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余無言醫案

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Text ID
KR3ep105
Date
1930–1963
Dynasty
民國

Yú Wúyán yīàn 余無言醫案

Medical Casebook of Yú Wúyán by 余無言 Yú Wúyán (1900–1963), of Fùníng 阜寧 (Jiāngsū).

About the work

A Republican-period casebook of the nationally-famous Shànghǎi jīngfāng pài 經方派 (Classical-Formulas School) physician Yú Wúyán — one of the so-called “three great Shànghǎi authorities” on 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghánlùn / Jīnguì yàolüè tradition (with 曹穎甫 Cáo Yǐngfǔ and 陸淵雷 Lù Yuānléi). The casebook records Yú’s mature internal-medicine practice in the 1930s–1940s Shànghǎi environment and is unusual in its aggressive use of canonical jīngfāng heavy-drug pharmacology (gypsum shígāo 石膏 to the half-jīn, rhubarb dàhuáng 大黃 to the liǎng) against severe febrile and acute internal-disease presentations — a clinical signature that earned him the popular Shànghǎi epithet “Mr Gypsum-and-Rhubarb” (石膏、大黃先生).

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 and editorial paratexts (the prefaces by Dīng Fúbǎo 丁福保, Xiè Guān 謝觀, and Chén Wújiù 陳無咎 that accompany related Yú works) are transmitted in the standard PRC reprint editions.

Abstract

Yú Wúyán 余無言 (1900–1963), of Fùníng 阜寧 (Jiāngsū), came from a distinguished medical family — his father 余奉仙 Yú Fèngxiān had practised for sixty years and was reckoned one of the “Three Great Physicians of Northern Jiāngsū in the late Qīng” (alongside 趙海仙 Zhào Hǎixiān of Xīnghuà 興化 and 張子坪 Zhāng Zǐpíng of Huáiān 淮安). Yú received a classical Confucian primary education in Huáiān (1909–1911), trained in medicine under his father, and began independent practice at age 18.

Influenced by the early-Republican zhōngxī huìtōng 衷中參西 (integrate-Chinese-with-Western) movement, in 1920 he travelled to Shànghǎi to study Western medicine — internal medicine under Yú Fèngbīn 俞鳳賓 and surgery under the German physician Vidofur. After a return to his hometown (1923) and a military medical-officer tour (1927–1929, 2nd Division under Gù Zhùtóng 顧祝同), he settled permanently in Shànghǎi at the end of 1929. In 1930 he was appointed Professor of Surgery at the Shànghǎi College of Chinese Medicine 上海中醫學院 (president Bāo Shìshēng 包識生); he co-founded the Shìjiè yībào 世界醫報 (World Medical Journal) with Zhāng Zànchén 章贊臣 and ran a joint clinic with him from 1931. In 1934 the Central National Medicine Institute appointed him to its editorial committee, where he drafted the nationally-adopted “Surgical Disease Nomenclature Schedule” 外科病名表. In 1936, on the invitation of 章炳麟 Zhāng Tàiyán, he became Director of Surgery at the Sūzhōu National Medicine School 蘇州國醫專科學校, concurrently teaching Shānghánlùn, Jīnguì yàolüè, and TCM surgery at multiple Shànghǎi institutions. He refused to register with the Japanese puppet government during the occupation and closed his school in 1942.

His major scholarly works include the 《傷寒論新義》 Shānghánlùn xīnyì (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1939; nine reprints) and the Jīnguì yàolüè xīnyì 金匱要略新義 (1952) — annotated re-readings of the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng canon, using a fourfold method explicitly set out in his prefaces: “yǐ jīng zhù jīng” (the classic interprets the classic), “yǐ jīng zhù jīng (using the refined to annotate the classic)”, “yǐ xīn zhù jīng” (using new Western-medical knowledge to annotate the classic), and “yǐ xīn xīndé zhù jīng” (using personal clinical insight). The present Yú Wúyán yīàn is the clinical companion to those theoretical works.

After 1949, Yú supported the PRC’s Chinese-medicine policy. In spring 1956 he moved from Shànghǎi to Běijīng to head the editorial office of the Ministry of Health’s Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine 中醫研究院 (later the Literature Research Office), and lectured on Jīnguì yàolüè in the first national training programme for Western-trained physicians studying TCM. In 1958 he transferred to the Běijīng College of Chinese Medicine 北京中醫學院, where he participated in the editorial design of the “Ten Great Classical Medical Works” series. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage caused by hypertension in Běijīng on 7 September 1963.

The composition window 1930–1963 brackets Yú’s Shànghǎi clinical career through the final Běijīng editorial period. The casebook is notable for documenting Yú’s heavy-drug jīngfāng approach (large shígāo doses up to half a jīn, dàhuáng up to a liǎng) in cases of acute fever, ascites from cirrhosis, head-wind, lily-disease (bǎihé bìng 百合病), running-piglet (bēntún 奔豚) syndrome, juézhèng (convulsive) disorders, liver abscess, and intestinal abscess. Each case is recorded in the standardised Republican format inherited from KR3ep099 Quánguó míngyī yànàn lèibiān (Hé Liánchén) — patient identification, disease name, aetiology, symptom-complex, diagnosis, therapeutic principle, prescription, follow-up consultations with revised prescriptions.

Translations and research

Scheid, Volker. 2007. Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006. Eastland Press — substantial discussion of Republican-period jīngfāng pài including Yú Wúyán’s milieu. Andrews, Bridie. 2014. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960. UBC Press — context for Republican-period Shànghǎi medical institutions in which Yú worked. Lei, Sean Hsiang-lin. 2014. Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity. University of Chicago Press — discusses the 1929 “abolish Chinese medicine” proposals against which Yú actively wrote.

Other points of interest

Yú’s writings against the 1929 proposal of the Nationalist government and 余雲岫 Yú Yúnxiù to abolish Chinese medicine were a notable contribution to Republican-period medical-political polemic; his classical-formulas pharmacology, combined with his Western-medical training, made him a particularly difficult opponent for the abolitionists to caricature. His son’s published memoir notes that Yú especially admired 張錫純 Zhāng Xīchún of Tiānjīn and his slogan “中醫科學化、西醫中國化 — Sinicise Chinese medicine through science; Sinicise Western medicine”.

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