Gǔjīn yī chè 古今醫徹
A Penetrating Survey of Medicine, Ancient and Modern by 懷遠 Huáiyuǎn (zì Bàoqí 抱奇, mid-Qīng physician of Sūzhōu / Chángshú region).
About the work
A four-juǎn mid-Qīng clinical compendium covering Shānghán, miscellaneous internal-medicine diseases (zázhèng 雜症), gynaecology, and pediatrics — the conventional four-fold division of late-imperial Chinese clinical doctrine. Huáiyuǎn’s principal methodological innovation, set out in the preface by Wáng Chāng 王昶, is to combine the Shānghán doctrine of Zhāng Zhòngjǐng with the broader Jīn-Yuán synthesis in such a way as to make the work clinically usable as a self-standing didactic system — to “draw out [the Shānghán] with ease” (出之以易，管令人約而可循). The work was completed by Huáiyuǎn in the early eighteenth century after roughly thirty years of clinical practice (㠯家學濟世幾三十年). Each disease-category is treated under the disease-presentation / aetiology / pulse / formula tetrad characteristic of mid-Qīng clinical compendia.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the preface of Wáng Chāng 王昶 (1725–1806), hào Shùān 述菴 of Qīngpǔ 青浦 (Shànghǎi), one of the most senior mid-Qīng kǎojù scholars and Hànlín officials, dated Jiāqìng wùchén 嘉慶戊辰 = Jiāqìng 13 = 1808 — the preface is a later reprint preface, not the original publication-date preface. Wáng narrates that he met Huáiyuǎn (“Huáizǐ”) in their youth when Huái was studying for the examinations; the post-1644 chaos led both to abandon orthodox official career, Huáizǐ retreating to medicine as a yǐn 隱 (hidden one). Wáng characterises Huáiyuǎn’s medical orientation as “moderate, eclectic, with sustained shénwù 神悟 (spiritual insight)“. A second preface (truncated in source) appears further on in the source file.
Abstract
Huáiyuǎn’s biographical detail is sparse; the surname is unrecovered (Huái is the míng in the catalog; Bàoqí is the zì). He was active in the lower-Yáng-zǐ Sūzhōu / Chángshú region in the early-to-mid Qīng. The composition is conventionally dated to Kāngxī 46 = 1707 in standard Chinese-medicine reference works; the Wáng Chāng preface of 1808 belongs to a later reprint. The work circulated through the Qīng as a moderate-eclectic mid-Qīng clinical compendium and was preserved in Japanese collections; the hxwd transmission is from a Japanese source. The Yīmén bǔyào of 趙濂 Zhào Lián (KR3er035) is a methodologically parallel — though much later — work in this clinical genre.
Translations and research
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. For the early-Qīng eclectic-synthetic medical genre see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007). Chinese-language critical edition: Gǔ-jīn yī-chè jiào-zhù 古今醫徹校註 (Shàng-hǎi kē-jì, 1991).