Yīxué yuánlǐ 醫學原理
The Principles of Medical Learning by 汪機 Wāng Jī (zì Shěngzhī 省之, hào Shíshān jūshì 石山居士, 1463–1539), the principal mid-Míng Dānxī-school physician of Qí 祁 / Xīníng 西寧 (Huīzhōu 徽州, modern southern Ānhuī).
About the work
A substantial thirteen-juǎn mid-Míng comprehensive clinical encyclopaedia — Wāng Jī’s mature life-work, written across eight years of “morning-and-evening study with neglected sleep and meals” (zhāo jiū mù yì, fèi qǐn wàng cān 朝究暮繹廢寢忘餐). The work was conceived as a successor to and refinement of Wāng’s earlier compositions — Sùwèn chāo 素問鈔, Běncǎo huìbiān 本草會編, Yùnqì yìlǎn 運氣易覽, Wàikē lǐlì 外科理例, Dòuzhì lǐbiàn 痘治理辨, Zhēnjiǔ wèndá 針灸問答, KR3eq026 Tuīqiú shīyì 推求師意, Màijué kānwù 脈訣刊誤, Shānghán xuǎnlù 傷寒選錄 — that Wāng felt had become diffuse and inaccessible to his descendants. The thirteen juǎn are organised in canonical sequence: first the jīngluò (channel-collateral) and xuèfǎ (acupuncture-point-location) anatomy; then the six external pathogens (liùyín 六淫) and disorders of qìxuè (vital-substance-and-blood); then internal-injury (nèishāng 內傷) disorders; ending with women’s-medicine and paediatrics. The doctrinal-clinical positions follow the 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī school via Wāng’s discipular transmission, with significant elaboration of the Dānxī yīn-supplementation framework.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with Wāng’s own zìxù (self-preface) signed Qíyì Pǔshù Shíshān jūshì zìxù 祁邑樸墅石山居士自序 — i.e. the Qí district Pǔshù village Shíshānjūshì (his characteristic studio-name). The preface narrates his youth in jǔrén examination preparation, his abandonment of the Confucian-examination path for medicine, the twenty-year clinical career that established his reputation, and his decision to consolidate his earlier writings into the present Yīxué yuánlǐ for his descendants’ use.
Abstract
Wāng Jī 汪機 (Shěngzhī, Shíshān jūshì, 1463–1539), the mid-Míng Dānxī-school physician of Huīzhōu, is treated more fully in person note 汪機. The composition window 1500–1539 reflects his mature middle-to-late career: he reports eight years of work on the present compilation, with the most plausible bracket the late Hóngzhì / early Zhèngdé era (1500–1539) terminating at his death-year. The work is the most substantial single mid-Míng clinical-encyclopaedic compilation by the principal Dānxī-school inheritor and is the immediate precursor to 王肯堂’s late-Míng Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng KR3e0078 (1597–1607). The work is documented in modern Chinese medical-historiographical scholarship through Joanna Grant’s A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories (Routledge, 2003) — the principal English-language scholarly engagement with Wāng Jī.
Translations and research
The most extensive English-language treatment of Wāng Jī’s medical work, with substantial discussion of his case-records and clinical method, is Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories (Routledge, 2003). Wāng’s broader role in the mid-Míng Dānxī-school transmission is treated in Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin (UC Berkeley, 1999).
Links
- Wāng Jī (zh)
- Person note 汪機.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫學原理 (jicheng.tw)