Lántái guǐfàn 蘭臺軌範
The Standard of the Orchid Terrace by 徐大椿 Xú Dàchūn (zì Língtāi 靈胎, hào Huíxī lǎorén 洄溪老人, 1693–1771, Wújiāng 吳江, Sūzhōu).
About the work
An eight-juǎn clinical handbook of the great kǎojù physician Xú Dàchūn, completed in Qiánlóng 29 / 1764, three years before Xú’s death. The title — lántái 蘭臺 (“Orchid Terrace,” the Hàn imperial library) — figures the work as the guǐfàn 軌範 (canonical standard) of the medical archive against the popular and jiāchuán 家傳 (family-tradition) eclecticism of mid-Qīng practice. The work is Xú’s most systematic positive statement of his clinical method: where his earlier polemic KR3eq048 Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭 (1741) had attacked the late-Míng warming-tonifying tradition of Zhào Xiànkě, the Lántái guǐfàn offers a constructive alternative grounded explicitly in pre-Sòng sources.
Xú’s doctrinal-historical thesis, stated explicitly in the self-preface, is that medicine progressively degenerated after the Nányáng fūzǐ 南陽夫子 (i.e. Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景): the Six Dynasties retained the textual tradition but produced little new; the Táng Wàitái mìyào 外臺秘要 and Qiānjīn fāng 千金方 were anthologies that preserved “specific disease-names and precise drug-selections” but did not theorise; the Sòng tradition substituted “vague generalities about yīnyáng, qìxuè, hánrè, bǔxiè” for the older nosological specificity; the late Imperial period reduced clinical practice to a handful of all-purpose formulae. Xú’s methodological response is to organise his work by disease-name (bìngmíng 病名) as defined in Nèijīng, Nánjīng, Jīnguì yàolüè, and Shānghán lùn, anchor each entry in the corresponding pre-Sòng formula, and supplement with Tang Wàitái and Qiānjīn prescriptions only where the canonical formulae do not extend.
The eight juǎn cover (i) the general clinical principles in essays, (ii) fēng 風, hán 寒, shǔ 暑, shī 濕, (iii) zázhèng internal medicine, (iv–vi) wàikē surgical complaints, (vii) gynaecology, (viii) paediatrics and materia medica selections.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a single self-preface dated Qiánlóng èrshíjiǔ nián sì yuè 乾隆二十九年四月 (fourth month of 1764), signed Huíxī Xú Língtāi shū yú Wúshān zhī Bànsōng shūwū 洄溪徐靈胎書於吳山之半松書屋 — written at the Bànsōng shūwū 半松書屋 studio at Wúshān 吳山 (presumably in Sūzhōu or possibly Hángzhōu).
Abstract
The 1764 dating is established by the self-preface. Xú had already been twice summoned to the capital by the Qiánlóng emperor for medical consultation (1761 and again on his death-journey of 1771); the Lántái guǐfàn was composed in the interval between these two summons and constitutes the mature Xú’s “official” medical synthesis, intended as a curriculum-replacing canonical handbook. It circulated in manuscript and through limited printings during Xú’s lifetime; the principal printed editions are the Qián-lóng-era Xúshì yīxué jí 徐氏醫學集 collected works and, especially, the Xú Língtāi yīxué quánshū 徐靈胎醫學全書 collected edition. The hxwd recension descends from a Japanese (Edo-period) reprinting.
Together with KR3eq048 Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭 (1741), KR3ec048 Shénnóng běncǎo jīng bǎizhǒng lù 神農本草經百種錄 (1736), Yīxué yuánliú lùn 醫學源流論 (1757), and Shānghán lèifāng 傷寒類方 (1759), the Lántái guǐfàn is one of the five principal works in Xú’s mature kǎojù-medicine programme. Xú’s CBDB id is c_personid 0058456.
Translations and research
For Xú Dà-chūn in English the principal study is Paul Unschuld, Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine (Paradigm, 1990), which translates Xú’s Yī-xué yuán-liú lùn; see also Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), and Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011). No European-language translation of the Lán-tái guǐ-fàn specifically located.
Links
- Xú Dàchūn (zh)
- Person note 徐大椿 (author).
- Companion polemic: KR3eq048 Yīguàn biān 醫貫砭.