, was the foundational theorist of shīwēn 濕溫 within the Qīng wēnbìng tradition and the most accomplished classical scholar of any mid-Qīng physician — a xiùcái and a substantial poet anthologised in standard Qīng collections (cf. his Yīpiáo shīwén jí 一瓢詩文集). He died in 1770 at the exceptional age of 89.
The Yīpiáo yīàn records selected cases from Xuē’s long Sūzhōu clinical career. The prescriptive signature is consistent with Xuē’s theoretical work: careful differentiation of shīwēn (humid-warm) from fēngwēn (wind-warm), discriminating attention to dampness as a pathogenic factor distinct from heat, and characteristic use of aromatic, light-and-clearing (xīnliáng 辛涼) Sūzhōu wēnbìng formulae. The composition window 1720–1770 brackets Xuē’s mature clinical career through his death.
Transmission was through manuscript copies preserved in the Sūzhōu yīshū milieu. The standard printed edition was produced by Wú Jīnshòu 吳金壽, a Sūzhōu medical editor and disciple of 張文燮 Zhāng Wénxiè, who in dàoguāng xīnmǎo (1831) printed several Xuē / Yè / Miào case-record manuscripts together with KR3eh022 Yīxiào mìchuán (the Yè Tiānshì casebook he had recovered from his fellow-student 徐雪香 Xú Xuěxiāng). The Yīpiáo yīàn belongs to this same Sūzhōu Dàoguāng-era recovery-and-print project.
The catalog meta records Wú Jīnshòu’s zì as 子音 — a possible variant; the standard sources (and his preface to Yīxiào mìchuán) record his zì as 子木 Zǐmù, which is followed in the linked person note.
Translations and research
Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. Routledge — extensive discussion of Xuē Xuě and his Shīrè tiáobiàn within the Sūzhōu wēnbìng tradition; the Yīpiáo yīàn is referenced as the clinical complement. Wú Yángbō 吳楊波 et al. (modern editors). Various reprints of Xuē Xuě’s Yīpiáo yīàn are included in Chinese-medical compendia (e.g. Zhōngyī yīàn xuǎn 中醫醫案選 etc.); see standard PRC textual collections.
Other points of interest
Xuē’s casebook prose is unusually literate by the standards of Qīng case-record writing — a direct reflection of his exceptional classical training. His diagnostic vocabulary and syndrome-discrimination idiom were widely imitated by later Sūzhōu / Wúmén physicians.
Links
- The compilation is closely associated with KR3eh022 Yīxiào mìchuán (Yè Tiānshì casebook, edited by the same Wú Jīnshòu in 1831).
- Related: KR3ea041 Yījīng yuánzhǐ (Xuē’s Nèijīng condensation); Xuē’s foundational 濕熱病篇 濕熱病篇 / 濕熱條辨 (independently transmitted).
- Kanseki DB
- 一瓢醫案