Yīlín gǎi cuò 醫林改錯
Correcting the Errors of the Medical Forest by 王清任 Wáng Qīngrèn (zì Xūnchén 勳臣, 1768–1831).
About the work
A two-juǎn anatomical and clinical treatise — the most important and controversial Chinese medical anatomical text of the nineteenth century, in which Wáng Qīngrèn presents revised diagrams of the zàngfǔ 臟腑 (viscera) drawn from his own first-hand observation of corpses, principally those of plague victims and executed criminals encountered during his medical practice in Héběi and the capital region. Wáng’s central polemic is that the canonical anatomical-illustration tradition — which he traces back to a single dissection of one executed criminal in the Hàn — has been propagated for two thousand years on the basis of a single defective specimen, while he himself has examined “more than a hundred” 親見之百人. The first juǎn presents his revised anatomical diagrams (including the now-famous qìfǔ 氣府, xuèfǔ 血府, and gémó 膈膜 reconstructions, which entirely reorder the standard zàngfǔ topology); the second juǎn presents his characteristic clinical programme of blood-stasis (xuèyū 血瘀) treatment, including the xuèfǔ zhúyū tāng 血府逐瘀湯 and other zhúyū 逐瘀 formulae that became the foundation of the modern huóxuè huàyū 活血化瘀 clinical tradition.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves two prefaces by friends and editors of Wáng. (1) Zhāng Rùnpō 張潤坡 of Shùntiān (順天), dated Xiánfēng guǐchǒu zhòngxià 咸豐癸丑仲夏 (= mid-summer 1853), narrates how he encountered Wáng’s prescriptions in Guǎngdōng treating a boy with convulsive seizure and a man with longstanding hemiplegia, and after repeated verification arranged for the work’s reprinting. (2) Liú [surname only] preface, dated Dīngwèi zhī qiū 丁未之秋 (= autumn 1847), discusses Wáng’s anatomical diagrams in dialogue with Yè Tiānshì’s jiǔbìng rùluò 久病入絡 doctrine (long-illness-enters-the-luò-vessels) and Xú Dàchūn’s critique of it, defending Wáng’s blood-stasis programme as the clinical embodiment of the rùluò concept.
Abstract
Wáng Qīngrèn (CBDB 72008, 1768–1831, Héběi Yùtián 玉田) composed the Yīlín gǎicuò in the closing years of his life; the first edition is dated Dàoguāng gēngyín 道光庚寅 (= 1830, the year before his death). The composition was the product of more than four decades of anatomical observation, beginning with Wáng’s observation of plague victims in his youth at Luánzhōu 灤州 in c. 1797 and continuing through his establishment of medical practice in Běijīng. His clinical programme of xuèyū therapeutics — entirely independent of the dominant Yèshì wēnbìng 溫病 (warm-disease) tradition of JiāngNán — was foundational for the modern Chinese-medicine sub-field of huóxuè huàyū. The work’s anatomical revisions are now treated by historians of medicine as a fundamentally distinct empirical programme — Wáng was certainly looking at real corpses — but as anatomical biology they are uneven, since Wáng’s observations were of plague-decomposed or post-execution material and were filtered through the conceptual apparatus of qì and xuè. CBDB 72008 gives lifedates 1768–1831, here followed.
Translations and research
The Yī-lín gǎi-cuò has received sustained scholarly attention. Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (California, 2010), and her articles on Qīng anatomical thought are foundational. Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014), discusses Wáng as a foundational figure for Republican-period anatomical reformers. Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (California, 1986), and What is Medicine? Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing (California, 2009), treat Wáng as the principal Qīng anatomist. For huó-xuè huà-yū clinical reception, see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007). Chinese-language critical edition: Lǐ Tiān-dé 李天德 et al., Yī-lín gǎi-cuò jiào-shì 醫林改錯校釋 (Rénmín wèishēng, 1978).
Links
- Wáng Qīngrèn (zh.wikipedia)
- Person note 王清任.