葉選醫衡

Yèxuǎn yīhéng 葉選醫衡

A Medical Scale, Selected by Yè [Tiānshì] attributed to 葉桂 Yè Guì (zì Tiānshì 天士, 1666–1745), the Sūzhōu master who founded the Wēnbìng school. The 1894 / 1910 imprint is the work of 繆萼聊 Miù Èliáo of Chángshú as printer-republisher, with editorial collation by 顧夢熊 Gù Mèngxióng (zì Wèichuān 渭川) of the Shànghǎi Medical Research Institute.

About the work

A short two-juǎn compilation of clinical-theoretical aphorisms (lùnzhèng 論症, lùnmài 論脈, lùnzhì 論治) on disease, pulse, and treatment, “selected” (xuǎn 選) — i.e. anthologised with editorial discrimination — from earlier medical authorities and presented under Yè Tiānshì’s name as a balance-and-measure (héng 衡) for the clinician’s reasoning. The work entered Chinese circulation as a Qiánlóng-era compilation but was lost in the Tàipíng-era destruction of its blocks (Géngshēn zhī biàn 庚申之變, i.e. the 1860 fall of Sūzhōu, mentioned by the 曹元恆 Cáo Yuánhéng preface), and survives in the present recension only because Miù Èliáo of Chángshú had retained a manuscript copy that he reprinted at Sūzhōu in 1894 (Guāngxù 20 jiǎwǔ 甲午), with editorial preparation by the Húzhōu physician 曹元恆 Cáo Yuánhéng and the Jiāngyīn Wēnbìng-school physician 柳寶詒 Liǔ Bǎoyí (zì Gǔsūn 谷孫). A second-stage Shànghǎi lithographic edition prepared at the Medical Research Institute by Gù Mèngxióng with prefatory matter by 金文鍓 Jīn Wénzhōng followed in 1910 (Xuāntǒng 2). The compositional layering is therefore in three stages: (a) an original Yè-attributed compilation conventionally dated to Yè’s mature career (post-1740), (b) the MiùCáoLiǔ 1894 recovery cut, (c) the Gù 1910 collated lithographic edition. The jicheng.tw digital exemplar follows the 1910 Shànghǎi recension.

Prefaces

Five prefaces are preserved in the jicheng.tw text, in order: 曹元恆 Cáo Yuánhéng (1890, signed Guāngxù shíliùnián, Wúxiàn Cáo Yuánhéng 光緒十六年吳縣曹元恆) — the Sūzhōu Wúxiàn physician’s lament for the Tàipíng-era destruction of medical-scholarship blocks and his case for the Miù printing; 柳寶詒 Liǔ Bǎoyí (1894, signed Guāngxù èrshínián, Jiāngyīn hòuxué Liǔ Bǎoyí 光緒二十年江陰後學柳寶詒) — the Wēnbìng-school physician’s reading of the work as continuous with Yè’s authentic Wēnrè lùn 溫熱論 and discontinuous with the Jǐngyuè fāhuī 景岳發揮 and Běncǎo jīngzhù 本草經注 (whose Yè attribution Liǔ doubts); 繆萼聊 Miù Èliáo (1894, signed Guāngxù èrshínián, Yúshān Miù Èliáo zhì yú Yīyuán 光緒二十年虞山繆萼聊識於伊園) — the ChángshúYúshān printer’s account of his discovery of the manuscript through his friend 呂梅卿 Lǚ Méiqīng of Huìjī; 金文鍓 Jīn Wénzhōng (1910, signed Xuāntǒng èrnián, Yuánhé Yìshēng Jīn Wénzhōng 宣統二年元和繹聲金文鍓) — preface for the Shànghǎi lithographic edition; 顧夢熊 Gù Mèngxióng (1910, signed Xuāntǒng èrnián, Mènghé Gù Mèngxióng Wèichuān 宣統二年孟河顧夢熊渭川) — the Mènghé-school physician’s reading of the work as a useful introduction not only to herbal practice but also to acupuncture-moxibustion training. A short self-preface “attributed to Yè Tiānshì” — placed at the end of the front matter and signed Gǔ Wú Yè Guì Tiānshì shū 古吳葉桂天士書 — closes the paratexts and supplies the work’s defining metaphor: contemporary physicians’ diagnostic-and-therapeutic procedures must be standardised on the héng 衡 balance of 張仲景 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng, 劉完素 Liú Wánsù, 李杲 Lǐ Gǎo, 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhēng, 張從正 Zhāng Cóngzhèng, et al.

Abstract

The work’s authenticity as a Yè Tiānshì composition is the principal scholarly question. Liǔ Bǎoyí’s 1894 preface treats it as authentically Yè (the Wēnrè lùn and the Yīhéng are the two works he is prepared to accept), but the Yīhéng is conspicuously absent from the standard early-Qīng listings of Yè’s works in KR3ep002 Xiānzhé yīhuà (Asada Sōhaku 1879) and in the contemporary Yīàn cúnzhēn 醫案存真 compilations. The “self-preface” is short, conventional, and metaphorically focused on the héng concept rather than on the specifics of Yè’s Wēnbìng doctrine — features that would be equally compatible with a respectful late-Qián-lóng (post-Yè) discipular compilation issued under Yè’s name. The cautious bracket notBefore 1740 (Yè’s late mature period, the earliest defensible date for a work bearing his self-preface) — notAfter 1894 (the Miù printing terminus) is followed here; the strong probability is that the original compilation is a late-Qiánlóng / early-Jiāqìng work edited within Yè’s discipular line but not directly by Yè.

The substantive content is doctrinally moderate Wēnbìng synthesis: discussion of pulse interpretation (the conventional six-position fúchénchíshù framework with extensive citation of 劉完素 Liú Héjiān and 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī), case-discrimination of wēnrè bìng 溫熱病 from shānghán 傷寒, the heretical 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn defence of yáng-tonifying that Liǔ Bǎoyí’s preface treats as the precise yīhéng-failure the work aims to correct. The work’s interest is partly historiographical (as a window into the Yè-attribution traditions of nineteenth-century Wēnbìng-school polemic) and partly clinical-pedagogical (as a still-readable distillation of mid-Qīng pulse-and-prescription practice for non-specialist Confucian-scholar readers).

The catalog meta gives no author. The conventional Chinese-language reception treats the work as Yè-attributed; the present entry follows that attribution while flagging the late-Qīng-Republican layering. CBDB lists Yè Tiānshì (Yè Guì) — see person note 葉桂 for the lifedates 1666–1745.

Translations and research

No substantial European-language secondary literature located. On Yè Tiānshì’s broader Wēnbìng corpus see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011), pp. 137–148; on Liǔ Bǎoyí and the Jiāngyīn / Mènghé Wēnbìng inheritance see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007), ch. 4.

Links

• Yè Tiānshì (zh)
• Liǔ Bǎoyí — see person note 柳寶詒.
• Kanseki DB
• 葉選醫衡 (jicheng.tw)