Jiǎnmíng yī gòu 簡明醫彀
A Concise Medical Compass by 孫志宏 Sūn Zhìhóng (hào Táishí 臺石, fl. late Wànlì 萬曆 / Chóngzhēn 崇禎, Wǔyuán 武原 / Hǎiyán 海鹽, Zhèjiāng).
About the work
An eight-juǎn late-Míng clinical compendium structured around a deliberately three-tier exposition of each disease-category: (i) the yuán 原 (aetiology and pathomechanism), (ii) the fǎ 法 (therapeutic principle and standard formula), and (iii) the jiājiǎn 加減 (clinical modifications appropriate to age, constitution, season, and concurrent conditions). Sūn explicitly aims at a stylistic balance between jiǎn 簡 (concision) and míng 明 (clarity) — the two terms of the title — and rejects both the prolixity of the standard Wàn-lì-era quánshū 全書 compendia and the over-condensed mnemonic-rhyme genre. The pedagogical framing — “first attack the origin of the received disease; next fix the rule of curing it; next adjust its modifications” (先攻其受病之原，次定其瘳治之法，又次調其加減之宜) — sets out a clear and explicitly Buddhist-inflected (the prefacer compares Sūn’s reading to Chán 禪 insight) clinical pedagogy.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries only a single text — the postface (bá 跋) of 施梁 Shī Liáng of Wúxīng 吳興, jìnshì and Jiāngxī circuit jiānchá yùshǐ 監察御史, with a long honorific titulature listing his appointments as imperial inspector of Zhílì, of the Chánglú 長蘆 salt-monopoly, of the canal-postal system, and of the Shāndōng / Hénán KāiGuī (Kāifēng) region. Shī describes Sūn as “Táishí xiān-sheng” 臺石先生, inheriting the yībō 衣缽 (Buddhist mantle, here used in the medical-discipleship sense) of his teacher “Guìyán xiān-sheng” 桂岩先生; Sūn is said to have practised across the SānWú liǎngZhè 三吳兩淛 region (the Suzhou-Hangzhou metropolitan belt), with particular distinction at Wǔyuán 武原 (the old name for Hǎiyán 海鹽, Zhèjiāng), and to have spent “five revolutions of the cold and hot seasons” (五閱寒暑) composing the work. Shī’s postface is undated, but Shī Liáng is securely placeable in the Wànlì 萬曆–Chóngzhēn 崇禎 era, and the work is conventionally dated to Chóngzhēn 2 / 1629 by modern Chinese medical-history reference works, which we follow here.
Abstract
Sūn Zhìhóng was a hereditary physician of the Hǎiyán / Wǔyuán region in northern Zhèjiāng, in the educational line of one Guìyán (no further identification possible). The work was composed over five years of clinical practice, finalised c. 1629, and printed under Shī Liáng’s patronage shortly thereafter. Neither author nor prefacer is in CBDB; their date-brackets must be inferred from Shī Liáng’s jìnshì status and stated official posts (Wàn-lì-era inspectorates).
The work circulated through the late Míng and Qīng but was preserved chiefly through Japanese reprintings; the hxwd recension repatriates this Japanese transmission. It is distinct from but generically related to other late-Wàn-lì three-tier handbooks such as Gōng Tíngxián’s Wànbìng huíchūn (KR3er039) and Yúnlín shéngòu (KR3er084).
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. For the late-Míng three-tier yuán-fǎ-jiā-jiǎn clinical-handbook genre see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition (Eastland, 2007); Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics (Routledge, 2011).