Hánshì yī tōng 韓氏醫通
Master Hán’s Penetrating Compendium of Medicine by 韓懋 Hán Mào (zì Tiānjué 天爵, hào Fēixiá zǐ 飛霞子, mid-Míng).
About the work
A two-juǎn short medical compendium in nine chapters and ninety-five entries (凡九十五則), self-described by its author Hán Mào as an attempt at “a top-to-bottom statement of the medical Way” (徹上徹下語). The work is unusual in mid-Míng medical literature for its tight aphoristic style, its compact two-fascicle scope (against the encyclopaedic ten-and-twenty-juǎn compendia then dominant), and its explicit acknowledgement of the author’s filial debt to his father’s collection of empirically validated formulae. The nine chapters cover pulse (脈), drug-property (藥性), formula composition (方法), inquiry-and-examination (問診), pediatrics, gynaecology, the six-qì / climatic-aetiology framework, and a closing miscellany. Hán’s Hánshì yītōng circulated widely in the late Míng and Qīng as one of the standard mid-Míng aphoristic handbooks, and it is among the earliest works to make explicit the diagnostic-by-questioning programme later canonised by 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn’s shíwèn 十問 doctrine.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the author’s self-preface signed Jiājìng gǎiyuán rénwǔ liùyuè shuò Fēixiázǐ Hán Mào Tiānjué zìxù 嘉靖改元壬午六月朔飛霞子韓懋天爵自序 — the first day of the sixth month of the inaugural year of Jiājìng (1 July 1522). Hán explains in the preface that he had at first wished to burn the draft, but that his elder brother urged its preservation as a tribute to their late father’s collection of “effective formulae in manuscript” 先君序集有效方手澤. Hán closes with a self-effacing characterisation of the work as “merely a top-to-bottom utterance about medicine, that is all” 是編聊為醫之徹上徹下語而已爾.
Abstract
The 1522 self-preface is the secure dating evidence; the work was completed and dedicated to the memory of Hán’s father in that year. Hán Mào is recorded in CBDB (320758) with c_index_year 1525, consistent with the preface dating. He was active in Sìchuān as a practising physician; the Fēixiázǐ literary cover-name became associated with the work, which was sometimes catalogued under the alternative title Fēixiázǐ yītōng 飛霞子醫通. The work is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections; modern Chinese editions appear in the standard Zhōngyī gǔjí jiàozhù cóngshū series.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Hán-shì yī-tōng located. Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (California, 1986), discusses Míng aphoristic-handbook compositions of this kind in passing. For Míng-Qīng diagnostic-by-questioning practice and the shí-wèn tradition, see Marta Hanson and Bridie Andrews’s chapters in TJ Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes, Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard, 2013).
Links
- Hánshì yī tōng (zh.wikipedia / zh.wikisource) — searchable via 韓懋 / 韓氏醫通.
- Person note 韓懋.