Yítáng sànjì 怡堂散記
Casual Records from the Yi Hall by 許豫和 Xǔ Yùhé (hào Xiàngcūn 橡村, fl. late eighteenth century), Qīng-period Xīnān (Anhui) physician.
About the work
A two-juǎn clinical-theoretical and case-record miscellany by Xǔ Yùhé (橡村 Xiàngcūn) — the late-eighteenth-century Xīnān 新安 (Huīzhōu / Anhui) physician whose principal medical specialty was paediatrics and smallpox treatment. The hxwd recension includes the Doutiao Yuyi 痘訣余議 (1 juǎn) — a supplementary essay on smallpox treatment that extends Xǔ’s earlier Xiàngcūn dòujué 橡村痘訣. The opening Cáo preface (by 曹序, a friend of Xǔ Yùhé) establishes the work’s place in the late-eighteenth-century Xīn-ān-school medical tradition and praises Xǔ for moving beyond his paediatric specialty into a broader clinical-theoretical synthesis. The preface includes one of the more articulate late-Qīng statements of the regional-environmental doctrinal position: that diseases differ across regions (“nánběi yìyí, shānchuān jiāngé” 南北異宜，山川間隔) and across time-periods even within the same region (“yī xiāng zhī zhōng yòu suí shì biàn zhuǎn” 一鄉之中又隨世變轉), so that clinical methods must respond to local-and-contemporary conditions rather than rigidly adhere to canonical formulary tradition.
Prefaces
- Cáo preface (曹序) by a friend of Xǔ Yùhé, situating the present work as the successor to Xǔ’s Xiàngcūn dòujué 橡村痘訣 (smallpox specialty). The Cáo preface explicitly articulates the late-Xīn-ān regional-medical doctrinal position.
Abstract
Xǔ Yùhé 許豫和 (Xiàngcūn 橡村, fl. late eighteenth century), Xīnān (Huīzhōu / Anhui) physician of the late Qiánlóng — early Jiāqìng period, was a major figure of the late-eighteenth-century Xīnān school — the regional Anhui medical tradition that produced KR3eq034 Miào Xīyōng (繆希雍, Xiānxǐngzhāi yīxué guǎngbǐjì), the Bencao chéngyǎbàn 本草乘雅半 tradition, and the broader Huīzhōu mercantile-medical complex. His principal works are the Xiàngcūn dòujué 橡村痘訣 (smallpox), the present Yítáng sànjì, and the Doutiao Yuyi 痘訣余議 supplement. The composition window 1750–1810 reflects his documented productive period.
Historiographical significance: the Yítáng sànjì is a useful source for the late-Xīn-ān school’s regional-medical clinical method — particularly the integration of paediatric specialty with broader internal-medicine clinical-theoretical reflection, and the explicit articulation of regional-environmental adaptation as a guiding clinical principle. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Yí-táng sàn-jì located. For the Xīn-ān-school medical tradition see Yu Xinzhong 余新忠, Qīng-dài Jiāng-nán de wēn-yì yǔ shè-huì 清代江南的瘟疫與社會 (Renmin Press, 2003); for late-Qīng smallpox literature see Chia-Feng Chang, “Aspects of Smallpox and its Significance in Chinese History” (London diss., 1996).
Links
- Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (hxwd) repatriation series entry.
- Person note 許豫和.