Yīzhǐ xùyú 醫旨緒餘
Remaining Threads of Medical Doctrine by 孫一奎 Sūn Yīkuí (zì Wényuán 文垣, hào Shēngshēngzǐ 生生子 / Dōng-sù-zi 東宿子, c. 1522–c. 1619), late-Míng Xīnān 新安 (Huīzhōu) physician.
About the work
A two-juǎn late-Míng medical compendium — the principal theoretical work of Sūn Yīkuí, who together with 王肯堂 Wáng Kěntáng and 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn forms the high-Míng triad of major yījiā (medical-house) scholars. The work assembles Sūn’s doctrinal-theoretical reflections on the sāncái 三才 (heaven-earth-man) cosmological foundation, the wǔxíng 五行 five-phase configurations, the debate over the xiānghuǒ 相火 (ministerial fire) and the placement of the sānjiāo 三焦 (triple burner) — perhaps the central doctrinal controversy of high-Míng medicine — and the topographical-anatomical structure of the body’s organ-channel system. Sūn’s principal doctrinal contribution is his systematic treatment of the xiānghuǒ / mìngmén 命門 (gate-of-life) complex as the principal yáng foundation of the body — a position that aligned him with the warming-tonifying school of 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě and 張介賓 Zhāng Jǐngyuè rather than with the 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī yīn-supplementation tradition. The work also engages substantively with the contemporary Confucian-philosophical debates about the relationship between li 理 (principle) and qì 氣 (vital substance), positioning medicine within the late-Míng xīnxué 心學 / qìxué 氣學 controversies as a discipline that requires both philosophical rigour and clinical empirical care.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with a preface by 孫燁 Sūn Yè (zì Yuánsù* 元素*, signed Zúzǐ Yè Yuánsù dùnshǒu bài zhuàn 族子燁元素頓首拜撰) — Sūn Yīkuí’s clan-nephew, who provides the principal biographical statement of his uncle: a Confucian xìntóng 沖年 (“juvenile in years”) youth (Sūn excelled at the Yìjīng as a boy and was marked for examination success), a turn to medicine after meeting an “yìrén” 異人 (an extraordinary person) who gave him a jìnfāng (secret prescription) on a youthful trip to Kuòcāng 括蒼 (mountain region of Zhèjiāng), and a thirty-year career of clinical study and travel through the Yangtze-Huai region. The preface gives Sūn’s Xīnān origins, his clinical reputation across the WúSān 三吳 region, and his combination of qiánjīng 鈐經 (“controlling-the-canons”) classical learning with active clinical practice.
Abstract
Sūn Yīkuí 孫一奎 (Wényuán; hào Shēngshēngzǐ “Living-Life Master”, Dōng-sù-zi “East-Cloister Master”), late-Míng physician of Xīnān 新安 (Huīzhōu, modern southern Ānhuī), is one of the three principal late-Wàn-lì-era medical authorities (alongside Wáng Kěntáng and Zhāng Jièbīn). The catalog meta dates him conventionally to the Míng; the standard lifedates c. 1522–c. 1619 follow modern reference works. The composition window 1573–1600 reflects the Wàn-lì-era productivity of his clinical maturity. His broader corpus includes Chìshuǐ xuánzhū 赤水玄珠 (the most-cited late-Míng general clinical reference work, in 30 juǎn) — see KR3e0085 — and the Sūnshì yīàn 孫氏醫案 case-record compilation; the Yīzhǐ xùyú stands to these as the doctrinal-theoretical companion piece.
Doctrinal significance: the work’s defence of the xiānghuǒ / mìngmén position aligns Sūn with the warming-tonifying line that Zhāng Jièbīn would canonise in the 1620s. The methodological commitment to li-qì philosophical rigour as a foundation for clinical reasoning is one of the more thorough late-Míng integrations of Confucian philosophical-textual scholarship with medical practice. CBDB records Sūn Yīkuí; see person note 孫一奎.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yīzhǐ xùyú located. Sūn’s broader corpus is treated in Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665 (UC Berkeley, 1999), and Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories (Routledge, 2003); on the late-Míng Xīnān 新安 medical school more broadly see Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Xīnān yīpài yánjiū 新安醫派研究 (Beijing: Kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2010).
Links
- Sūn Yīkuí (zh)
- Person note 孫一奎.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫旨緒餘 (jicheng.tw)