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 JīnYuán 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
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).