Yī lěi yuán róng 醫壘元戎
The Commander-in-Chief at the Medical Camp by 王好古 Wáng Hǎogǔ (zì Jìnzhī 進之, hào Hǎicáng 海藏, c. 1200 – c. 1308).
About the work
A twelve-juǎn clinical handbook organising Wáng Hǎogǔ’s mature clinical doctrine under the liùjīng 六經 (six-channel) framework — the Shānghán-derived nosological apparatus that Wáng’s teacher 李杲 Lǐ Dōngyuán had refashioned into a comprehensive disease taxonomy. The work’s martial-metaphor title — yīlěi yuánróng “the great commander at the medical encampment” — frames the physician as the supreme strategic commander of the body’s defensive and offensive forces, with the liùjīng representing the six divisions of the army. Each jīng is treated systematically with characteristic pulse, presentation, and ranked formulae from light to severe; the work contains some of the most clinically distinctive Yì-shuǐ-school formula-discussions, including the xiǎocháihú tāng 小柴胡湯 family and the fùzǐ tāng 附子湯 family, both deployed across multiple liùjīng indications.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves a preface that, on close inspection, is actually the preface to a different work — a treatise on the treatment of dīng 疔 (boil / virulent abscess) called Zhìdīng jiéfǎ 治疔捷法, prefaced by an editor named Zhāng Róngtíng 張蓉亭 of Wúmén 吳門 (Sūzhōu). This appears to be a transmission-error in the hxwd source — the Yīlěi yuánróng prefatory paratext has been replaced by the wrong preface during digitisation or earlier manuscript circulation. The body of the work (_001.txt onward) is intact and is the genuine Yīlěi yuánróng.
Abstract
The work was composed in Wáng Hǎogǔ’s mature period, conventionally dated to the late Yuán Zhìyuán / Dàdé / Zhìdà eras (1291–1308). The work circulated through the Míng and Qīng and was repeatedly reprinted in the Wànlì 萬曆 era and again in the Qiánlóng / Jiāqìng eras. The standard Chinese-medicine reference works treat the Yīlěi yuánróng together with the KR3er030 Cǐ shì nánzhī and the KR3er034 Bānlùn cuìyīng as the principal Wáng Hǎogǔ medical corpus; the Yīlěi yuánróng is the most clinically substantive of the three. Wáng’s lifedates are conventionally bracketed c. 1200 – c. 1308. The work is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yī-lěi yuán-róng located. For the Yì-shuǐ school and Wáng Hǎo-gǔ specifically see 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); Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007).