Jiào zhù Yīchún shèng yì 校注醫醇賸義
Annotated Edition of “The Remaining Significations of Pure Medicine” by 費伯雄 Fèi Bóxióng (zì Jīnqīng 晉卿, 1800–1879), with mid-twentieth-century editorial annotation by 朱祖怡 Zhū Zǔyí.
About the work
A four-juǎn clinical handbook — the surviving fragment of Fèi Bóxióng’s larger projected work Yīchún 醫醇 (now lost), which Fèi himself completed in Xiánfēng era only to lose the manuscript during the Tàipíng 太平 rebellion’s depredations of JiāngNán. The Shèngyì — “remaining significations” — were reconstructed by Fèi in his old age from memory; the work covers twenty-four disease-categories arranged from Zhòngyào qīngtóu biàn 重藥輕投辯 (the discussion of using heavy drugs in light dosage) to Chǎnhòu sān chōng 產後三沖 (post-partum three-rushing disorder), with a total of 196 self-formulated formulae (out of which 8 are “having a formula but no theoretical discussion”, explicitly marked as such). Fèi’s clinical doctrine is methodologically distinctive: he advances a qīngtóu 輕投 (light-dosage) programme against the prevailing late-Qīng tendency to heavy fǎzhì zhī 法治 (severe therapeutic methods), arguing that the most-effective intervention is typically the lightest one consistent with the clinical pattern.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves the Zhū bá 朱跋 (Zhū postface) of Zhū Zǔyí 朱祖怡, the twentieth-century editor of the present recension. Zhū characterises Fèi as having had little leisure-time (日鮮暇晷), having completed the Shèngyì only in his old age (晚年抽閒成此賸義), and explicitly disclaiming any motivation of profit or reputation (並無名利之心) — Fèi presents the work simply as an example for posterity (為後學舉隅示範). Zhū’s editorial framing: the reader should “from the clinical text discover the principles of pattern-distinction (從條文中求得辨證的原理); from the formula-methods discover the principles of drug use (從方法中求得用藥的原則); from the relative comparison and the contrary comparison discover the correct viewpoint of Chinese medical theory (從相對的比較、相反的比較中，求得中醫藥學理的正確觀點)“. The Zhū postface is a substantial mid-twentieth-century editorial statement reflecting the new pedagogy of the early-PRC era.
Abstract
Fèi Bóxióng (1800–1879) was the foundational figure of the Mènghé 孟河 medical lineage of mid-late-Qīng Sūzhōu / Chángzhōu — the most influential nineteenth-century Chinese-medicine school, whose physicians dominated the Shànghǎi medical scene in the late Qīng and early Republic. Fèi’s other works include the Mènghé yīàn 孟河醫案 (Mènghé case-records) and the lost Yīchún (of which the present Shèngyì is the remnant); the Shèngyì was completed in c. 1860–1864 (the years of the Tài-píng-rebellion-related manuscript-loss bracketing the reconstruction window). The work was first printed in Tóngzhì 2 (1863) and was repeatedly reprinted through the late Qīng. The Zhū Zǔyí annotated edition that is the basis of the hxwd transmission belongs to the 1950s-PRC editorial efflorescence of late-Qīng medical-textual scholarship. Fèi’s lifedates are securely datable.
Translations and research
The Mèng-hé tradition has been the subject of sustained European-language scholarly work: Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007) — the foundational English-language treatment of the school — and Scheid, “Convergent Lines of Descent” (EASTS, 2014). For Fèi Bó-xióng specifically see Scheid, Currents of Tradition, pp. 153–187. Chinese-language critical edition: the standard recension is the Zhū Zǔ-yí 1950s annotated edition, reprinted as Yī-chún shèng-yì jiào-zhù 醫醇賸義校註 (Rénmín wèishēng, 1962).
Links
- Fèi Bóxióng (zh.wikipedia)
- Person notes 費伯雄, 朱祖怡 (twentieth-century editor).