Yī jiàn néng yī 一見能醫
Able to Cure at a Single Glance by 朱時進 Zhū Shíjìn (zì Nánzhēn 南珍, mid-Qián-lóng), with prefatory framing by Yè Fèngmáo 葉鳳毛 dated 1769.
About the work
An eight-juǎn mid-Qīng clinical-pedagogical handbook framed for the apprentice physician: each disease-category is presented in compact form designed to produce immediate clinical recognition (yī jiàn néng yī 一見能醫 = “able to cure at a single glance”). The work organises Chinese medical doctrine in a strongly didactic mode: the prefatory framing by Yè Fèngmáo argues that the work is the product of Zhū’s “diligent and painstaking learning” through which he had personally hand-copied earlier physicians’ secret texts (常手錄前人秘本), and that the Yī jiàn néng yī represents the distillation of this learning into a clinically applicable form. The work explicitly polemicises against late-Míng / early-Qīng excesses in both directions — against Zhāng Jièbīn’s 張景岳 universal-vacuity-cold doctrine (“謂人盡虛寒”) and against the anti-ginseng polemics of an unnamed contemporary (“近某著人參不可餌論”) — and positions itself as a moderate scholarly handbook in the Confucian-physician tradition.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with Yè Fèngmáo 葉鳳毛’s preface, signed Qiánlóng sānshísì nián gòuyuè shíyī rì 乾隆三十四年姤月十一日 (= the eleventh day of the fifth month, Qiánlóng 34 = 5 June 1769). Yè frames the work as the medical exemplar of the Sīmǎ Wēngōng 司馬溫公 (Sīmǎ Guāng’s) dictum that “if a man cannot be a good minister of state, he should be a good physician” (人生不得為良相，必為良醫), and traces a lineage of rúyī 儒醫 (Confucian-physicians) from Zhū Dānxī (理學上承徽國) through Wáng Kěntáng 王肯堂. A second preface follows (truncated in the source), arguing for the methodological centrality of guǎng jī bó kǎo 廣稽博考 (“broad investigation and exhaustive consideration”) combined with shàn jì shàn wù 善記善悟 (“good memory and good understanding”) for the apprentice physician.
Abstract
Zhū Shíjìn 朱時進 (zì Nánzhēn 南珍) is the standard catalog name; he was a Hīzhōu / Xīnān regional Qián-lóng-era physician with no surviving CBDB record. The 1769 Yè-preface dating is the secure dating evidence. The work circulated as one of the popular mid-Qīng didactic handbooks and was repeatedly reprinted through the Qīng. The Hīzhōu (Xīnān yīxué 新安醫學) context of its production aligns the work with other mid-Qīng Hīzhōu medical compilations including KR3er022 Fāngzhèng huìyào of Wú Màishū (1756) and KR3er058 Yīshù of Chéng Xìngxuān. Preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. For the mid-Qīng Hī-zhōu (Xīn-ān) medical school see Wú Yǐ-zhī’s 吳以哲 Chinese-language studies of Xīn-ān yī-xué 新安醫學.
Links
- Person note 朱時進.