Yī mén bǔ yào 醫門補要
Supplementary Essentials at the Gate of Medicine by 趙濂 Zhào Lián (zì Hérén 何人, hào Zhúquán 竹泉, late-Qīng physician of Dāntú 丹徒 / Zhènjiāng).
About the work
A three-juǎn late-Qīng clinical handbook organised principally around external-medicine (wàikē 外科) and surgical conditions but extending to selected internal-medicine and gynaecological topics. The work’s distinctive feature is the opening cǎijí xiānzhé chá shēngsǐ mìfǎ 採集先哲察生死秘法 — a comprehensive compilation of prognostic indicators drawn from the canonical and post-canonical medical literature, organised by anatomical site (head, face, eye, hand, foot, etc.) and presenting for each site the visual signs that signal imminent death (a si-zhèng 死症 nosology of remarkable detail). The work then turns to clinical treatment of surgical-and-external-medicine conditions, with characteristic mid-late-Qīng formulae. The work is one of the principal late-Qīng wàikē clinical primers and was widely used in late-Qīng / Republican-period medical training.
Abstract
The hxwd _000.txt opens directly with the cǎijí xiānzhé prognostic compilation; no formal preface is preserved. Zhào Lián (Zhúquán) was a hereditary physician of Dāntú 丹徒 (Zhènjiāng, Jiāngsū) active in the late-Qīng Guāngxù era; the work was first printed in Guāngxù 9 (1883) — the dating that appears in the standard Chinese-medicine reference works and that is followed here. Zhào also produced the Yīmén bǔyào shízhèng tújiě 醫門補要室證圖解 (an illustrated companion) and the Yīmén bǔyào ànyàn lù 醫門補要按驗錄 (case-record companion). The work was carried into Japan in the late-Qīng / Meiji era and is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yī-mén bǔ-yào located. For Qīng-period external-medicine and the development of surgical nosology see Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women (California, 2010), in passing. Chinese-language critical edition: Yī-mén bǔ-yào jiào-zhù 醫門補要校註 (Shàng-hǎi kē-jì, 1989).
Links
- Person note 趙濂.