Yīxué kèér cè 醫學課兒策
Examination Questions for Instructing My Son in Medicine by 高鼎汾 Gāo Dǐngfén (hào Shàngchí 上池; b. ca. 1794, jìnshì of 1843; son of 高秉鈞 Gāo Bǐngjūn 錦亭), with marginal annotations by 王泰林 Wáng Tàilín (Xùgāo 旭高, 1798–1862).
About the work
A one-juǎn clinical-pedagogical question-and-answer text in the kè 課 (school-examination) format — Gāo Dǐngfén poses examination questions (cèwèn 策問) to his son Gāo Dòujī 高鬥機, with his own model answers attached, on the principal topics of clinical internal medicine. The Kanripo source preserves the table of topics: wēnrè yī / èr / sān (warm-heat 1, 2, 3); lìjí dysentery; zhòngfēng wind-stroke; xūláo deficiency-exhaustion; jìngbìng tetanus; shǔbìng summer-heat; shībìng damp; zàobìng dryness; nüèjí malaria; hóushā throat-rash; fùrén tāiqián prenatal women’s medicine; fèibìng lung disease. The text is a key witness to the mid-19th-century Wúxī 無錫 medical family-instruction tradition, in which clinical knowledge was transmitted father-to-son through structured cè exercises rather than through bedside apprenticeship alone.
Prefaces
The Kanripo source _000 opens with two prefaces. (i) Gāo Dǐngfén’s self-preface dated 道光癸卯中秋朔日 = 1843 Mid-Autumn-1st-day: he reports being fifty suì and having pursued medical study for nearly twenty years; his elder son Dòujī 鬥機 had reached the age for serious study; he conceived the kèér cè (instructing-the-son examination-question) format as a vehicle for jiàoxué xiāngzhǎng 教學相長 — mutual teacher-and-student progress. He signs as Gāo Dǐngfén Shàngchí. (ii) A printer’s preface by Zhōu Zhèn 周鎮 zì Bóhuá 伯華 hào Xiǎonóng 小農 of Wúxī 無錫, dated 中華民國四年冬月 (1915 winter). Zhōu’s preface reconstructs the lineage: in the late-Qīng Wúxī medical school, Gāo Jǐntíng 高錦亭 (高秉鈞 Gāo Bǐngjūn, author of the Yángkē xīndé 瘍科心得) was the master, and Wáng Xùgāo 王旭高 (王泰林, 1798–1862) was his student; Gāo Dǐngfén (hào Shàngchí 上池) was Jǐntíng’s zhésì (illustrious heir-son). The surviving manuscript was discovered by Zhōu Zhèn in the possession of Gāo Dǐngfén’s great-grandson Yánwǔ 研五, with marginal notes by Wáng Xùgāo added during clinical consultations between Xùgāo and Shàngchí. Zhōu hand-copied the manuscript and submitted it to Qiú Jíshēng 裘吉生 of Yuèzhōu (Shàoxīng), who included it in his Yībào 醫報 collection of rare medical works as part of the early-Republican guócuì (national-essence) preservation programme — explicitly framed as resistance to the Ōufēng dōngjiàn 歐風東漸 (eastward incursion of European custom).
Abstract
Gāo Dǐngfén 高鼎汾 (hào Shàngchí 上池) was a Wúxī physician of the mid-19th century, son of the much more famous 高秉鈞 Gāo Bǐngjūn (Jǐntíng 錦亭, 1755–1827, author of the Yángkē xīndé jí 瘍科心得集). The catalog meta gives him as 清 — confirmed by the self-preface dating to 1843. Inferred lifedates from his being aged 50 in 1843: born c. 1794, died after the 1860 Tài-píng-war destruction of Wúxī. Composition window 1843–1860 reflects this.
The work is a uniquely valuable primary source for three interlocking topics: (i) the Wúxī medical lineage — Gāo Jǐntíng → (Wáng Xùgāo / Gāo Dǐngfén, with Xùgāo as collateral disciple of the master and elder peer of the son) → Gāo Dòujī, with the kèér cè serving as the actual teaching text; (ii) the late-Imperial medical jiāxùn (family-instruction) genre in its most explicit form — the eight-legged-essay cèwèn exam-question structure adapted to clinical pedagogy; and (iii) the early-Republican guóyī preservation movement — the 1915 print is a key document of the Qiú Jíshēng / Yuèzhōu rare-medical-book recovery programme. Wáng Xùgāo’s marginal annotations preserve mid-19th-century Wúxī collegial consultation in a way that no other surviving text does. Not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Yī-xué kè-ér cè located. For the Wú-xī medical lineage and the Mèng-hé / Jiāng-Sū school context, see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007); for Wáng Xù-gāo 王旭高 specifically see the same. For the early-Republican Qiú Jí-shēng guó-yī book-recovery programme see Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC Press, 2014).