Lǚshuāng jí 履霜集
The Treading-Frost Collection by 臧達德 Zāng Dádé (hào Gōngsān 公三, 1750–c. 1820 by internal evidence: self-preface dated Jiāqìng 19 = 1814, signed at “age sixty-five”), Qīng physician of Zhūchéng 諸城 (Shāndōng).
About the work
A four-juǎn family-tradition medical compilation by Zāng Dádé, presenting three generations of clinical experience from the family medical practice in the Wǔliánshān 五蓮山 region of eastern Shāndōng. The title alludes to the Yìjīng 易經 Kūn 坤 hexagram’s chūliù 初六 line statement “lǚshuāng, jiānbīng zhì” 履霜堅冰至 (“treading on frost — solid ice is coming”), interpreted by the work’s author as a metaphor for early-warning clinical observation: the wise physician recognises the early signs of disease just as the wise farmer reads the autumn frost as the harbinger of winter ice. The work’s principal interest is as a regional-medical document of eastern Shāndōng practice — a region underrepresented in the Lower-Yangtze-dominated Qīng medical literature — and as a witness to the late-Qián-lóng / Jiāqìng jiāchuán 家傳 (family-transmission) tradition of clinical knowledge.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text carries Zāng’s own self-preface and zhì 識 statement, signed Qīng Jiāqìng shíjiǔ nián bāyuè shàngxún zhì yú Wǔliánshān zhī Wànghǎi shūlóu, Shāndōng Zhūchéngxiàn Zāng Dádé Gōngsānshì zìzhì, shí nián liùshí yǒu wǔ suì 清嘉慶十九年八月上旬識於五蓮山之望海書樓山東諸城縣臧達德公三氏自識時年六十有五歲 — i.e. early eighth month of Jiāqìng 19 = September 1814, signed at the Wànghǎi 望海 (“Watching-the-Sea”) Library of Wǔliánshān, with the Shāndōng Zhūchéngxiàn attribution and the “age sixty-five” self-identification establishing Zāng’s birth-year as 1750. The preface complains that contemporary physicians’ work falls into “either over-cooling-clearing or over-warming-tonifying” extremes (piān yú liángqīng 偏於涼清 / piān yú wēnbǔ 偏於溫補), that those who hit upon effective methods tend either to “die with their methods concealed” or to “withhold them on transmission” — and that the present family compendium of three-generation experience is offered as a corrective. The introduction notes that the local friend 王鶴侶 Wáng Hèlǚ (“Master of the Crane Companion”) had repeatedly urged Zāng to commit the family methods to print.
Abstract
Zāng Dádé 臧達德 (Gōngsān, b. 1750), Shāndōng Zhūchéng physician of the Jiāqìng era, is documented through the Lǚshuāng jí preface and the corresponding local references; the catalog meta lists him conventionally as Qīng. The composition window 1814–1814 reflects the precisely-dated self-preface (autumn 1814) and accepts the single year as the work’s composition date.
Historiographical significance: the Lǚshuāng jí is a useful late-Qián-lóng / Jiāqìng jiāchuán medical document for eastern Shāndōng practice — a regional tradition underrepresented in the standard Qīng medical reference works. The preface’s complaint about the cooling-clearing vs. warming-tonifying partisanship of contemporary medicine echoes 徐大椿’s 1757 Yīxué yuánliú lùn polemic against the JīnYuán Four Masters’ inheritance, and positions Zāng within the broader mid-Qīng kǎojù-influenced critical-classical-medicine movement, though from a regional Shāndōng base rather than the Lower-Yangtze kǎojù yīxué circle. The Wǔliánshān location is the well-known scenic mountain in eastern Shāndōng (the Bātài Lǚshuāng 八泰履霜 — “Eight-Towers Treading-Frost” landmark is a Tāng-dynasty landscape feature), associated with Daoist yǎngshēng tradition.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Lǚshuāng jí located. The work is treated in the modern Chinese medical-bibliographical references including the Zhōngguó yījí dàcídiǎn 中國醫籍大辭典 (2002).
Links
- Wǔliánshān, Zhūchéng (Shāndōng) — Zāng family medical practice location.
- Kanseki DB
- 履霜集 (jicheng.tw)