Mài yīn zhèng zhì 脈因證治
Pulse, Aetiology, Presentation, and Treatment attributed to 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhēng (Dānxī 丹溪, 1281–1358), redacted by the Qīng-period physician 湯望久 Tāng Wàngjiǔ; with prefatory framing by Miù Zūnyì 繆遵義 dated 1775.
About the work
A two-juǎn clinical handbook arranged under the four-pillar rubric of mài 脈 (pulse), yīn 因 (aetiology), zhèng 證 (presentation), and zhì 治 (treatment) — the four-pillar formula that gave the work its name and that has been the canonical four-step clinical decision template of Chinese medicine ever since. The text presents each disease-category as a tightly compressed màiyīnzhèngzhì tetrad, with the pulse signature listed first, the aetiology second, the clinical presentation third, and the recommended formulae and treatment-orientation fourth. The attribution to Zhū Dānxī (the Yuán fourth master of the Jīn–Yuán synthesis) has been controversial since at least the eighteenth century: the work circulates in two distinct recensions and contains material clearly post-dating Dānxī, suggesting either that the work is a Míng-period reconstruction of authentic Dānxī clinical doctrine from his students’ notebooks, or that the attribution is largely or wholly pseudepigraphic. The transmitted text in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū is the Qián-lóng-era Tāng Wàngjiǔ recension brought to print by Miù Zūnyì in 1775.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a preface by Miù Zūnyì 繆遵義 (Wúqū / Sūzhōu, zì unrecovered) dated Qiánlóng yǐwèi zhòngxià 乾隆乙未仲夏 (= mid-summer 1775). Miù narrates that he had taken up serious medical study after his mother’s protracted illness was healed only by his own application of the formulae he had gathered through book-learning, and that his subsequent study had concentrated on the four Jīn–Yuán masters (Zhāng Chángshā 張長沙, Liú Héjiān 劉河間, Lǐ Dōngyuán 李東垣, Zhū Dānxī 朱丹溪). Of these four, he says, only Chángshā stands as the shízhōng zhī shèng 時中之聖 (the sage who unites all things in their time), while the others — including Dānxī — are partial. Miù praises the present Màiyīnzhèngzhì as the unique surviving compact statement of Dānxī’s clinical doctrine and reports that he obtained a manuscript copy after thirty years of vain search.
Abstract
The attribution to Zhū Dānxī (CBDB; 1281–1358) is debated. The two-juǎn recension preserved in the hxwd transmission shows clear Míng-period editorial intervention (the four-pillar màiyīnzhèngzhì framing as a programmatic title is not securely attested in the Yuán) and is most plausibly understood as a Míng-period compilation from Dānxī’s clinical notebooks by his disciples and their successors, further redacted by Tāng Wàngjiǔ in the mid-Qīng. The “actual composition date” of the work as it now stands — the received recension of the CLAUDE.md rule — therefore belongs in the Qiánlóng era, specifically the Tāng / Miù recension of 1775. The notBefore / notAfter are set accordingly; the original Yuán-period Dānxī materials underlying the work would be c. 1335–1358 but the work as transmitted is a Qiánlóng recension. The dynasty field is left as 元 for catalogue-meta consistency.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Mài-yīn-zhèng-zhì located. For Zhū Dān-xī’s clinical doctrine more broadly, see Volker Scheid’s chapters on the Jīn–Yuán four-master synthesis in Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), and the classic Chen Yuan-peng 陳元朋, Liǎng-Sòng de “Shàng-yī shì-rén” yǔ “rú-yī” 兩宋的「尚醫士人」與「儒醫」 (Tái-Dà Wén-shǐ cóng-kān, 1997).