Yīshù 醫述
Recountings on Medicine (Recensions of Earlier Medical Writings) by 程文囿 Chéng Wényòu (zì Guānquán 觀泉, hào Xìngxuān 杏軒, c. 1761 – c. 1833, Shèxiàn 歙縣 / Xīnān 新安, Ānhuī).
About the work
A sixteen-juǎn late-Qīng medical encyclopaedia compiled by Chéng Wényòu of Shèxiàn — one of the most ambitious editorial undertakings of the late-Qīng Xīnān 新安 medical tradition. The work is a topically-organised jílù 輯錄 (compilation-from-sources) covering the standard repertoire of internal medicine, women’s medicine, paediatrics, surgery, shānghán 傷寒, wēnbìng 溫病, and clinical case-precedent, with each topic structured as a sequence of verbatim or lightly-paraphrased quotations from earlier authorities, accompanied by Chéng’s editorial ànyǔ 案語 (head-notes) identifying the source and explaining the editorial choice.
The hxwd postface specifically commends Chéng’s editorial principle that “no character is without provenance, no character is without a source” (無一字無來歷，無一字無出處): the work is constructed as a transparent zhāngjù 章句 compilation, with full attribution. Particularly valuable is Chéng’s incorporation of unprinted Wǎnnán 皖南 (southern-Ān-huī) medical manuscripts — many of which would otherwise have been lost — alongside the printed canon. The work is the most comprehensive single witness to the Xīnān regional medical tradition.
The postface also notes the parallel Japanese editorial work of Tānbō Gen-ken 丹波元堅, Zábìng guǎngyào 雜病廣要 (KR3eb046?), which is generically related but, in the Chinese postfacer’s judgement, less successful than Chéng’s in its editorial selection.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a long modern (Republican / early-PRC) postface by an unnamed prefacer (signing as a member of the Jiàntíng 鑑庭 lineage), narrating: (i) the Huīzhōu 徽州 / Yángzhōu 揚州 commercial-cultural axis under which Xīnān medical learning was carried to and made famous in Yángzhōu (most notably by Chéng Yúnlái 程云來 of the Shùnzhì era, the postfacer asserts to be a clansman of Chéng Wényòu); (ii) the comprehensive kǎojù 考據 quality of Chéng Wényòu’s editorial work, his eclecticism, and the high regard he was held in by Yángzhōu physicians on first publication; (iii) the print-fate of the work — first issued in Yángzhōu, plates lost shortly thereafter, then reprinted at Hànshàng 漢上 (Wuhan); (iv) the prefacer’s autobiographical note that he had carried only three medical books with him when fleeing the 1937 Sino-Japanese war: the Běncǎo gāngmù, the Zhèngzhì huìbǔ (KR3er015), and the Yīshù — testimony to the work’s continuing reference value into the modern period; and (v) the announcement that the Ānhuī Provincial Bureau of Health and the Ānhuī Science and Technology Press are jointly reprinting the work, of which the present hxwd recension is the descendant.
Abstract
The catalog meta gives Chéng’s dynasty as 元 (Yuán) — a clear transcriptional error: Chéng Wényòu is securely an early-19th-c. Qīng physician (CBDB carries an unrelated Yuán-era Chéng Wényòu, 1671–1733, who is not the medical author). The work is conventionally dated to 1826 in some Chinese sources and to 1833 (the year of Chéng’s death) in others; we use the 1826–1833 bracket. The first printing was at Yángzhōu; the surviving recension descends from a later Hànshàng (Wuhan) reprint and from a Japanese reprinting (the route by which the hxwd recension entered the hǎiwài huíliú series).
Chéng Wényòu’s other major work is the Chéng Xìngxuān yīàn 程杏軒醫案 (KR3ep019), a clinical case-record series in three instalments (1796 onward), which together with the Yīshù makes him the most influential single voice of the late-Qīng Xīnān tradition.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Yī-shù located. The Xīn-ān medical tradition has a substantial modern Chinese literature; in English see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), ch. 5–6, for the late-Qīng regional medical traditions.
Other points of interest
The hxwd postface is an unusual document — it dates from after the 1937 Sino-Japanese war but before the modern reprint of the work, and is itself a small primary source for the social history of Republican-era Yángzhōu medicine. The reference to fleeing with only the Běncǎo gāngmù, Zhèngzhì huìbǔ, and the Yīshù — a self-contained traveling reference library — is an evocative testimony to the Yīshù’s practical clinical utility a century after its compilation.
Links
- Person notes 程文囿 (compiler).