XuānQí jiùzhèng lùn 軒岐救正論
Discourses on Restoring Correctness to the Medicine of Xuānyuán and Qíbó by 蕭京 Xiāo Jīng (zì Wànyú 萬輿, hào Tōngyǐnzǐ 通隱子, fl. late Wànlì 萬曆 – early Shùnzhì 順治, Fújiàn).
About the work
A six-juǎn polemical treatise of the very end of the Míng — Xiāo Jīng’s self-styled effort to “rescue and rectify” (救正) the medicine of Xuānyuán 軒轅 (the Yellow Emperor) and Qíbó 岐伯 from what Xiāo regards as its late-Míng corruption. The work systematically engages the JīnYuán four masters (Liú Wánsù, Zhāng Cóngzhèng, Lǐ Gǎo, Zhū Zhènhēng) and the late-Míng warming-tonifying school of Xuē Jǐ 薛己 and 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě (KR3er001), defending positions Xiāo regards as canonical against what he calls wèiyī 偽醫 (counterfeit doctors) and yōngyī 庸醫 (vulgar doctors). The argumentative core is the yīnyáng shuǐhuǒ 陰陽水火 doctrine: Xiāo argues for a strict reading of the Nèijīng against the late-Míng tendency to inflate huǒ (fire) into the formless root-of-life of the Mìngmén school. The work also contains an extensive practical formulary, drawn from Xiāo’s own clinical experience on the Fújiàn coast, and his characteristic critiques of fǎnyī 反醫 (counter-therapy) and overprescription of warming agents.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries (i) the visiting-prefacer’s preface narrating a visit to Xiāo’s residence in Jìnān 晉安 (Fuzhou region), describing Xiāo’s literary cover-name and his family’s reputation for “loyalty, filial piety, integrity and restraint” (忠孝廉節) — the prefacer reads the work after Xiāo’s death and is presented the manuscript by Xiāo’s son; (ii) Xiāo Jīng’s own self-preface dated Chóngzhēn jiǎshēn 崇禎甲申 = 1644, spring, second month, first decade (“崇禎甲申春二月上浣之吉閩中通隱子蕭京萬輿甫撰”); (iii) a postface (bá 跋) by Xiāo Jīng’s son Xiāo Zhèn 蕭震, opening with the mourning formula “嗚呼，先君子沒歲一再 — 周震不孝倚廬伏苫不能讀父書” (alas, my late father has been dead for some years now; this unfilial son, Zhèn, observing the mourning vigil in the hut of straw, could not read his father’s book…), placing the postface and the printing some years after Xiāo Jīng’s death.
Abstract
Xiāo Jīng’s self-preface securely dates the work to Chóngzhēn 17 / 1644 — the very last spring of the Míng dynasty, before the Shùnzhì conquest of Běijīng. Xiāo Jīng was of Mǐnzhōng 閩中 (Fújiàn); the prefacer’s account locates him at Jìnān 晉安 (the old name of Fuzhou). The work was not published in Xiāo’s lifetime — his son Xiāo Zhèn saw it through the press only some years after the father’s death, presumably in the early Qīng. Xiāo Jīng is otherwise unattested in standard biographical sources and is not in CBDB; his date-bracket and Fújiàn origin must be inferred from internal evidence.
The work is unusual among late-Míng medical writings for the directness of its polemical engagement with the dominant ZhūZhènhēng / Xuē Jǐ / Zhào Xiànkě warming-tonifying tradition — predating by almost a century 徐大椿 Xú Dàchūn’s much more famous Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭 (KR3eq048, 1741), which attacks the same target. The hxwd recension is the modern repatriation from a Japanese (Edo-period) reprint.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. For the late-Míng Mìng-mén warming-tonifying tradition and its early critics see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011); Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition (Eastland, 2007).