Duìshān yīhuà 對山醫話
Duìshān’s Medical Discourses by 毛祥麟 Máo Xiánglín (hào Duìshān 對山), Qīng physician of the Dàoguāng — Tóngzhì era; the modern recension incorporates a Bǔbiān 補編 prepared by 曹炳章 Cáo Bǐngzhāng of Yīnxiàn 鄞縣 / Níngbō from Máo’s Mòyú lù 墨余錄 talking-of-medicine entries.
About the work
A four-juǎn collection of medical discourses in the mature yīhuà form: each entry a self-contained essay anchored in a clinical case or doctrinal anecdote, with extended commentary from the editor “Liǎngcāngshì” 兩蒼氏 (a recurrent annotator-voice that closes most entries with critical reflection). Máo’s anecdotal scope ranges across the high-Qīng medical world: the celebrated 蘇州 vs. 青浦 controversy between 徐秉楠 Xú Bǐngnán and 何書田 Hé Shūtián over the Liú 劉 youth’s liǎnggǎn shānghán 兩感傷寒, the 李中梓 Lǐ Zhōngzǐ / 王肯堂 Wáng late-Míng exchange (Wáng’s píxiè 脾泄 in old age treated by Lǐ with bādòu downward-purgation against the consensus of contemporary physicians), the celebrated 姚蒙 Yáo Méng diagnostic miracle (the tàisù mài 太素脈 prediction of 鄒來學 Zōu Láixué’s death by day-count after a left-關 slippery-and-soft pulse reading), the long anecdote on conversations with 袁綺香 Yuán Qǐxiāng at Suǐlǐ in 1844 (jiǎchén) on the proper construction of clinical formulae, and the celebrated late-Qīng Western-medicine essays on 古西醫 古 (“the old Western-medicine practitioners”) which preserve the earliest substantial Chinese-language descriptions of Western surgical procedure and the tīngfèi mù 聽肺木 stethoscope. The Cáo Bǐngzhāng Bǔbiān preserves additional Máo material from his Mòyú lù 墨余錄 (Inkstone Leftovers) — the principal vehicle for Máo’s other talking-of-medicine entries.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with the Bǔbiān preface by 曹炳章 Cáo Bǐngzhāng of Yīnxiàn 鄞縣 (the founder of the Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng 中國醫學大成 anthology in 1936), introducing the supplementary Máo material from Mòyú lù and the Āncāngshì 兩蒼氏 / Duìshān yīhuà canonical corpus.
Abstract
Máo Xiánglín 毛祥麟 (hào Duìshān 對山), Qīng physician of the Dàoguāng — Tóngzhì era (1820s–1870s), is documented within Chinese medical-biographical reference works through this work and through the parallel Mòyú lù 墨余錄 miscellany. The catalog meta dates him conventionally to the Qīng. Internal evidence (the jiǎchén 甲辰 date of his Suǐlǐ visit = 1844 in the Yuán Qǐxiāng tányī entry, his references to early Western medical practice in Shànghǎi which require post-1840 dating, his use of cow-pox vaccination terminology pointing to mid-nineteenth-century reception) is consistent with a working life fl. 1820s–1870s. The composition window 1840–1870 reflects the documented activity range and accepts the bracket as wide enough to encompass the bulk of the Duìshān yīhuà essays without committing to a single composition year. The Cáo Bǐngzhāng Bǔbiān is a separable 1930s layer.
The work’s interest is principally as a high-Qīng / early-late-Qīng anecdotal medical history: it preserves materials of considerable historical value (e.g. the XúHé pulse-vs-symptom controversy is one of the better-attested mid-Qīng zhāomù disagreements), records mid-Qīng debates about practical formulary construction (the Yuán Qǐxiāng dialogue is a sustained late-Qīng reflection on the limits of the doctrinal-formulary tradition), and engages with the early Chinese reception of Western medicine (the gǔxīyī 古西醫 entry is one of the earliest Chinese-language attempts to evaluate Western surgery and equipment from within a literate Chinese medical position). The “Liǎngcāngshì” critical-commentator voice is functionally identical to a modern editorial annotator: the entries are not pseudo-anonymous but represent an established late-Qīng convention for self-distancing critical commentary.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Duìshān yīhuà located. On Cáo Bǐngzhāng’s editorial work and the broader Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng programme see Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse (Chicago, 2014). On the early Chinese reception of Western medicine to which the Duìshān yīhuà witnesses, see Bridie J. Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC Press, 2014).