Rúmén shìqīn 儒門事親
Confucians Attending to Their Parents by 張從正 Zhāng Cóngzhèng (zì Zǐhé 子和, hào Dàirén 戴人, 1156–1228, Suízhōu 睢州 Kǎochéng 考城, Hénán); compiled and edited by 麻知幾 Má Zhījǐ and other disciples.
About the work
A fifteen-juǎn polemical-clinical compendium — the foundational doctrinal statement of the Gōngxià pài 攻下派 (“attack-and-purge” school) of Jīn medicine, one of the JīnYuán four masters’ lineages. Zhāng Cóngzhèng’s signature doctrinal claim is the sān fǎ liù mén 三法六門 — three principal therapeutic methods (hàn 汗 sweating, tù 吐 vomiting, and xià 下 purging) deployed against six classes of pathogenic disorder (fēng 風, hán 寒, shǔ 暑, shī 濕, zào 燥, huǒ 火 — the six excesses of seasonal qì). The work is an extended argument that virtually all illness arises from xiéqì 邪氣 (pathogenic qì) that must be expelled, and that the late-Jīn / early-Yuán tendency toward universal bǔ 補 (tonification) is a clinically dangerous fashion. The body of the work is organised into doctrinal essays (Sān fǎ liù mén lùn 三法六門論), clinical case-records (the longest extant Jīn-era case-record collection), formulary, and Zhāng’s polemical biànhuò 辨惑 (disambiguation-of-confusions) on the proper use of the cooling and purging drug-pharmacopoeia.
The title — “Confucians Attending to Their Parents” — alludes to the classical Mèngzǐ maxim that a filial son must know medicine to care for his parents, and frames the work as an addressed to literate Confucian household-heads rather than to professional physicians.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries an extensive Míng-period publication-preface — Xīnkè Rúmén shìqīn xù 新刻儒門事親序 — by a late-Míng preface-writer whose name is truncated at the head of the preserved fragment. The preface stages a long argument in defence of Zhāng Cóngzhèng’s xià (purging) doctrine against the late-Míng fashion for bǔ (warming-tonifying), opposing Zhāng Dàirén to Xuē Lìzhāi 薛立齋 as paired exemplars of the bǔxià 補瀉 polarity — citing Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s own balanced clinical practice (the Tōngmài sìnì tāng 通脈四逆湯 against cold-deficiency and the Dà chéngqì tāng 大承氣湯 against heat-excess) as the paradigm of non-partisan correct practice. The preface’s polemical aim is to bring Zhāng Cóngzhèng’s work back into wide circulation against the Wàn-lì-era preponderance of warming-tonifying handbooks.
Abstract
Zhāng Cóngzhèng (1156–1228, zì Zǐhé, hào Dàirén — “the man from Dài” — referring to his ancestral home in Dàizhōu 戴州) was a physician of Kǎochéng (modern Lánkǎo 蘭考, Hénán) under the Jīn dynasty. He served briefly as tàiyī 太醫 at the Jīn court before retiring to private practice. His doctrinal positions were transmitted to print not by Zhāng himself but by his disciple 麻知幾 Má Zhījǐ and other students, who collected Zhāng’s writings, case-records, and oral teachings; the resulting fifteen-juǎn compilation is conventionally dated to Zhèngdà 5 / 1228, the year of Zhāng’s death. The work was first printed in the early Yuán (the Yuándàdé 元大德 edition is the earliest extant printing) and was repeatedly reprinted in the Míng and Qīng. It was included in the SKQS.
The hxwd recension descends from a Japanese reprinting of a Míng edition. The polemical bǔxià dispute that frames the work’s Míng-era reception was central to the late-Míng / early-Qīng medical debates and is the principal context for the work’s later transmission.
Translations and research
Selected translations and studies in English: Jou-jou Yang, The Yellow Emperor’s Cure: Han Fei and the Reign of the Yellow Emperor’s Medicine — see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. VI.6, on Jīn-Yuán medical thought; Paul Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (California, 1985), with particular treatment of the Gōng-xià pài; TJ Hinrichs and Linda Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard, 2013). A partial English translation of Zhāng’s case-records by Yáng Shǒu-zhōng appeared in the Blue Poppy series.