Cúncúnzhāi yīhuà gǎo 存存齋醫話稿
Draft Medical Discourses from the Cúncún Studio by 趙晴初 Zhào Qíngchū, late-Qīng physician of the Hángzhōu medical circle, with a substantial appended Wúshān sǎnjì 吳山散記 by 沈仲圭 Shěn Zhòngguī (1908–1986) added for the 1936 Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng 中國醫學大成 edition.
About the work
A four-juǎn collection of late-Qīng medical-discourse essays in the mature yīhuà form, accompanied in the standard recension by a substantial appended Wúshān sǎnjì 吳山散記 supplement of twenty-five additional essays composed by Shěn Zhòngguī 沈仲圭 in the early Republican era and added to the 1936 Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng anthology cut. The Zhào Qíngchū main text addresses the standard late-Qīng yīhuà topics — clinical observations, materia-medica reflections, criticism of contemporary medical practice — from the perspective of a Hángzhōu mid-to-late nineteenth century physician embedded in the Wēnbìng-school clinical tradition. The Shěn Zhòngguī appendix is methodologically interesting as one of the earliest substantial Republican-era integrations of Western pharmaco-medical knowledge with the yīhuà tradition: Shěn’s twenty-five essays incorporate references to (a) the neurasthenia category and its sleep-disorder presentations, with practical bedside-management instructions in the Western style; (b) Western pharmaceutical preparations including the laxative Cascara tablets; (c) early-Republican statistical-experimental work on cholera prophylaxis; and (d) systematic referencing of Western medical literature alongside the Chinese tradition. The 沈 appendix is dated bǐngzǐ 丙子 jìchūn 季春 = late spring of 1936; the underlying Zhào main text dates from the late nineteenth century.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with Shěn Zhòngguī’s Wúshān sǎnjì xiǎoyǐn 吳山散記小引 (signed Bǐngzǐ jìchūn GǔHáng Shěn Zhòngguī zhì yú Wúshān jìlú 丙子季春古杭沈仲圭志於吳山寄廬 = late spring 1936) — recording Shěn’s training in 1918 (mín 7) under the Hángzhōu physician 王香岩 Wáng Xiāngyán (his teacher), his study of the Yījīng yuánzhǐ 醫經原旨 and Nánjīng jīngshì 難經經釋 (under master’s instruction), his subsequent teaching posts in Shànghǎi and Hángzhōu medical schools, and the gathering of the Wúshān 吳山 essays into the appendix to Zhào’s Cúncúnzhāi yīhuà gǎo for publication in the Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng. The Zhào main-text preface is not preserved in the present jicheng.tw exemplar.
Abstract
Zhào Qíngchū 趙晴初, late-Qīng physician of the Hángzhōu Wēnbìng-school inheritance, is not heavily documented in standard reference works; the catalog meta dates him conventionally to the Qīng. The composition window 1880–1936 reflects (a) the late-Qīng circulation of the Zhào main text — the Wēnbìng-school doctrinal positioning and the pharmacological references suggest a Guāng-xù-era composition — and (b) the 1936 Shěn Zhòngguī supplement that constitutes the work’s first widely-printed form. The work entered the modern Chinese medical reference tradition through the Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng (1936, 曹炳章 Cáo Bǐngzhāng ed.) and the jicheng.tw digitisation.
Historiographical interest: the work is a useful example of the transitional Republican-era yīhuà form that incorporated Western medical-scientific framing without abandoning the classical Chinese clinical tradition. Shěn Zhòngguī’s twenty-five essays are particularly valuable for early-Republican Chinese medical pedagogy: his instructions for managing insomnia, his discussions of pharmacological supplementation (the tùnǎo wán 兔腦丸 / Brain-Restoration Pill with detailed compositional analysis), and his sustained Western-Chinese pharmaceutical-comparative work prefigure the post-1949 ZhōngXī yī jiéhé 中西醫結合 medical-integration movement.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation located. For the Republican-era yīhuà form and the Western-Chinese pharmaceutical integration project see Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse (Chicago, 2014). For Shěn Zhòngguī’s broader scholarly career see Zhōngguó yīxué míngzhù xuǎnbā 中國醫學名著選把 (Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, 1985).
Links
- Zhōngguó yīxué dàchéng (Cáo Bǐngzhāng ed., 1936).
- Shěn Zhòngguī (1908–1986) — early-Republican Hángzhōu / Shànghǎi medical educator.
- Kanseki DB
- 存存齋醫話稿 (jicheng.tw)