Yányī xuǎnpíng 言醫選評
The “On Medicine” — Selected with Commentary by 裴一中 Péi Yīzhōng (hào Zhàoqī 兆期, mid-seventeenth-century early-Qīng physician of Hǎiníng 海寧) — original Yányī 言醫 composed in 1657 — selected and commented by 王士雄 Wáng Shìxióng in 1851.
About the work
A one-juǎn compilation by Wáng Shìxióng of selected entries from Péi Yīzhōng’s early-Qīng (Shùn-zhì-era 1657) Yányī 言醫 — a medical-philosophical treatise that had circulated in print in the Kāngxī period but had subsequently fallen out of circulation. The recovered Yányī was praised by Wáng Shìxióng as one of the most penetrating early-Qīng medical-doctrinal works, and the present Yányī xuǎnpíng gives Wáng’s selection of the most clinically important entries with his own running commentary. Péi Yīzhōng’s Yányī is doctrinally interesting as an early-Qīng yīguàn pài 醫貫派 inheritor (Péi was a 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě follower who maintained the Yīguàn’s warming-tonifying line into the Shùnzhì era), but the work transcends doctrinal partisanship to develop a series of methodological positions on the physician’s clinical responsibility, the dangers of routine over-prescription, the proper balance of bǔ 補 and xiè 瀉, and the integration of Confucian moral cultivation with medical practice. The opening aphorism — quoted by Wáng in the preface — establishes the work’s tone: xué bùguàn jīngǔ, shí bùtōng tiānrén, cái bùjìn xiān, xīn bùjìn fó zhě, níng gēngtián zhībù, qǔ yīshí ěr, duàn bùkě zuò yī yǐ wù shì 學不貫今古，識不通天人，才不近仙，心不近佛者，寧耕田織布，取衣食耳，斷不可作醫以誤世 (“Without learning that bridges ancient and modern, without understanding that links the heavenly and the human, without talent approaching the immortal, without a heart approaching the Buddha — better to plough the fields and weave cloth for food and clothes than to practise medicine and harm the world”).
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with Wáng Shìxióng’s xiǎoyǐn 小引 (small introduction) signed Xiánfēng yuánnián chūnwáng zhēngyuè yìrén Wáng Shìxióng shū yú Chóngqìngtáng 咸豐元年春王正月邑人王士雄書於重慶堂中 (= first month of Xiánfēng 1 = February 1851, signed at the Chóngqìngtáng), recording Wáng’s recovery of the Péi Yīzhōng manuscript through introduction by 楊素園 Yáng Sùyuán of Dìngzhōu 定州 and his editorial decision to publish the selection with commentary. A second postface by 陳月亭 Chén Yuètíng of Nántōng 南通 dated Zhōnghuá Mínguó liùnián zhòngxià yuè xiàhuàn 中華民國六年仲夏月下浣 = late summer 1917 records the Republican-era re-circulation of the work. The Péi zìxù (self-preface) is preserved as a sub-section of the front matter — a substantial first-person account of Péi’s transmission and the work’s polemical aim.
Abstract
Péi Yīzhōng 裴一中 (Zhàoqī 兆期), early-Qīng physician of Hǎiníng (Zhèjiāng), active in the Shùnzhì era (1644–1661), is documented through the Yányī itself and through Wáng Shìxióng’s biographical sketches. The Yányī was completed in 1657 (Shùnzhì shísì nián 順治十四年 dīngyǒu 丁酉) — the year of the friend 趙善鳴 Zhào Shànmíng’s preface — and circulated in the Kāngxī era before falling out of circulation. The composition window 1657–1851 reflects the two-stage history: Péi’s original composition (1657) and Wáng’s re-edition with commentary (1851). The work entered modern Chinese circulation through the 1917 Republican-era reprint and the jicheng.tw digitisation.
The work’s principal interest is as an early-Qīng (Shùn-zhì-era) precursor to the eighteenth-century kǎozhèng yīxué / 徐大椿 Yīxué yuánliú lùn tradition of medical-philosophical reflection. Péi’s opening aphorism (the four-part conditional for entering medical practice) became proverbial in late-Qīng / Republican Chinese medical literature and is one of the most-quoted single passages from the early-Qīng yīlùn corpus. Wáng Shìxióng’s 1851 re-edition with commentary makes the work accessible to mid-nineteenth-century clinical readers and integrates Péi’s early-Qīng positions with mid-Qīng Wēnbìng-school clinical practice.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yányī xuǎnpíng located. The work is treated in modern Chinese medical-bibliographical references including the Zhōngguó yījí dàcídiǎn 中國醫籍大辭典 (2002).
Links
- Person note 裴一中.
- Wáng Shìxióng — see person note 王士雄.
- Kanseki DB
- 言醫選評 (jicheng.tw)