Xīxī shūwū yèhuà lù 西溪書屋夜話錄
Records of Night Conversations at the West-Brook Study by 王泰林 Wáng Tàilín (zì Xùgāo 旭高, 1798–1862) — clinical maxims recorded and arranged (ji-lù 輯錄) by his pupil 周鎮 Zhōu Zhèn (Mèng-hé-school 孟河派 physician of the late nineteenth century).
About the work
A one-juǎn anthology of clinical maxims and case-records by Wáng Tàilín — the early Mèng-hé-school physician of Wúxī 無錫 (Jiāngsū) — collected by his pupil Zhōu Zhèn. The work’s title metaphor yèhuà 夜話 (“night conversations”) situates the contents as the master’s evening miànshòu 面授 (“face-to-face transmission”) discussions with his disciples at the Xīxī shūwū 西溪書屋 (West-Brook Study) — preserving the actual oral pedagogical practice of the Mènghé tradition before its early-Republican consolidation. The principal substantive content is the famous “Thirty Methods for Treating the Liver” (Zhìgān sānshí fǎ 治肝卅法) — Wáng’s systematic typology of clinical responses to the various manifestations of gānqì 肝氣 (Liver-qì), gānfēng 肝風 (Liver-wind), gānhuǒ 肝火 (Liver-fire), and gānhán 肝寒 / gānxū 肝虛 (Liver-cold / Liver-deficiency) syndromes. Each of the thirty methods is presented with its principal indication, the canonical formula or yàopǐn 藥品 (drug-stock), and brief clinical commentary. The work also includes a substantial yīhuà section of clinical case-records and doctrinal aphorisms.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens directly into the Zhìgān sānshí fǎ main text without a separate front-matter preface in the present digital exemplar. The work’s circulation history reaches from Wáng’s late-life clinical practice (1840s–1850s) through Zhōu Zhèn’s editorial compilation (probably 1870s–1880s) into the early-Republican Mèng-hé-school anthologies.
Abstract
Wáng Tàilín 王泰林 (Xùgāo, 1798–1862), early Mèng-hé-school physician of Wúxī, is one of the principal early-to-mid nineteenth-century clinical figures of the JiāngZhè Wēnbìng / classical-formulary inheritance. His doctrinal positions are doctrinally integrative — combining 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì’s Wēnbìng-school clinical method with 徐大椿 kǎojù yīxué discipline and the 李時珍 pharmacological tradition. The famous Zhìgān sānshí fǎ is one of the most-cited single typological frameworks in the late-Qīng / Republican Chinese internal-medicine corpus and has been incorporated into virtually every twentieth-century Chinese clinical-medicine textbook. The composition window 1840–1900 reflects (a) Wáng’s mature clinical period beginning around 1840 and (b) the late-Qīng Zhōu-edited recension. CBDB does not record Wáng Tàilín. See person note 王泰林.
The work’s enduring historiographical significance is its preservation of the oral-discipular pedagogy of the early Mènghé school — a pedagogical mode that the later Mènghé generations under 費伯雄, 馬培之, and 丁甘仁 would systematise into the foundational Republican-era Chinese internal-medicine curriculum.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Xīxī shūwū yèhuà lù located. Wáng Tàilín’s Zhìgān sānshí fǎ is widely cited in modern Chinese clinical references. The Mènghé school’s broader development is treated extensively in Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007), ch. 4.
Links
- Person note 王泰林.
- Mènghé school — see Scheid 2007.
- Kanseki DB
- 西溪書屋夜話錄 (jicheng.tw)