Dānxī zhìfǎ xīn yào 丹溪治法心要
The Essential Treatment-Methods of Dān-xī attributed to 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhēng (Dānxī 丹溪, 1281–1358); compiled and edited by 高叔宗 Gāo Shūzōng (mid-Míng, post-1481 recension).
About the work
An eight-juǎn clinical case-record handbook drawn from Zhū Dānxī’s medical practice, organised by disease-category with each case-record presented as a tight diagnostic-and-prescription unit. Each entry typically gives the patient’s age (or anonymously “一人”), the principal clinical presentation, the inferred aetiology, and the prescribed formula — often a variation of one of Dānxī’s canonical formulae (Sìjūnzǐ tāng 四君子湯, Sìwù tāng 四物湯, Bǔzhōng yìqì tāng 補中益氣湯) adjusted for the case-specific pattern. The work is principally a clinical àn 案 (case-record) compilation in the Dānxī tradition — the late-Yuán originator of the yīàn 醫案 (medical case-record) genre as a substantive literary form — and represents the principal YuánMíng source for understanding Dānxī’s actual clinical practice as distinct from his theoretical writings.
Abstract
The hxwd _000.txt is empty; the body of the work opens directly with the yīàn shíyí 醫案拾遺 appendix-collected cases. The catalog meta records the work’s dynasty as 元 and the compiler as 高叔宗 (a Míng-period editor whose biographical detail is unrecovered). The work itself is a Dānxī material; the editorial intervention is Míng. Standard Chinese-medicine reference works place the compilation in the mid-Míng Chénghuà / Hóngzhì era, contemporary with Chéng Chōng’s 1481 Dānxī xīnfǎ recension (KR3er018), and probably from the same Hīzhōu Dānxī-lineage editorial circle. The notBefore / notAfter fields are set to the upper bracket of Dānxī’s lifetime (the underlying clinical material) and to 1481 (the broader Chéng-huà-era editorial context); the dynasty field is left as 元 for catalogue-meta consistency with the attribution. The work is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Dān-xī zhì-fǎ xīn-yào located. For the Dān-xī yī-àn tradition and its place in the development of the Chinese medical case-record genre see Christopher Cullen, “Yi’an (case histories): The Origins of a Genre of Chinese Medical Literature”, in Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu (Cambridge, 2001); Joanna Grant, A Chinese Physician: Wang Ji and the “Stone Mountain Medical Case Histories” (Routledge, 2003).