Biànzhèng lù 辨證錄
Records of Pattern-Discrimination by 陳士鐸 Chén Shìduó (zì Jìngzhī 敬之, hào Yuǎngōng 遠公 / Dàshān 大山, c. 1627 – c. 1707, Shānyīn 山陰 / Shàoxīng).
About the work
A fourteen-juǎn early-Qīng clinical-formulary compendium, the sister-volume to Chén Shìduó’s Shíshì mìlù 石室秘錄 (KR3er057) — both completed in the same Kāngxī dīngmǎo 康熙丁卯 = 1687 spirit-revelation year that Chén locates at the Tiāntán 天壇 cliff of his native Shānyīn. Where the Shíshì mìlù is organised by therapeutic fǎ 法 (mode of treatment), the Biànzhèng lù is organised by zhèng 證 (clinical pattern), each entry presented as a Qíbó / Tiānshī — disciple dialogue in which the pattern’s symptoms are first described, then the Tiānshī diagnoses the underlying pathomechanism and supplies the formula, and Chén Yuǎngōng appends his commentarial coda (“陳遠公曰”) tying the spirit-master’s diagnosis to Nèijīng precedent. The 14 juǎn cover the full clinical repertoire — internal medicine, shānghán, women’s medicine, paediatrics, throat and eye diseases, wàikē and trauma — with several hundred patterns and corresponding formulae. Together with the Shíshì mìlù, this work is the central exposition of Chén’s clinical-doctrinal system.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt opens with a publication postface (bá 跋) by an editor who narrates his twenty-plus-year fascination with Chén’s Shíshì mìlù and the Běncǎo xīnbiān 本草新編 (also Chén’s), and his eventual acquisition of the Biànzhèng lù manuscript through Chén’s sister’s-son (Chéngjūn 成君 — zì of Chén’s nephew, otherwise unidentified). The postface explains that Chén’s collected medical writings together form the Dòngyuán quánshū 洞垣全書 (Chén’s general title for his corpus), of which the Biànzhèng lù is the most clinically useful component.
Abstract
The Biànzhèng lù is securely dated by Chén’s revelation-narrative to Kāngxī 26 / 1687, in parallel with the Shíshì mìlù. Like its sister-volume, it was preserved chiefly through the popular printed-book market (the SKQS excluded Chén’s corpus for its pseudepigraphic framing) and through Japanese reprintings, the route by which the hxwd recension descends. The pattern-by-pattern organisation makes the Biànzhèng lù the more clinically practical of the two works and the more frequently reprinted in modern editions; it remains a referent (with appropriate critical distancing) in modern TCM curricula.
Translations and research
No complete European-language translation located. Chén Shì-duó’s corpus and its spirit-revelation framing are treated in Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), ch. 4; see also Vincent Goossaert on late-imperial spirit-writing literature.