Gǔsūn yīhuà 谷蓀醫話
Gusun’s Medical Conversations by 戴谷蓀 Dài Gǔsūn (d. c. 1933, original 休寧 Xiūníng / Anhui native, late resident of 泰興季家市 Tàixīng Jìjiāshì / JiāngSū).
About the work
A one-juǎn clinical-anecdotal compendium by Dài Gǔsūn — Republican-era Xiū-níng-origin physician who resided in Tàixīng’s Jìjiāshì (JiāngSū). The preface — by a Chùān 觸庵 friend who escaped to Shanghai during the 1938–1939 Japanese invasion of South-Tōng-zhōu 南通 — provides the work’s principal biographical and transmission frame: Dài was originally a Confucian zhūshēng 諸生 (licentiate) and an accomplished poet (compared to Zhào Yì 趙翼 / SòngYuán Ōuběi poet) and painter (working in the SìWáng 四王 manner). He was discovered as a medical talent only late in life, after he displayed striking clinical acumen during a fellow-resident’s heat-stroke episode at the lodging-house. The preface’s chronological frame: Dài came to Tōngzhōu in Gēngwǔ 庚午 = 1930 yùhuà 鬻畫 (selling-paintings) — no one knew he could practise medicine; he died six years before the preface’s composition — i.e. c. 1933, with the preface composed in late 1938 / 1939 after 18 months of Sino-Japanese war.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the Chùān preface — the autobiographical-elegiac frame by a friend who fled the Japanese occupation. Recording: (a) Dài’s Gēngwǔ (1930) arrival in Tōngzhōu as a painter; (b) Dài’s accidental clinical-talent reveal; (c) Dài’s six-years-before-the-preface death (c. 1933); (d) Dài’s family scattered by the 1938 Japanese invasion of South-Tōng-zhōu; (e) the preface-writer’s preservation of Dài’s Yīhuà manuscript through evacuation to Shanghai.
Abstract
Dài Gǔsūn 戴谷蓀 (d. c. 1933), Republican-era literatus-physician from Xiūníng 休寧 (Huīzhōu / Anhui) who relocated to Tàixīng Jìjiāshì 泰興季家市 (JiāngSū) and finally to Tōngzhōu 通州 (Nántōng). Originally trained as a Confucian licentiate and accomplished poet-painter, with medical talent discovered only late in life. His painting style was in the SìWáng (Wáng Shímǐn 王時敏 / Wáng Jiàn 王鑑 / Wáng Huī 王翬 / Wáng Yuánqí 王原祁) Qīng-orthodox tradition; his poetry compared to Zhào Yì 趙翼 (1727–1814). The Gǔsūn yīhuà is the testamentary record of his medical practice — composed in his final years and entrusted to a friend who preserved it through the war. The composition window 1920–1939 reflects the chronology.
Historiographical significance: the Gǔsūn yīhuà is one of the more poignant late-Republican literatus-physician testamentary texts — preserving the medical thought of an unrecognized provincial talent whose work might have been lost altogether had the war not motivated his friend to print the manuscript. The biographical-historical frame is a useful primary source for the 1937–1939 Sino-Japanese war’s impact on Chinese medical-textual transmission through provincial JiāngSū. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Gǔ-sūn yī-huà located. For the broader provincial-Republican literatus-physician tradition see Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse (Chicago, 2014); for the 1937–1939 war’s impact on Chinese medical practice see Mary Brown Bullock, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College (California, 1980).
Links
- Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (hxwd) repatriation series entry.
- Person note 戴谷蓀.