Yī yī yī 醫醫醫
Treating-Treating-Physicians (or, “Doctor-Doctoring the Doctors”, “A Tripled Sigh for the Physicians”) by 孟今氏 Mèng Jīnshì (the hào under which the author signs his own preface; preface by 徐紹楨 Xú Shàozhēn calls him “Mèng Jīn of Fēngbā” 孟今於風八), a late-Qīng / Xuān-tǒng-era physician-and-civil-administrator.
About the work
A single-juǎn polemical treatise produced in the final months of the Qīng dynasty — the very late-Qīng intervention into the post-1905 reform debates over the establishment of medical-education institutions and the role of Chinese vs. Western medicine in the Late-Qīng xīnzhèng 新政 reform programme. The provocative title is a triple-pun on yī 醫 (“medicine”/“physician”) and its homophonic yī 噫 (“alas!“): “A Sigh-Sigh-Sigh, the YīYīYī, the discipline-of-medicine-treating-the-physicians” — i.e. an examination of what it would take to treat the disease of contemporary Chinese physicians themselves before they could be entrusted with treating others. The author’s central argument — paralleling the contemporary New-Policy debates — is that medical reform must precede educational-institutional reform: it is futile to establish medical schools (the yīxué táng 醫學堂 that the Xuān-tǒng-era reformers were proposing) when the underlying culture of medicine has become “the refuge of those who failed in classical learning and could not find other employment” (dúshū bùchéng tāyè bùjiù zhě zhī táoshū 讀書不成他業不就者之逋逃藪). The work proposes a programme of moral-and-institutional reform of the physician class as the necessary precondition for medical-educational reform, framed in self-consciously zhèngzhì 政治 political language with parallels to military-administrative renewal (the author had served as a senior military administrator before retirement to medicine). The work is methodologically interesting as a late-Qīng / Xuāntǒng jīngshì 經世 reform treatise applied to medicine — a genre that prefigures the Republican-era zhōngyī cúnfèi 中醫存廢 (preserve-or-abolish Chinese medicine) debates of the 1920s.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with the preface by 徐紹楨 Xú Shàozhēn (zì Gùqīng 固卿, 1861–1936) — the prominent late-Qīng / Republican-era military governor-general and reformer, signed Xuāntǒng jìyuán suìcì jǐyǒu shíèryuè, xièshǔ Jiāngběi tídū jìmíng tídū SūSōngzhèn zǒngbīng tǒnglǐng Jiāngnán quánshěng liànbīng dìjiǔzhèn tǒngzhì Pányú jǔrén Xú Shàozhēn Gùqīng bàixù yú Jiāngnán lùjūn yíngcì 宣統紀元歲次己酉十二月卸署江北提督記名提督蘇松鎮總兵統領江南全省練兵第九鎮統制番禺舉人徐紹楨固卿拜序於江南陸軍營次 (twelfth month of Xuāntǒng 1 = January 1910, signed at the Jiāngnán Army camp). Xú’s preface gives an autobiographical narrative of his medical-classical friendship with the author dating back to his Guìlín 桂林 boyhood, lists the author’s prior scholarly works (Sìshū zhìyí 四書質疑, Xiàojīng zhìyí 孝經質疑, Sānguó zhì zhìyí 三國志質疑, Suànxué rùmén 算學入門, Gōugǔ jīngyì 勾股精義, Jìngmíngguǎn shī gǔwéncí jí 靖冥館詩古文詞集), and frames the Yī yī yī as the synthesis of the author’s classical-and-medical learning into a Xuān-tǒng-era reform programme. The author’s self-preface, signed Xuāntǒng jìyuán suì jǐyǒu qiū bāyuè Mèng Jīnshì zhuàn 宣統紀元歲己酉秋八月孟今氏撰 (autumn / eighth month of Xuāntǒng 1 = September 1909), develops the yī yī yī triple-pun and frames the work as a response to the high-court reformers who had repeatedly approached him to lead the establishment of a new medical-school institution.
Abstract
The author signs as Mèng Jīnshì 孟今氏 (a hào-form) and is identified in Xú Shàozhēn’s preface as “Mèng Jīn of Fēngbā” 孟今於風八. Standard biographical-reference identification is difficult: the personal name is hard to recover with confidence from the available evidence. Internal evidence (the prior scholarly works listed by Xú, the jǔrén status implied by association with the Sìshū zhìyí / Xiàojīng zhìyí tradition, the lifelong friendship with Xú Shàozhēn dating to a Guìlín 桂林 boyhood) places him as a Guangxi-region jǔrén of the second half of the nineteenth century, with significant administrative service and a late turn to medicine. The composition date 1909 is precisely fixed by the autumn 1909 self-preface. The work was almost immediately printed and circulated through the Jiāngnán military-and-medical networks of Xú Shàozhēn’s influence.
Historiographical interest: the Yī yī yī is one of the earliest substantial Chinese-language reform programmes for medicine that simultaneously defends the integrity of the classical Chinese medical tradition (the author identifies the Yìjīng / LíngSù foundation as the proper basis) and argues for radical institutional reform of the contemporary physician class. This combination — classical-medical conservatism plus institutional radicalism — is the position that the Republican-era moderate zhōngyī reformers (including 任應秋 Rén Yìngqiū and 張錫純 Zhāng Xīchún) would later develop, and the Yī yī yī is a key precursor text for that programme. Xú Shàozhēn’s preface frames the work in language (“空前絕後之論” “an unprecedented and unsurpassable argument”) that may be regarded as over-confident but signals the seriousness with which the late-Qīng reform circle received the work.
Translations and research
No European-language translation located. For the broader late-Qīng / Republican zhōngyī cúnfèi debate to which the Yī yī yī is a precursor, see Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity (Chicago, 2014); Bridie J. Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC Press, 2014); Ralph Croizier, Traditional Medicine in Modern China (Harvard, 1968).
Other points of interest
The Xú Shàozhēn who provides the 1909 preface is the well-known Pānyú 番禺 (Guǎngdōng) jǔrén and military governor who would in 1911 lead the Nánjīng-region Republican forces in the Xīnhài revolution against the Qīng — the Yī yī yī preface thus comes from a figure in the very final months before the Qīng collapse, with the political-reform framing of the medical-reform argument carrying particular weight in light of subsequent events.