Yīxué gāngmù 醫學綱目
A Net and Mesh of Medical Learning by 樓英 Lóu Yīng (zì Quánshàn 全善, hào Gǔquán 谷泉, 1332–1401, Xiāoshān 蕭山 / Zhèjiāng).
About the work
A forty-juǎn early-Míng comprehensive medical compendium structured under the gāngmù 綱目 (general-headings / particular-subheadings) bibliographic organisational principle. Lóu Yīng’s editorial method is to identify the master clinical categories (gāng 綱) — yīnyáng 陰陽, jīngluò 經絡, the five zàng and six fǔ, wàigǎn 外感 (external infection), nèishāng 內傷 (internal damage) — and to lay out under each the particular diseases (mù 目), each with its pathomechanism, prescription-formulary, and clinical commentary. The work draws systematically on the Nèijīng, Nánjīng, Shānghán lùn, and the JīnYuán four masters (Liú Wánsù, Zhāng Cóngzhèng, Lǐ Gǎo, Zhū Zhènhēng), with explicit cross-attribution.
It is the earliest of the major Míng gāngmù-style medical compendia and supplies the structural model for the much later and better-known Běncǎo gāngmù 本草綱目 of Lǐ Shízhēn (1593) — Lǐ explicitly cites Lóu Yīng’s organisational principle. Lóu’s clinical doctrine reflects his Dānxī training — he was a third-generation disciple of Zhū Zhènhēng through his teacher Wáng Lǚ 王履 — but his eclectic citation practice and his early-Míng comprehensive scope distinguish him from the later, more sectarian Dānxī handbooks.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with the Nèijīng yùnqì lèizhù xùwén 內經運氣類注序文 (preface to Lóu Yīng’s classified annotations on the Nèijīng on cosmological yùnqì), which Lóu integrated into the larger Yīxué gāngmù as its opening doctrinal scaffolding. The work’s substantive composition preface and the publication preface of his disciples / family members follow.
Abstract
Lóu Yīng (1332–1401) was a native of Xiāoshān 蕭山 (Zhèjiāng); the Yīxué gāngmù was completed at Hóngwǔ 29 / 1396, when Lóu was in his mid-sixties. The work was not put through the press in Lóu’s lifetime but circulated in manuscript and was first printed in the early to mid Wànlì era under late-Míng patronage. CBDB id 572085 records Lóu’s name without dates; the 1332–1401 bracket follows the established modern Chinese medical-history consensus.
The work was a standard reference in the late Míng and Qīng and was included in the SKQS imperial collection. The hxwd recension descends from a Japanese reprinting.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Yī-xué gāng-mù located. For Lóu Yīng’s place in the early-Míng Dān-xī transmission see Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin (California, 1999); TJ Hinrichs and Linda Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard, 2013), ch. 8. For the gāng-mù bibliographic principle and its impact on Lǐ Shí-zhēn see Carla Nappi, The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China (Harvard, 2009).
Links
- Person notes 樓英 (author).