Juélú yīhuà lùcún 覺廬醫話錄存
Records Preserved of the Awakened-Hermitage Medical Conversations by 盧覺愚 Lú Juéyú (fl. 1900s–1940s), Republican-era Cantonese physician.
About the work
A one-juǎn clinical-anecdotal compendium by Lú Juéyú, recording two decades of clinical and pedagogical experience. The work opens with Lú’s exceptionally vivid autobiographical Biànyán 弁言: at age 17 his mother contracted a febrile-blood-vomiting illness that was misdiagnosed and over-treated with warming-tonifying drugs by multiple physicians, leading to a 50-day terminal decline; the family’s last-arriving consultant — Master Fāng Bózhāi 方博齋 of Guǎngxī Guìlín 廣西桂林 (the laicized Buddhist monk teacher) and Léi Dānfēng 雷丹峰 — diagnosed the iatrogenic error too late, prescribed a heroic Báihǔ tāng 白虎湯 dose that could not be administered in time, and lost the patient. The young Lú abandoned his English-school education at the Xīyíngpán guānlì Yīngwén xuéxiào 西營盤官立英文學校 (the Hong Kong Government English-language School at Sai Ying Pun) and turned to medicine under Léi Dānfēng. The Bian-yan is one of the most articulate Republican-era yīyǐ àimǔ (medicine-from-filial-piety) conversion-narratives.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens directly with Lú’s own Biànyán 弁言 — the autobiographical-conversion narrative recorded “Cǐ biān wèi èrshí nián qián jiùgǎo” 此編為二十年前舊稿 (“this compilation is an old draft from twenty years ago”). The 20-year retrospective and the explicit Hong Kong reference (西營盤 = Sai Ying Pun district, central Hong Kong Island) date Lú’s medical-conversion period to c. 1905–1910 and the compilation period to c. 1925–1930.
Abstract
Lú Juéyú 盧覺愚 (fl. 1900s–1940s), Republican-era Cantonese physician, was probably based in Hong Kong / Guǎngzhōu in the early Republican period. Originally a student at the Hong Kong Government English-language School at Sai Ying Pun, he turned to medical study after his mother’s iatrogenic-failure death, training under the laicized Guǎngxī Buddhist monk Fāng Bózhāi 方博齋 and the physician Léi Dānfēng 雷丹峰. The Juélú yīhuà lùcún is the published-record of his early-career clinical-pedagogical material. The composition window 1925–1945 reflects the autobiographical-retrospective timing.
Historiographical significance: the Juélú yīhuà lùcún is a useful source for the early-Republican Hong Kong / Guǎngzhōu literatus-physician tradition — the South-China medical practice that operated at the geographical and cultural margin of the JiāngZhèHù core. The Hong Kong English-language educational anchor distinguishes Lú’s biographical-cultural formation from the typical JiāngZhè Confucian-classical-trained literatus-physician. The transmission-pedagogy from a Guǎngxī laicized Buddhist monk through Léi Dānfēng is also distinctive of the South-China lineage networks. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Jué-lú yī-huà lù-cún located. For Hong Kong / South-China Republican-era Chinese medical practice see Chee-Han Lim, “Hong Kong’s Chinese Medicine”; for broader Republican-era Chinese medicine see Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse (Chicago, 2014); Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014).
Links
- Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (hxwd) repatriation series entry.
- Person note 盧覺愚.