Jǐngyuè quánshū 景岳全書
The Complete Writings of Master Jǐng-yuè by 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn (zì Huìqīng 會卿, hào Jǐngyuè 景岳, 1563–1640, Shānyīn 山陰 / Shàoxīng).
About the work
A sixty-four-juǎn late-Míng comprehensive medical encyclopaedia — the magnum opus of Zhāng Jǐngyuè and the principal monument of the late-Míng Wēnbǔ 溫補 (warming-tonifying) school. The work systematically integrates Zhāng’s earlier Lèijīng 類經 (his great Nèijīng commentary, 1624 KR3a0007) and Lèijīng túyì 類經圖翼 with his clinical-doctrinal writings into a unified curriculum spanning: (i) the Chuánzhōng lù 傳忠錄 (doctrinal essays on the Mìngmén 命門, yīnyáng, qìxuè, and the moral-philosophical foundations of medicine); (ii) the Màishénzhāng 脈神章 on pulse-diagnosis; (iii) the Shānghán diǎn 傷寒典 on cold-damage; (iv) the Zázhèng mó 雜證謨 on miscellaneous diseases; (v) the Fùrén guī 婦人規 on women’s medicine; (vi) the Xiǎoér zé 小兒則 on paediatrics; (vii) the Dòuzhěn zhuàn 痘疹詮 on smallpox-and-measles; (viii) the Wàikē qián 外科鈐 on surgery; (ix) the Xīnfāng bāzhèn 新方八陣 and Gǔfāng bāzhèn 古方八陣 — Zhāng’s signature classification of all prescriptions into eight strategic-method zhèn 陣 (battle-arrays): bǔ 補 (tonifying), hé 和 (harmonising), gōng 攻 (attacking), sàn 散 (dispersing), hán 寒 (cooling), rè 熱 (warming), gù 固 (consolidating), yīn 因 (responding-to-cause).
Zhāng’s doctrinal positioning is the apex of the late-Míng Wēnbǔ school: he argues that yáng is always insufficient and yīn always in surplus (a deliberate inversion of the Dānxī formulation yáng cháng yǒu yú yīn cháng bù zú 陽常有餘陰常不足), and his clinical practice systematises the use of large-dose shǔdì huáng 熟地黃, rénshēn 人參, and fùzǐ 附子 against what he diagnoses as the dominant late-Míng clinical reality of yángxū 陽虛 (yang depletion). The signature formulae zuǒguī wán 左歸丸 and yòuguī wán 右歸丸 are Zhāng’s own and remain canonical in modern TCM.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the Jiǎ xù 賈序 — the publication preface of 賈所學 Jiǎ Suǒxué of Yángzhōu, who saw the work into print after Zhāng’s death — followed by additional prefaces by Zhāng’s son and disciples. The work was completed before Zhāng’s death in 1640 and was first printed posthumously in 1700 (康熙39) by Jiǎ Suǒxué’s grandson Lǔ Chāo 魯超, who supplied the editio princeps preface. We use the 1640 composition date.
Abstract
Zhāng Jǐngyuè (1563–1640) was the dominant clinician of the late Wànlì 萬曆 / Tiānqǐ 天啓 / Chóngzhēn 崇禎 period and the systematiser of late-Míng Wēnbǔ doctrine. He was a Shānyīn 山陰 (Shàoxīng) native of military-family origin who served briefly on the Liáodōng 遼東 northern frontier before retiring to medicine in his fourth decade. The Jǐngyuè quánshū was composed across the last decade of his life as a deliberate integration and culmination of his earlier writings; the work was put through the press posthumously in the early Kāngxī era (1700) under Jiǎ Suǒxué’s patronage.
The work attracted a sustained Qīng kǎojù critical response, most importantly 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì’s Jǐngyuè quánshū fāhuī 景岳全書發揮 (KR3er082), which from the wēnbìng 溫病 school perspective challenged Zhāng’s universal yang-depletion diagnostic frame. The dispute between the Wēnbǔ and Wēnbìng schools — with the Jǐngyuè quánshū as the principal text on the Wēnbǔ side — is the defining clinical-doctrinal polemic of the high Qīng.
Translations and research
Selected scholarship in English: Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), particularly ch. 2 — Scheid’s title-date is 1626 because that is the conventional bracket for the Wēn-bǔ / Mìng-mén synthesis that the Jǐng-yuè quán-shū culminates; Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960–1665 (California, 1999), ch. 5–6 (treats Zhāng centrally); TJ Hinrichs and Linda Barnes, Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard, 2013). For the Lèi-jīng commentary see Paul Unschuld, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text (California, 2003), which engages extensively with Zhāng’s commentary.