Sōngyá yī jìng 松崖醫徑
The Medical Pathway of Sōng-yá by 程玠 Chéng Jiè (hào Sōngyá 松厓 / Sōngyá 松崖, jìnshì 1475, mid-Míng).
About the work
A two-juǎn (in some recensions four-juǎn) clinical handbook framed for the apprentice physician as a “shortcut path” (jìng 徑 = path, by-way, route) to medical competence. Chéng’s framing in the preface is methodological: where the existing encyclopaedic medical literature requires the apprentice to read and reconcile a vast and contradictory body of canonical and SòngJīnYuán material, the Sōngyá yījìng presents the same disease-categories in a single compact form that pairs each disease with its characteristic pulse and a corresponding short formula. The work organises the clinical material by disease-class (分門別類) with each disease entry presenting the next-pulse / one-formula pairing (有一病則次一脈，按一脈則著一方). The clinical framing is shaped by Chéng’s regional Hīzhōu (Xīnān) medical context and by Dān-xī-school doctrine (the Hízhōu lineage was a major Dānxī branch).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a xù (preface) framing the work as a regional Hīzhōu medical inheritance. The preface signer (Hīzhōu zōngrén 歙宗人 — “of the Hīzhōu lineage”, i.e. Chéng’s clansman) characterises Chéng as “having long held a great plan within him” (夙蘊弘猷) and as having flourished as both a jìnshì and a clinical physician (鐫有醫徑) — a Confucian-physician (rúyī 儒醫) in the proper sense. The preface concludes by noting that the woodblocks of the original printing had become scattered (久而板蠡散遺，未廣其傳) and that the prefacer had recovered the work from an existing fascicle in his own library and was reissuing it.
Abstract
Chéng Jiè (Sōngyá) was a hereditary Hīzhōu Xīnān physician who broke pattern by also attaining the jìnshì in Chénghuà 11 (1475) and serving briefly as a Hànlín biānxiū 編修. His medical practice was carried on alongside his official career. The Sōngyá yījìng is conventionally dated to Chénghuà 23 (1487) and is the most widely circulated of his medical works; he also produced an Yīlùn jíyào 醫論集要. The work circulated through the late-Míng and Qīng as a standard Hīzhōu clinical primer and entered the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. For Chéng Jiè in the broader Hī-zhōu / Xīn-ān yī-xué 新安醫學 tradition see Wú Yǐ-zhī’s 吳以哲 Chinese-language studies.
Links
- Person note 程玠.