Zhāngshì yī tōng 張氏醫通
The Penetrating Compendium of Medicine of Master Zhāng by 張璐 Zhāng Lù (zì Lùyù 路玉, hào Shíwán lǎorén 石頑老人, 1617–1700).
About the work
A sixteen-juǎn synthetic medical compendium completed by Zhāng Lù in his late old age (he reports having written ten successive drafts: gǎo fán shí yì 稿凡十易) and brought to print in Kāngxī 34 (1695). The work covers internal medicine, gynaecology, pediatrics, ophthalmology, and the dòuzhěn 痘疹 (smallpox) — explicitly added in the final recension by Zhāng’s sons Zhuō 倬 and Róu 柔 after the loss of earlier drafts. Zhāng’s prefatory framing is a strikingly autobiographical document: he reports being born in Wànlì dīngsì (1617), surviving the MíngQīng cataclysm of jiǎshēn (1644), spending more than a decade in hiding (“身同匏繫”), and devoting his subsequent forty years to clinical practice in Sūzhōu. The work is the foundational text of the Zhāng family medical lineage of late-seventeenth-century Sūzhōu and is one of the most influential early-Qīng synthetic clinical compendia, marking a transition from the late-Míng warming-tonifying programme of 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě (whose Yīguàn Zhāng had cited approvingly in his earlier Yīguī 醫歸) to a more eclectic Qīng synthesis incorporating the Shānghán-revisionist current of Yù Chāng 喻昌.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves Zhāng’s lengthy autobiographical self-preface. Zhāng narrates the three transformations (biàn 變) of contemporary medicine: (1) the late-Míng pre-cataclysm period when each physician kept to his specialty; (2) the post-1644 chaos when patients “did not choose physicians, and physicians went where they were summoned” (病不擇醫，醫隨應請) — the loss of specialty boundaries; (3) the post-Rényín (1662) revival of medical fashion when “scholars and gentlemen lowered their ambition to medicine” (儒林上達，每多降志於醫) and “medical aspirants daily exchanged greetings through the world of fashion” (醫林好尚之士，日漸聲氣交通). Zhāng’s Yītōng is presented as the work to bring back the old standards against this third transformation. The preface contains the famous methodological declaration “piēyī wú yú ér yǔ jiǎn yìmǎ 撇一無餘而與見聞迥殊” — Zhāng’s claim that his medical knowledge was hard-won through forty years of his own clinical experience, not derivative learning.
Abstract
Zhāng Lù (Shíwán) was the foundational figure of the Zhāngshì 張氏 medical lineage of Sūzhōu, which continued through three generations into the mid-Qīng. CBDB does not have a clean entry; the conventional lifedates 1617–1700 follow modern Chinese-medicine reference works and are anchored by Zhāng’s own Wànlì dīngsì birth notice in the preface and the conventional death date. The Yītōng was completed in 1695 and is the principal Zhāng work; he also produced the Shānghán zuǎnxù 傷寒纘緒, the Yīguī 醫歸 (1659; later renamed Yītōng), and several other works that circulated together as the Zhāngshì yīshū qīzhǒng 張氏醫書七種. The Yītōng was repeatedly reprinted through the Qīng and was carried into Korea and Japan as a major reference work.
Translations and research
No comprehensive European-language translation of the Zhāng-shì yī-tōng located. For Zhāng Lù and the early-Qīng Sūzhōu medical world see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), and Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011). Chinese-language critical edition: Zhāng-shì yī-tōng jiào-zhù 張氏醫通校註 (Rénmín wèishēng, 1995).
Links
- Zhāngshì yītōng (zh.wikipedia / zh.wikisource).
- Person note 張璐.