Yīxué dúshū jì 醫學讀書記
Notes from Medical Reading by 尤怡 Yóu Yí (zì Zàijīng 在涇, hào Zhuózhái 拙齋 / Sìhè shānrén 飼鶴山人; ca. 1650 – ca. 1749), SūzhōuChángshú scholar-physician.
About the work
A three-juǎn clinical-doctrinal reading-notebook by Yóu Yí, with a one-juǎn Xùjì 續記 (continuation/sequel) appended. The Kanripo source preserves the Xùjì in _000 (placed first, evidently because it functions as the front-matter of the modern edition), followed by _001, _002, _003 corresponding to juǎn 1–3 of the main Yīxué dúshū jì proper. The work is a sustained pendant to Yóu’s two major commentaries on the ZhāngJī corpus — the Shānghán guànzhū jí 傷寒貫珠集 (KR3ef019) and the Jīnguì yàoluè xīn diǎn 金匱要略心典 (KR3ef089) — and uses the dúshū jì (reading-notes) genre to record Yóu’s discriminations on points of doctrine, materia medica, prescription history, and pulse-diagnostic interpretation that did not fit into the Shānghán / Jīnguì commentaries.
Prefaces
The Kanripo source _000 preserves the Xùjì (continuation), opening with the Cùnkǒu fēnzhěn zàngfǔ dìngwèi 寸口分診臟腑定位 essay — Yóu’s reconstruction of Nèijīng pulse-diagnostic placement. The text moves from zhěnfǎ (pulse method) through gǔfāng quánliàng 古方權量 (the quánliàng / weight-and-measure problem in classical prescriptions — Yóu defends the Chén Wúzé 陳無擇 Sānyīn fāng identification of gǔliǎng 古兩 / Kāiyuánqián equivalence against the Qiānjīn fāng’s less satisfactory ratio), through identifications of obscure compounds (Huǒjì tāng 火齊湯, Cōngchǐ tāng 蔥豉湯 etc.). Juǎn 1 of the main text opens with the Yángqì yīnqì 陽氣陰氣 essay synthesising the Sùwèn yángyīn doctrine. The Kanripo source compresses the preface(s) and the main text together — no separate dated zìxù is preserved.
Abstract
Yóu Yí 尤怡 was one of the most influential commentators on the ZhāngJī corpus in the early-to-mid Qīng, a disciple of Mǎ Jūnliáng 馬俊良 of the SūzhōuChángshú medical circle. The Yīxué dúshū jì is his last major work, occupying the same period as the Shānghán guànzhū jí (1729) and the Jīnguì xīndiǎn. Its composition window 1729–1749 reflects the period of Yóu’s mature production, and the Xùjì (continuation) confirms that material was being added late.
Substantively the work is one of the most valuable mid-Qīng kǎojù (evidential) reading-notes on the Nèijīng and Shānghán / Jīnguì corpus. Its discrimination of the Cùnkǒu zàngfǔ placement — assigning small intestine to the right chǐ rather than the conventional left-cùn, on the basis of the Nèijīng “qián yǐ hòu, hòu yǐ hòu” passage — was particularly influential, and it was on this and similar points that Yóu was admired in the late-Qīng Wēnbìng-school synthesis. The gǔfāng quánliàng essay is one of the standard references in pre-modern fāngjì scholarship and remains cited in modern medical-history work. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Yī-xué dú-shū jì located. For Yóu Yí’s place in the early-Qīng Zhāng-Jī commentary tradition, see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011), and Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007). For the gǔ-fāng quán-liàng problem (the weight-measure ratio between Hàn-era and later prescriptions), see the discussion in Paul U. Unschuld and Hermann Tessenow, Huang Di nei jing su wen: An Annotated Translation (UC Press, 2011), introduction.