Sùwèn xuánjī yuánbìng shì 素問玄機原病式
The Mysterious-Mechanism Pattern of Original Pathology, after the “Plain Questions” by 劉完素 Liú Wánsù (zì Shǒuzhēn 守真, hào Tōngxuán chǔshì 通玄處士, c. 1110–1200).
About the work
A single-juǎn programmatic treatise — the foundational text of the JīnYuán Cooling-and-Cold-Drug school (hánliáng pài 寒涼派) and the first of the four canonical Jīn–Yuán medical reformulations. Liú’s central argument, developed across the work, is that all disease originates in fire (火) and heat (熱), and that the Sùwèn 病機十九條 (the canonical nineteen bìngjī / disease-mechanism passages of the Sùwèn) must therefore be re-read with the cooling-and-cold therapeutic implication systematically foregrounded. Liú reorganises the Sùwèn nineteen-pattern apparatus, expanding the original five fire-related patterns into a comprehensive framework in which heat-driven mechanisms underlie almost every clinical category — including conditions that the canonical literature had classified as cold or vacuity. The clinical implication is that the formulary should privilege cooling and bitter-cold agents over warming and tonifying ones, a thesis that became the foundation stone of the Héjiān 河間 medical lineage and the principal JīnYuán alternative to the Shānghán tradition.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with Liú Wánsù’s own preface developing his historical-doctrinal framework: he traces the medical lineage from Fúxī 伏羲, Shénnóng 神農, and Huángdì 黃帝 (the sānfén 三墳 of the great Way) through the wǔdiǎn 五典 of Shǎohào, Zhuānxū, Gāoxīn, Táng, Yú; identifies Confucius and Lǎozǐ as inheritors of the chángdào (常道) and dàdào (大道) respectively; and places Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景 as the “second sage” (亞聖) whose Shānghán cùbìng fānglùn 傷寒卒病方論 has been transmitted only imperfectly through the post-Hàn / Jìn redactor Wáng Shūhé 王叔和 and the early-Sòng Gāo Jìchōng 高繼沖 imperial submission. Liú’s framing is therefore historicising and reformist: his own programme is presented as the recovery of the Sùwèn doctrine that the Shānghán lineage has imperfectly transmitted.
Abstract
Liú Wánsù (Shǒuzhēn, c. 1110–1200) was a physician of Héjiān 河間 (Héběi); his lineage was carried forward most prominently by Zhāng Cóngzhèng 張從正 (KR3eg004). The Yuánbìng shì is conventionally dated to Dàdìng 22 of the Jīn (1182 CE), the date that appears in some manuscript witnesses; modern Chinese-medicine reference works follow this dating. The work is the first of Liú’s four major treatises — alongside Xuānmíng lùnfāng 宣明論方, Sùwèn bìngjī qìyí bǎomìng jí 素問病機氣宜保命集, and Shānghán biāoběn xīnfǎ lèicuì 傷寒標本心法類萃 — and is the doctrinal foundation of the entire JīnYuán huǒrè lùn 火熱論 (fire-and-heat doctrine). The work was carried into Korea and Japan in the Yuán and Míng and was widely commented on through the late imperial period (notably by 馬蒔 Mǎ Shì in his Míng-period Yuánbìng shì zhù 原病式註).
Translations and research
The work is partially translated and extensively discussed in Paul U. Unschuld, Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine (Paradigm, 1990), as a key text of the Jīn-Yuán reformulation. Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), and Robert J. R. Levanvier (forthcoming PhD), discuss the work’s place in the Hé-jiān–Dān-xī cooling-and-yīn-nourishing lineage. The Chinese-language standard edition is Liú Wán-sù yī-xué quán-shū 劉完素醫學全書 (Zhōng-guó zhōng-yī-yào, 2006).
Links
- Liú Wánsù (zh.wikipedia)
- Person note 劉完素.