Wúyī huìjiǎng 吳醫彙講
Anthology of Wúregion Medical Discussions edited by 唐大烈 Táng Dàliè (zì Lìsān 立三, hào Wènxīn 問心, late Qiánlóng / early Jiāqìng physician of Chángzhōu 長洲 / Sūzhōu).
About the work
A landmark eleven-juǎn periodical-style anthology — frequently identified by modern scholars as the first Chinese medical journal — compiling clinical-theoretical essays from forty-some contemporary Sūzhōu-region physicians of the late Qiánlóng era. The work was issued by Táng Dàliè from his Sūzhōu Wènxīn cǎotáng 問心草堂 studio in eleven sequential cuts (the canonical eleven juǎn correspond to the original sequential issues), and the editorial principle is the systematic solicitation of brief contributions from active Sūzhōu physicians on whatever doctrinal-clinical topic each contributor wished to address — yielding a remarkable cross-section of late-Qián-lóng-era Sūzhōu / Wú-region medical thought. Contributors include the principal physicians of the late 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì 葉天士 generation and their successors; the work is the principal external witness to the doctrinal disputes of late-Qián-lóng / early-Jiā-qìng Sūzhōu medicine. The structure is non-hierarchical and not classified by topic but by contributor — a feature that prefigures the modern medical-journal form rather than the encyclopaedia / yīàn / yīhuà / yīlùn forms of the earlier Qīng tradition.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with Táng Dàliè’s self-preface, signed Qiánlóng rénzǐ zhòngqiū Chángzhōu Táng Dàliè Lìsānshì shū yú Wènxīn cǎotáng 乾隆壬子仲秋長洲唐大烈立三氏書於問心草堂 — i.e. mid-autumn of Qiánlóng 57 = 1792, written at the Wènxīn cǎotáng in Chángzhōu (Sūzhōu). The preface frames the work as a generic-historical successor to 江瓘 Jiāng Guàn’s Míngyī lèiàn 名醫類案 and 羅美 Luó Měi’s Yīhuì cuì 醫匯粹 selection — both earlier compilations that anthologised case-records — but with a critical methodological innovation: rather than excerpting from existing books, Táng solicits yet-unprinted essays from his contemporary physician-friends, thereby preserving for posterity the yīlùn of physicians who would otherwise leave no written record. The preface invokes the precedent of the Kāngxī-era 過繹之 Guò Yìzhī Wúzhōng yīàn 吳中醫案 as the institutional precedent for the Sūzhōu-region focus, identifies several lineages of the Sūzhōu medical world (the Hán 韓 brothers, the Gě 葛 father-and-son, 凌新甫 Líng Xīnfǔ and 葉啟東 Yè Qǐdōng = Yè Guì’s disciples in the early-Qīng generation, Shēngzhōu 生洲 = 陸耘 Lù Yùn and Lù Lù 路玉 = 張璐 Zhāng Lù in the slightly-later generation, 袁儀 Yuán Yí = the Yìnjīcǎo 印機草 author, and the Dúshūjì 讀書記 author Yóu Zàijīng 尤在涇 = 尤怡 Yóu Yí), and closes with the work’s editorial commitment to solicit contributions broadly and to publish whatever quality material is offered without restriction of length or doctrinal position.
Abstract
Táng Dàliè 唐大烈 (zì Lìsān 立三, fl. late Qiánlóng — early Jiāqìng, c. 1750s–1800s), physician of Chángzhōu / Sūzhōu, is the editorial figure behind the Wúyī huìjiǎng. The catalog meta lists him conventionally as Qīng without finer dating. Internal evidence (the 1792 preface, the documented serial cuts running through the 1790s into the early Jiāqìng era) places the editorial work principally in the period 1792–1801. The composition window 1792–1801 reflects this range and accepts the bracket as wide enough to cover the eleven juǎn of sequential publication.
Historiographical importance: the Wúyī huìjiǎng is the most-cited single witness to the late-Qián-lóng Sūzhōu medical world — the principal regional center of Chinese medicine in this period — and is conventionally identified by historians of Chinese medicine as the first Chinese medical periodical, structurally distinct from the case-record (yīàn), discourse-collection (yīhuà), and encyclopaedic (yīshū) forms of earlier Qīng compilations. The journal-like organisation (contributor-keyed rather than topic-keyed) and the systematic solicitation of fresh material from working physicians prefigure the late-Qīng / Republican Chinese medical-journal tradition. The principal scholarly engagement is via the Zhōngguó yīxué dàcídiǎn 中國醫學大辭典 and the Republican-era reprints by Shànghǎi ChángWúyī commercial publishers.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Wúyī huìjiǎng located. The work is treated in Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (UC Berkeley, 2010), as a major late-Qīng source for women’s-medicine practice in the Lower Yangtze; on the Sūzhōu medical world more broadly see Marta Hanson, “The Significance of Manchu Medical Sources in the Late Qing”, Asian Medicine 3 (2007), and Bridie J. Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC Press, 2014).
Other points of interest
The work’s identification as “first Chinese medical journal” is conventional in modern Chinese medical historiography but is more strictly a first periodical-style anthology of newly-solicited contemporary contributions — a distinction that matters because earlier compilations (e.g. the Sòng-period Tàipíng huìmín héjì júfāng) had been issued as serial publications but with different editorial logic. The novelty of the Wúyī huìjiǎng is the author-keyed serial solicitation organisational structure that prefigures modern academic-medical-journal practice.
Links
- Táng Dàliè (zh)
- Wènxīn cǎotáng — Táng Dàliè’s Sūzhōu studio.
- Kanseki DB
- 吳醫彙講 (jicheng.tw)