Yù jī wēi yì 玉機微義
Subtle Significations of the Jade-Mechanism Pulse by 徐彥純 Xú Yànchún (zì Yòngchéng 用誠, of Kuàijī 會稽 / Shàoxīng, mid-late Yuán to early Míng), with continuation by 劉純 Liú Chún (zì Zōnghòu 宗厚, of Wúlíng 吳陵, mid-Míng).
About the work
A fifty-juǎn comprehensive clinical-doctrinal treatise — one of the most ambitious early-Míng medical syntheses, presenting Chinese medical doctrine under the rubric of the yùjī wēiyì 玉機微義 (the “jade-mechanism”, a metaphor drawn from the Sùwèn yùjī zhēnzàng lùn 素問玉機真臟論 for the subtle interaction of the pulse and the visceral physiology). The work covers in order: aetiology (bìngyīn 病因), symptomatology (zhèng 證), treatment principles (zhì 治), and characteristic formulae for each major disease-category. The doctrinal lineage acknowledged in the preface is highly specific: the Yìshuǐ school of 張元素 Zhāng Yuánsù → 李杲 Lǐ Dōngyuán → 王好古 Wáng Hǎogǔ in the north; and the Dānxī lineage in the south via 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī. Xú Yànchún and Liú Chún are framed as the “private students” (私淑) of Dānxī, transmitting his doctrine into the early Míng. The work was therefore the principal vehicle by which the JīnYuán synthesis was carried into the early-Míng Yìshuǐ / Dānxī integrated framework that became the foundation of all subsequent Míng medical practice.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves the yuánxù 原序 (original preface) by Yáng Shìqí 楊士奇 (hào Dōnglǐ 東里, 1365–1444), the foundational early-Míng Hànlín official and one of the “Three Yáng” (三楊) cabinet ministers of the Yǒnglè and Xuāndé eras. Yáng’s preface places Xú Yànchún and Liú Chún at the head of the Dānxī lineage’s southern transmission, and explicitly identifies Zhāng Yuánsù as “the wángdào 王道 (kingly way) of medicine, because the wángdào takes the nourishment of the people as its root, and Zhāng’s method takes the strengthening of the spleen-earth as its essential — this is the zhīběn zhī wù 知本之務 (the affair of knowing the root)“. The preface positions the work as a teaching aid: even an average-grade physician using this compendium can succeed in clinical practice (雖中醫執此施治可以成功), while the educated patient who knows the work cannot be deceived by an incompetent physician.
Abstract
Xú Yànchún (Yòngchéng) was a late-Yuán / early-Míng physician active in the Kuàijī 會稽 region; he was a private student of 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī through the Dài Sīgōng 戴思恭 line. His other principal work is the Běncǎo fāhuī 本草發揮 (a pharmacological treatise). Liú Chún (Zōnghòu) was an early-Míng physician of Wúlíng 吳陵 (Jiāngsū) who continued and expanded the work; he is also the author of the KR3er051 Yījīng xiǎoxué (1388). The composition of Yùjī wēiyì is conventionally dated to Hóngwǔ 29 = 1396 (the year of Liú Chún’s continuation); the Yáng Shìqí preface is later, probably Xuāndé era. The work circulated continuously through the Míng and Qīng and was a major source for Lǐ Shízhēn’s Běncǎo gāngmù and Zhāng Jièbīn’s Jǐngyuè quánshū 景岳全書.
Translations and research
No comprehensive European-language translation of the Yù-jī wēi-yì located. The early-Míng Dān-xī transmission and the Yáng Shì-qí preface are discussed in John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (California, 1983). For the Yì-shuǐ-Dān-xī synthesis see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007).