Yīxué zhōngzhōng cānxī lù 醫學衷中參西錄
Records of Medicine, Centred on the Chinese with Western Reference by 張錫純 Zhāng Xīchún (zì Shòufǔ 壽甫, 1860–1933, Yánshān 鹽山 / Héběi).
About the work
A monumental thirty-juǎn clinical-doctrinal compendium in seven serially-published instalments, composed between 1909 and 1934 — the magnum opus of Zhāng Xīchún and the principal text of the late-Qīng / Republican-era ZhōngXī huìtōng 中西匯通 (Chinese-Western synthesis) medical movement. Zhāng’s title is precisely calibrated: zhōngzhōng 衷中 = “centred on the Chinese”, cānxī 參西 = “with reference to the Western” — Chinese medicine as the doctrinal centre, Western pharmacology and anatomy as supplementary reference. This is the deliberate counterposition to 唐宗海 Táng Zōnghǎi’s earlier and more accommodating ZhōngXī huìtōng programme.
The work is organised as a sequence of clinical yīfāng 醫方 — Zhāng’s own original prescriptions (the zīshēng tāng 資生湯 with which the work opens is his signature formulation against consumption / láozhài 勞瘵), each accompanied by extensive doctrinal exposition, Nèijīng and Shānghán citation, clinical case-records, and — in the latter instalments — explicit pharmacological comparison with the Western drug literature current in early-20th-c. Chinese translation. The work is the most clinically influential single text of Republican-era Chinese medicine and remains a standard reference in modern TCM education.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens directly with the body of the work — Yīfāng yī, zhì yīnxū láorè fāng yī: Zīshēng tāng 醫方一、治陰虛勞熱方一．資生湯 — Zhāng’s first prescription. The substantive prefaces (including Zhāng’s zìxù 自序 and the prefaces by his major Republican-era patrons and disciples) are not preserved in this _000.txt; the standard text accessible elsewhere records prefaces by Zhāng Xīchún himself, the late-Qīng official Zhāng Tàiyán 章太炎, and others.
Abstract
Zhāng Xīchún (1860–1933) was a Héběi native who passed the xiùcái 秀才 examination but did not advance to the jǔrén; he turned to medicine fully after the 1894 Sino-Japanese war and became one of the leading clinicians of north China. He served as superintendent of the Lìdá yīyuàn 立達醫院 in Tiānjīn (1916) and as founder of the Fèngtiān 奉天 (modern Shěnyáng) school of Chinese medicine. The first instalment of Yīxué zhōngzhōng cānxī lù was printed in 1909 (Xuāntǒng 1); the seventh and final instalment in 1934, after Zhāng’s death, was edited by his son. The work is conventionally dated 1909–1934 to cover the publication span.
The hxwd recension preserves the standard combined recension of the seven instalments. It should be noted that the work was being written during the Qīng-Republican transition; the catalog dating of the work as Qīng is conventional but the bulk of the writing is Republican.
Translations and research
The standard Chinese edition is the Hé-běi rén-mín 河北人民 reprint (1957–58, multiple later editions). A partial English study and translation is Volker Scheid, Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis (Duke, 2002); see also Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), ch. 6 (specifically on Zhāng Xī-chún); Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014); Sean Bradley, Becoming Good Doctors: The Place of Virtue and Character in Medical Ethics — for the Republican-era Chinese medicine context.