Yī shuō 醫說
Discourses on Medicine by 張杲 Zhāng Gǎo (zì Jìmíng 季明, fl. Southern Sòng / Jiādìng — Duānpíng era, c. 1149–c. 1227), Sòng physician of Xīnān 新安 (Huīzhōu 徽州, modern southern Ānhuī).
About the work
A ten-juǎn Sòng compendium — one of the most important pre-Yuán Chinese medical reference works after the Tàipíng shènghuì fāng 太平聖惠方 and Héjì júfāng 和劑局方 imperial-court compilations. The work assembles approximately one thousand classified medical anecdotes, case-records, doctrinal positions, and historical observations from earlier medical literature, organised by topic and substantially commented by Zhāng Gǎo. The Sòng-era editorial method is interesting: Zhāng explicitly counts and announces his entries (“having read for a year I have collected so-many items; having read for two years I have so-many more items”) — a quantitative editorial mode that prefigures the high-Sòng cílèi 詞類 categorical-reference style. The work’s ten juǎn cover physician-biographies (Zhāng’s family had three generations of practitioners — his great-great-uncle 張子充 Zhāng Zǐchōng in the capitals, who had trained under 范純仁 Fàn Zhōngxuān of the great Héběi physician house; the family’s three-generation continuity is the “sānshìyī” 三世醫 tradition), classical-canon glosses on the Sùwèn / Língshū / Nánjīng / Màijué / Běncǎo, materia-medica observations, prescription methodology, and topical-clinical disease-categories. It is the principal pre-Yuán Chinese-language reference for the Sòng medical world and is foundational for later anecdote-and-case-record genres including 江瓘’s Míng Míngyī lèiàn 名醫類案 and 魏之琇’s Qīng Xù míngyī lèiàn 續名醫類案.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with a preface by 羅頊 Luó Xū (cháofèng dàfū quán fāqiǎn Yángzhōu 朝奉大夫權發遣郢州), signed Jǐyǒu suì shíyuè liùrì 己酉歲十月六日 — i.e. tenth month sixth day of jǐyǒu — which is most plausibly Jiādìng 2 jǐsì (1209) or Bǎoyòu 1 jǐyǒu (1249); since Luó Xū is identified as cháofèng dàfū of Yǐngzhōu (a southern Sòng prefectural office) the 1249 dating is consistent with a posthumous-and-near-contemporary Luó preface. Luó’s preface develops the famous “medicine is like war” (醫之伐病猶將之伐敵) metaphor, traces the Zhāng family’s three-generation medical lineage (the great-uncle Zǐchōng who served the Fàn Zhōngxuān; the grandfather 張壽仁 Shòurén 壽仁 the father of Jìmíng), and announces Zhāng Gǎo’s editorial method of counting entries as he goes. Luó had a YānYǐng zhī yì 鄢郢之役 (YānYǐng campaign) intervene during the writing of the preface and so could only briefly engage the work’s substance.
Abstract
Zhāng Gǎo 張杲 (Jìmíng), Sòng physician of Xīnān 新安 (Huīzhōu, modern southern Ānhuī), is the principal Southern-Sòng Xīnānpài 新安派 physician of the second half of the twelfth century and early thirteenth century. The catalog meta dates him conventionally as Southern Sòng (南宋); the standard lifedates c. 1149–c. 1227 follow modern Chinese reference works. The composition window 1224–1239 reflects the conventional late-Sòng dating of the Yī shuō — Zhāng’s life-time work that he progressively expanded over decades, with the final form reaching publication shortly before or after his death.
Historiographical significance: the Yī shuō is the principal pre-Yuán Chinese medical reference work for physician-anecdote and case-record literature, and is foundational for the entire later medical-anecdote tradition (Jiāng Guàn’s KR3e0075 Míngyī lèiàn, Wèi Zhīxiù’s Xù lèiàn, KR3eq005 Lěnglú yīhuà, etc.). It also preserves Sòng-era materials that are now lost in their original sources, making it a de facto fragmentary anthology of the now-vanished Sòng medical-anecdote literature. The work is among the most-cited Sòng medical sources in modern Chinese medical historiography and is conventionally read alongside 劉完素 Liú Wánsù’s Sùwèn xuánjī yuánbìng shì 素問玄機原病式 (late Jīn) and the great Sòng dàzhàolìng jí 宋大詔令集 medical-imperial-decree compilations as the foundational primary sources for Sòng medicine.
CBDB records Zhāng Gǎo at 130559 with the lifedates c. 1149–c. 1227. See person note 張杲.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yī shuō located. The work is treated extensively in modern Chinese medical-historiographical scholarship including Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Qí Huáng yī yì shì 岐黃醫意識 (Beijing: Kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2004), and Mǎ Bóyīng 馬伯英, Zhōngguó yīxué wénhuà shǐ 中國醫學文化史 (Shànghǎi: Rénmín chūbǎnshè, 1994).