Cǐ shì nán zhī 此事難知
This Matter Is Hard to Know by 王好古 Wáng Hǎogǔ (zì Jìnzhī 進之, hào Hǎicáng 海藏, c. 1200 – c. 1308), late-Yuán physician of the Yìshuǐ 易水 lineage.
About the work
A two-juǎn (in some recensions one-juǎn) clinical-doctrinal treatise — Wáng Hǎogǔ’s mature systematic statement of the medical doctrine he had received in his youth from his teacher 李杲 Lǐ Gǎo (Dōngyuán 東垣, 1180–1251). The work’s title — Cǐ shì nán zhī “this matter is hard to know” — is taken from a phrase used by the Táng physician Xǔ Yìnzōng 許胤宗 quoted in the Hòuxù 後序: yī zhě, yì yě 醫者意也 (“the physician [knows the patient] by intuition”). The work is therefore framed as Wáng’s attempt to articulate in writing the intuitive dimension of Dōngyuán’s clinical doctrine — the dimension that ordinarily cannot be transmitted in writing but only “in the heart, in the spirit” (在乎心領而神會耳). The principal content of the work covers the wǔyùn liùqì 五運六氣 (five-circulatory-phase / six-seasonal-influence) framework, the yīnyáng shēngjiàng 陰陽升降 (rise-and-fall of yīnyáng) physiology, the zàngfǔ xūshí 臟腑虛實 (vacuity-and-repletion of the viscera-and-bowels), and the jīngluò shàngxià 經絡上下 (channel-network upper-and-lower) topology — the four-fold framework that defines the Yì-shuǐ-school clinical apparatus.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the Hòuxù 後序 (postface) signed Chénghuà jiǎchén suì zhòngxià jìwàng Jīngnán yīrén shí 成化甲辰歲仲夏既望荊南一人識 — the day after the mid-summer full moon of Chénghuà 20 (1484), signed by “the single man of Jīngnán” (i.e. an anonymous Húběi / Húguǎng editor). The postface reports that the editor’s “府” (princely household / prefecture) had previously printed the rest of Dōngyuán’s medical corpus and that the Cǐ shì nán zhī had now been received as a new addition and was being printed for the first time in this 1484 edition. The postface frames the work as the “marrow” 精髓 of the Dōngyuán transmission — the part that Dōngyuán’s direct disciples had received in oral teaching and only later articulated in writing.
Abstract
Wáng Hǎogǔ (Hǎicáng) was Lǐ Gǎo’s principal disciple together with Luó Tiānyì 羅天益 (KR3er052 Wèishēng bǎojiàn 衛生寶鑑) and a key transmitter of the Yìshuǐ school’s clinical doctrine into the late Yuán. His other principal works include the Yīlěi yuánróng 醫壘元戎 (KR3er033) and the Bānlùn cuìyīng 斑論萃英 (KR3er034). The composition of Cǐ shì nán zhī is conventionally dated to Zhìdà 1 = 1308, the close of Wáng’s life; the 1484 Jīng-nán-edition postface is the terminus ante quem of the work’s stable circulation in print. Wáng’s lifedates are not securely datable; the c. 1200 – c. 1308 bracket follows the modern Chinese-medicine consensus. The work circulated continuously from the Míng through the Qīng and is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
For the Yì-shuǐ school and Dōng-yuán doctrine see the foundational discussions in Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007); for Wáng Hǎo-gǔ specifically see the relevant chapter in Yu Yong 余瀛鰲, Wáng Hǎo-gǔ yī-xué quán-shū 王好古醫學全書 (Zhōng-guó zhōng-yī-yào, 2005). No European-language standalone translation of the Cǐ shì nán zhī located.