Jīntái yīàn 金臺醫案
Case Records from the Golden Terrace [= Beijing]
About the work
A one-juǎn late-Qīng clinical case-record compendium by an unidentified Beijing-resident scholar-physician (the Jīntái 金臺 in the title is the classical literary appellation for Beijing). The work opens with a self-preface dating the author’s medical conversion to 庚寅 庚寅 = 1890 (when he fell critically ill and was bedridden for 8 years, during which he consulted Master Xiè Lùyuán 謝鹿圓 and assembled an extensive medical library) and the work’s compilation to 庚子 庚子 = 1900 (when, during the imperial examination at the dūmén 都門 / Beijing, he met his friend Zhāng Júrú 張子菊如 on a rainy day, and the conversation produced the yīàn compilation framework). The preface is a particularly clear statement of the late-Qīng literatus-physician’s iatrogenic-mistrust ethics: the author explicitly blames Yōngyī 庸醫 (mediocre physicians) for the metal-mineral overdosing that prolonged his original illness, and credits his recovery to his own self-treatment after extensive reading.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the author’s self-preface. Internal date references: Gēngyín 庚寅 = 1890 (illness onset); Gēngzǐ 庚子 = 1900 (imperial examination at Dūmén / Beijing, compilation framework). The 1900 date establishes the work’s composition window in the immediate Boxer Rebellion / late-Guāng-xù period.
Abstract
The author of Jīntái yīàn is not identified in the hxwd paratext. Internal evidence: (a) the 1890–1900 illness-and-recovery timeline; (b) the 1900 examination context at Beijing; (c) the named consultation with Xiè Lùyuán 謝鹿圓 (otherwise unidentified late-Qīng Beijing physician); (d) the conversation-partner Zhāng Júrú 張子菊如 (otherwise unidentified late-Qīng Beijing scholar-friend). The composition window 1890–1910 reflects the 1900 self-preface date and the typical multi-year compilation-and-printing timeline. The work entered Chinese circulation via the late-Qīng / Republican Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí (hxwd) repatriation programme.
Historiographical significance: the Jīntái yīàn is one of the more useful single texts for studying late-Qīng Beijing literatus-physician self-treatment practice in the immediate post-1900 period. The Boxer Rebellion (June–August 1900) and the Eight-Nation-Alliance occupation of Beijing immediately followed the gēngzǐ examination at the Dūmén, making the work a primary source for the intersection of imperial-examination-system and medical-textual practice at the moment of the late-Qīng crisis.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Jīn-tái yī-àn located. For late-Qīng Beijing medical practice see Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014); for the 1900 Boxer crisis and its medical context see Joseph Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (California, 1987).
Links
- Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (hxwd) repatriation series entry.
- Author anonymous in paratext.