Jìngān shuōyī 靖庵說醫
Jing’an’s Discussions of Medicine by 周聲溢 Zhōu Shēngyì (hào Jìngān 靖庵; fl. late Qīng / early Republican; deceased before the 1910 preface).
About the work
A one-juǎn clinical-theoretical compendium by Zhōu Shēngyì — late-Qīng Chángshā 長沙 (Húnán) literatus-physician of the Zhōu family medical lineage (his grandfather Shǎolǚ 少呂 was a famous Chángshā physician). Zhōu Shēngyì himself was a zhōngshū 中書 (secretariat) official, and a recognized scholar of the Shuōwén jiězì and small-seal calligraphy. The work survives in parallel with his companion Yīxué shíyàn 醫學實驗 (experimental-medical observations).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the Yáo preface (姚序) by Yáo Yǒngpǔ 姚永樸 / Yáo Yǒnggài 姚永概 (Tóng-chéng-school scholar of the late-Qīng / early-Republican period, in the line of Xībào 惜抱 = Yáo Nài 姚鼐, 1731–1815). The Yáo preface — composed in the Jīngshī 京師 capital — opens with the famous Xībào maxim “Yī zhī wéi dào, zhì jīng qiě hòu, gǒu fēi címíng dǔhòu zhī jūnzǐ, bù néng jiū qí yì” 醫之為道至精且厚苟非慈明篤厚之君子不能究其義 (“the way of medicine is utterly refined and profound — except for the kind-bright-sincere-thick gentleman, none can fathom its meaning”), and frames Zhōu Shēngyì’s work as a worthy fulfillment of this Tóng-chéng-school Confucian-medical ideal. The Yáo preface also includes a remarkable late-Qīng acknowledgement that Western medicine (Xīfāng zhī shù 西方之術) had entered China and was widely regarded as superior; Yáo’s response is to argue that the perceived inferiority of Chinese medicine reflects not the inadequacy of the classical-Chinese medical zhīzhì 制 (“institution”) but the loss of its proper transmission and the unfortunate dominance of unworthy practitioners.
Abstract
Zhōu Shēngyì 周聲溢 (Jìngān 靖庵), late-Qīng Chángshā literatus and zhōngshū 中書 (secretariat) official, was a member of the Zhōu family hereditary-medical lineage (his grandfather Shǎolǚ 少呂 was a famous Chángshā physician). Active also as a Shuōwén jiězì and small-seal calligraphy scholar. The Jìngān shuōyī and the parallel Yīxué shíyàn were collected for printing by his elder brother Zhōu Yǐngshēng 周郢生 (a county magistrate), who brought the manuscripts to Beijing and showed them to Yáo Yǒngpǔ / -gài. Zhōu Shēngyì himself died before the printing (the Yáo preface refers to him as jūn yǐ qián zú 君已前卒 — “the gentleman has already died”). The composition window 1890–1910 reflects Zhōu’s productive period.
Historiographical significance: the Jìngān shuōyī is a useful primary source for studying the late-Qīng Tóng-chéng-school engagement with Chinese-Western medical comparison — the conservative-Confucian intellectual response to the perceived superiority of Western medicine. The Yáo preface’s response — that Chinese medicine’s apparent failure reflects institutional decline rather than doctrinal inadequacy — is one of the principal late-Qīng conservative arguments in the Sino-Western medical controversy that would become acute under the Republic. Zhōu Shēngyì is also a useful figure for studying late-Qīng Húnán literatus-medical practice — the Chángshā / Húnán medical tradition that produced Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景 himself (the Chángshā tàishǒu 長沙太守 of legend) and that retained, through the late-Imperial period, a distinctive regional-medical character. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Jìng-ān shuō-yī located. For the Tóng-chéng-school’s late-Qīng intellectual engagement see Theodore Huters, Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Hawaii, 2005); for the Sino-Western medical controversy see Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse (Chicago, 2014).