Yī cuì jīng yán 醫粹精言
Refined Words of the Medical Distillate by 徐延祚 Xú Yánzuò (zì Língchén 齡臣, late Qīng, fl. 1860s–1890s).
About the work
A four-juǎn clinical-theoretical compendium by Xú Yánzuò — late-Qīng physician with a twenty-year Beijing practice — completed in winter 1895 and prefaced in spring 1896. The work is a synthesis of the author’s clinical-theoretical conclusions from twenty-plus years of practice and from his extensive reading of the medical-historical corpus (“數十百家”). The preface explicitly identifies the work’s methodological position as (a) rejecting “ní hū gǔrén” 泥乎古人 (rigid adherence to the ancients) and “báo hū gǔrén” 薄乎古人 (dismissive denigration of the ancients) alike, and (b) seeking instead to “shén ér míng zhī” 神而明之 — to apply the ancient principles with creative methodological flexibility informed by clinical experience.
Prefaces
The text opens with two prefaces:
- Preface by 毛澤曜 Máo Zéyào (zì Nánfǔ 南甫, Wǎnjiāng 皖江 / Anhui), dated róuzhào tūntān chūn wáng zhèngyuè 柔爾涒灘春王正月 = first month of bǐngshēn = early 1896. Records Máo’s friendship with Xú during Máo’s official trip to Guǎngdōng in winter 1895 and his witness to the work’s composition at Guangzhou.
- Self-preface by Xú Yánzuò himself, with the author’s positioning of his work in the late-Qīng medical-doctrinal landscape.
Abstract
Xú Yánzuò 徐延祚 (zì Língchén 齡臣), late-Qīng physician of late nineteenth-century Beijing — originally trained as a Confucian scholar (“jī xué wèi dì, xuán qì rú ér jiù yī” 績學未第旋棄儒而就醫) who shifted to medicine after failing the imperial examinations, eventually settling in Beijing for over twenty years of clinical practice (“jū jīng èrshí yú nián, huó rén wúsuàn” 居京二十餘年活人無算). The Yī cuì jīng yán is the synthesis-volume of his twenty-year Beijing practice. The composition window 1880–1896 reflects his mature clinical period and the 1895 winter / 1896 spring preface dates. The work is preserved digitally at jicheng.tw.
Historiographical significance: Xú Yánzuò is one of the late-Qīng northern (Beijing) clinical-theoretical synthesizers, working in the imperial capital during the post-Hóngxiù / Wùxūbiànfǎ period and engaging the same set of doctrinal questions (Wēnbìng vs. Shānghán, YèWú vs. ZhāngLiúYèWáng, classical-formulary integrity vs. methodological innovation) that animated the contemporaneous JiāngSūZhè Mènghé school (cf. KR3eq049) and the southern Wēnbìng lineages (cf. KR3eq059). His comparative under-study is largely an artifact of the late-Qīng Beijing medical scene’s general under-representation in the modern Chinese medical-historiographical literature relative to its JiāngZhè counterparts. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Yī cuì jīng yán located. For late-Qīng Beijing medical practice see Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014); for the broader late-Qīng physician-scholar literature see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition (Eastland, 2007).
Links
- Person note 徐延祚.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫粹精言 (jicheng.tw)