Yīyì tōngshuō 醫易通說
A Comprehensive Discussion of Medicine-and-the-Yìjīng by 唐宗海 Táng Zōnghǎi (zì Róngchuān 容川, 1846–1897), the late-Qīng Sìchuān 四川 physician and pioneering proponent of the ZhōngXī huìtōng 中西匯通 (“convergence-between-Chinese-and-Western-medicine”) movement.
About the work
A two-juǎn late-Qīng treatise systematically integrating the Yìjīng cosmological framework with Chinese medical theory, and — in a remarkable intellectual move that distinguishes Táng from earlier yīyì (medicine-and-Yìjīng) authors — explicitly opening the framework to Western scientific knowledge. Táng’s central thesis is that the Yìjīng’s biànhuà 變化 (transformation-and-change) framework provides the underlying logic of (a) the human body’s zàngfǔ 臟腑 organ-channel structure, (b) the SòngYuán yùnqì 運氣 cosmological doctrine, and (c) the Western scientific corpus including astronomy, chemistry, electricity-and-magnetism, thermodynamics, and steam-engine engineering, which Táng treats as so many partial illuminations of the comprehensive Yìjīng truth. The Western-translation of Yìjīng as biànhuà (a literal translation), Táng argues, shows that “Western scholars have already recognised the Yìjīng as the root-source of chemistry and qìshù 氣數 (energy-and-numerical-pattern) thought”. The work was a foundational influence on the late-Qīng / Republican-era ZhōngXī huìtōng movement and is one of the earliest substantial Chinese-language attempts to translate Western scientific concepts into classical Chinese-medical / Yìjīng terms.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw source preserves only the body text; the front-matter is not present in the present digital exemplar. The standard print recensions carry Táng’s self-preface dated to the post-1880 period.
Abstract
Táng Zōnghǎi 唐宗海 (Róngchuān, 1846–1897), Sìchuān physician active in the late Qīng, is the founding figure of the ZhōngXī huìtōng 中西匯通 movement of the late nineteenth century — the systematic attempt to integrate Chinese-medical doctrine with Western scientific-medical knowledge in a unified theoretical framework. His other principal works are the ZhōngXī huìtōng yī jīng jīngyì 中西匯通醫經精義 (1892) — a major late-Qīng integration of Chinese-medical canonical doctrine with Western anatomical-physiological knowledge — and the Xuèzhèng lùn 血證論 (1884) — a clinical reference on bleeding disorders that became one of the most-used texts of the early-Republican Chinese-medical curriculum. The composition window 1880–1897 reflects the documented period of Táng’s productive career and his death-year. The Yīyì tōngshuō is one of the earliest texts of the huìtōng movement and is methodologically central to understanding the late-Qīng intellectual move that integrated Yìjīng cosmology with Western scientific concepts.
Doctrinal significance: the Yīyì tōngshuō establishes the late-Qīng / Republican ZhōngXī huìtōng movement’s foundational claim that Western scientific knowledge does not displace but rather illuminates aspects of the comprehensive Yìjīng / Chinese-medical framework. This claim — which has antecedents in the Jesuit-Confucian conversations of the late-Míng / early-Qīng — was developed by Táng into a systematic programme that shaped (a) the Mènghé school’s late-Qīng reception of Western anatomy under 馬培之 Mǎ Péizhī and 丁甘仁 Dīng Gānrén; (b) the Republican-era Shànghǎi Chinese-medical educational reform programmes under 何廉臣 Hé Liánchén and 沈仲圭 Shěn Zhòngguī; and (c) the post-1929 zhōngyī cúnfèi 中醫存廢 (preserve-or-abolish Chinese medicine) debates’ principal moderate position.
See person note 唐宗海 for biographical detail.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yīyì tōngshuō located. Táng Zōng-hǎi’s broader huì-tōng programme is treated in Bridie J. Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC Press, 2014); Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s Modernity (Chicago, 2014); and Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007).
Links
- Táng Zōnghǎi (zh)
- Person note 唐宗海.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫易通說 (jicheng.tw)