Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭
The Lance against the “Yīguàn” by 徐大椿 Xú Dàchūn (zì Língtāi 靈胎, 1693–1771).
About the work
A two-juǎn polemical treatise — Xú Dàchūn’s mid-life critique of 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě’s Yīguàn 醫貫 (Penetrating-the-Heart-of-Medicine, 1617), a late-Míng warming-tonifying programme that had been canonised in the early-Qīng medical-pedagogical curriculum through the work of 呂留良 Lǚ Liúliáng (Lǚ Wǎncūn 呂晚村) (the early-Qīng Confucian master executed posthumously by the Yōngzhèng emperor in 1733 for Míng 明 loyalist activity) and his circle. Xú’s title metaphor biān 砭 — the classical pre-acupuncture stone-tip lance — is shared with his later KR3eq039 Yī biān 醫砭 (Wáng Shìxióng’s 1850 redaction of Xú’s Shènjí chúyán). Xú’s polemic systematically dismantles Zhào Xiànkě’s programme of universal warming-tonifying prescription with the liùwèi dìhuáng wán 六味地黃丸 and bāwèi dìhuáng wán 八味地黃丸 (the Qián Yǐ-derived formulae that Zhào had reorganised into a comprehensive late-Míng treatment system) on grounds of (a) doctrinal misreading of 錢乙 Qián Yǐ’s original formulary logic, (b) catastrophic clinical consequences when the warming-tonifying formula is applied indiscriminately to patients with underlying yīn-deficiency-fire or Wēnbìng pathology, and (c) the unfortunate alignment of Zhào’s programme with the Lǚ Liúliáng faction’s broader cultural-political programme. The work is the precursor of Xú’s later KR3eq011 Yīxué yuánliú lùn (1757) and the foundational text of the mid-Qīng kǎojù yīxué movement’s critical engagement with the late-Míng warming-tonifying tradition.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with Xú’s self-preface signed Qiánlóng liùnián èryuè jìwàng Huíxī Xú Dàchūn tí 乾隆六年二月既望洄溪徐大椿題 = mid-second-month of Qiánlóng 6 = March 1741. The preface develops the methodological argument that medicine is the most-verifiable-yet-most-unverifiable of practical arts: medicine differs from divination in being subject to verification by clinical outcome (cold drugs cause cold, hot drugs cause heat — verifiable in principle); but the actual verification is rendered nearly impossible by the complexity of disease-traversal and the multiple confounding causes of clinical outcome. Xú’s critique is therefore aimed specifically at Zhào’s Yīguàn — and at its high-Qīng reception through Lǚ Liúliáng’s editorial labour — because Zhào’s programme has acquired the cultural prestige of Lǚ’s reputation while compounding the verifiability difficulty with the systematic over-prescription of warming-tonifying drugs.
Abstract
Xú Dàchūn 徐大椿 (Língtāi, 1693–1771), the foundational figure of mid-Qīng kǎojù yīxué, composed the Yīguàn biān in early 1741 — sixteen years before the KR3eq011 Yīxué yuánliú lùn (1757). The composition window 1741–1741 reflects the precisely-dated self-preface and accepts the single year as the work’s composition date. The work is doctrinally important as the earliest sustained mid-Qīng polemic against the late-Míng warming-tonifying tradition and as the methodological precedent for Xú’s mature KR3eq011 systematisation of the kǎojù yīxué programme.
Reception: the work was widely cited in late-Qīng medical literature and is treated by 王士雄 Wáng Shìxióng in KR3eq039 Yī biān (1850) as the principal precedent for his own yībiān-titled critical-clinical handbook. The Lǚ Liúliáng / Lǚ Wǎncūn 呂晚村 connection makes the Yīguàn biān indirectly a Qīng-era kǎojù engagement with the post-1730s political-cultural sensitivities surrounding the Lǚ Liúliáng case.
CBDB records Xú Dàchūn at 61225 with lifedates 1693–1771.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yīguàn biān located. Xú Dàchūn’s broader corpus is treated in Paul U. Unschuld, Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine (Paradigm, 1990); the late-Míng warming-tonifying tradition that Xú critiques is treated in Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007).
Links
- Xú Dàchūn (zh)
- Person note 徐大椿.
- Cross-reference: Zhào Xiànkě 趙獻可 Yīguàn — the target of Xú’s polemic.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫貫砭 (jicheng.tw)