Jǐngyuè quánshū fāhuī 景岳全書發揮
An Elucidation of the Complete Works of Jǐng-yuè by 葉桂 Yè Guì (zì Tiānshì 天士, hào Xiāngyán 香岩, 1666–1745, Sūzhōu).
About the work
A four-juǎn polemical commentary by Yè Tiānshì on the great late-Míng warming-tonifying compendium of 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn (Zhāng Jǐngyuè 張景岳, 1563–1640), the KR3eg005 Jǐngyuè quánshū 景岳全書 (1636/1700). The work is a sustained, sentence-by-sentence rebuttal of Zhāng’s central doctrinal positions — the universal-warming-tonifying programme, the Mìngmén 命門 / xiāntiān zhī yáng 先天之陽 doctrine, the xīnfāng bāzhèn 新方八陣 (“eight ranks of new formulae”) system, and Zhāng’s polemic against Liú Wánsù 劉完素 and Zhū Dānxī 朱震亨 — interspersed with Yè’s own counter-arguments and clinical observations. Yè proceeds quotation-by-quotation through the Jǐngyuè quánshū, citing passages and then refuting them, with the explicit aim of “exposing its concealments and correcting its errors” (fā qí fù, jiū qí miù 發其覆，糾其謬).
Yè’s signature analytic moves are: (i) identifying Zhāng’s misrepresentations of Liú Héjiàn 劉河間 and Zhū Dānxī (e.g., “Héjiàn’s Xuānmíng lùn and Bǎomìng jí in fact use warm-hot drugs as well”); (ii) re-asserting the standard Nèijīng doctrine of yīnyáng mutual rooting against Zhāng’s privileging of yáng alone; (iii) furnishing his own clinical cases — e.g., the case of Líng Yíjí 凌儀吉 of Tángqī 塘棲 (where the Jǐngyuè quánshū woodblocks were held), whose mis-treatment with hot-tonifying drugs from Zhāng’s formulary Yè reversed by using Èrchén tāng 二陳湯 plus huánglián 黃連 and shígāo 石膏 to clear fire and resolve phlegm.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a bá 跋 (postface) by Yè Yǒng 葉栐, Yè Tiānshì’s wǔshìsūn 五世孫 (fifth-generation descendant), dated Dàoguāng èrshísì nián 道光二十四年 jiǎchén chūn sān yuè (spring third month of jiǎchén = 1844). Yè Yǒng’s postface gives the publication history: the Fāhuī was written by Yè Tiānshì in marginal notes on the family copy of the Jǐngyuè quánshū and was never prepared for the press in his lifetime; Yè’s grandson Yè Bànfān 葉半帆 (the xiānkǎo 先考 / late father of Yè Yǒng) had hoped to print it in the Jiāqìng era but was prevented by illness; Yè Yǒng’s senior cousin Yè Nèrén 葉訥人 began a separate fair-copy editorial project but was likewise prevented; Yè Yǒng himself, working for a full year in the 1840s, produced the fair-copy edition in four juǎn and arranged its publication.
Abstract
The work’s composition date falls within Yè Tiānshì’s clinical maturity, i.e., the first half of the 18th c.; we bracket it conservatively 1700–1745. The 1844 editio princeps is the basis of all subsequent recensions; the hxwd recension descends from this print through a Japanese reprinting.
The Fāhuī is the single most important early-Qīng polemical response to the late-Míng Mìngmén / warming-tonifying tradition (the Xuē Jǐ → Zhào Xiànkě → Zhāng Jièbīn lineage), antedating and complementing the better-known KR3eq048 Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭 (1741) of 徐大椿 Xú Dàchūn (which targeted Zhào Xiànkě’s Yīguàn 醫貫 from the same critical position). Together, Yè’s Fāhuī and Xú’s Yīguàn biān constitute the Qīng kǎojù-style philological-clinical counter-tradition to the late-Míng warming-tonifying mainstream, and prepared the ground for the Sūzhōu wēnbìng 溫病 school that Yè himself, through his lectures on Wēnrè lùn 溫熱論, would found. Yè’s grandson Yè Bànfān (chūmíng Yè Tiāncí 葉天賜) and the descendants Nèrén and Yǒng are documented only through the postface.
The work’s organisation in 4 juǎn mirrors the topical sequence of the parent Jǐngyuè quánshū: juǎn 1 covers Chuánzhōng lù 傳忠錄 and Màishén zhāng 脈神章 (Zhāng’s doctrinal preliminaries); juǎn 2–3 cover the Zázhèng mó 雜證謨 (clinical-pattern sections); juǎn 4 covers the Bāzhèn fāng 八陣方 (formulary).
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Jǐng-yuè quán-shū fā-huī located. For Yè Tiān-shì’s biography and place in early-Qīng Sū-zhōu medicine see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011); for the Sū-zhōu medical milieu more broadly Chao Yuan-ling, Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China (Peter Lang, 2009). For the Qīng anti-warming-tonifying counter-tradition see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), and Wú Yī-lì, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (California, 2010).
Other points of interest
The Fāhuī is the principal counter-argument in the Qīng debate over the Jǐngyuè quánshū and circulated widely after its 1844 printing; it should be read together with KR3eq048 Xú Dàchūn’s Yīguàn biān (1741) as the two flagship polemics of the Qīng-period anti-Mìng-mén movement. Its 1844 publication date makes it a Dào-guāng-era intervention in the 19th-c. medical debates as much as a record of Yè’s early-18th-c. clinical thinking.
Links
- Yè Tiānshì (zh)
- Person notes 葉桂 (author), 張介賓 (target of the polemic).
- Companion polemic: KR3eq048 Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭.
- Parent text: KR3er073 Jǐngyuè quánshū 景岳全書.