Chìshuǐ xuánzhū 赤水玄珠
The Mysterious Pearl of the Red River by 孫一奎 Sūn Yīkuí (zì Wényuán 文垣, hào Dōngsù 東宿 / Shēngshēng zǐ 生生子, c. 1522 – c. 1619, Xiūníng 休寧, Huīzhōu).
About the work
A thirty-juǎn late-Wàn-lì clinical compendium — the principal medical work of the great Huīzhōu Mìngmén physician Sūn Yīkuí, organised by clinical category through almost the entire spectrum of internal medicine, gynaecology, paediatrics, shānghán, surgery, and ophthalmology. The work’s title alludes to Zhuāngzǐ 12.5 (Tiāndì 天地): the Yellow Emperor lost his xuánzhū 玄珠 (mysterious pearl) at the Chìshuǐ 赤水 and sent Zhī 知, Lí Zhū 離朱, and Chī Gòu 喫詬 to find it without success, until the formless Xiàng Wǎng 象罔 retrieved it. Sūn appropriates the topos to figure the elusive yet recoverable “pearl” of authentic clinical knowledge.
Sūn’s clinical-doctrinal position is the Huīzhōu development of the Mìngmén 命門 tradition: he proposes the dòngqì 動氣 (“moving qì”) at the Mìngmén between the two kidneys as the ontological foundation of life, prior to and generative of both yīn and yáng; the doctrine is laid out systematically in Sūn’s separate treatise Yīzhǐ xùyú 醫旨緒餘 and applied throughout the Chìshuǐ xuánzhū. The work is the principal late-Míng monument of this Huīzhōu Mìngmén line, alongside the work of Sūn’s senior contemporary Zhào Xiànkě (KR3er001 Yīguàn, 1617).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt is unusually short, carrying only a single self-bá 跋 (postface) by Sūn. The postface narrates the work’s gestation: Sūn began compiling it during a period of residence at Wúxīng 吳興 (Húzhōu), where his collaborator the recluse-physician Tóngbì shānrén 銅壁山人 was the original co-initiator; the work nearly faltered, but Sūn was urged on by Chén Sōngliàng 陳松亮 (a guānglù 光祿 official) and Wú Jiǔyí 吳九宜 (wénxué 文學) with the saying “if the collection is finished, you alone suffer; if not, the whole realm suffers — do not put your own person before the realm” (jí chéng zé zǐ bìng, bù chéng zé tiānxià bìng 集成則子病，不成則天下病); Sūn returned to his Xiūníng home, and with his nephew Sūn Yuánsù 孫元素 compiled and edited for ten years; on a subsequent return to Wúxīng he found that both Tóngbì shānrén and Chén Sōngliàng had died, and the publication was eventually funded by Chén’s father Chūnyě 春野 and the surviving Wúxīng circle. The postface is signed Shēngshēng zǐ Sūn Yīkuí shí, Chángchéng Zhōu Chéngjī shū 生生子孫一奎識，長城周承積書 — calligraphed by Zhōu Chéngjī of Chángchéng (Chángxìng 長興).
Abstract
The 1596 Wànlì bǐngshēn 萬曆丙申 editio princeps date is established by external prefaces (not preserved in the hxwd _000.txt but standard in other recensions) and is consistent with Sūn’s self-postface — ten years of editing from c. 1586. The work was reprinted multiple times in the Míng and Qīng; the hxwd recension descends from a Wàn-lì-era imprint repatriated from Japan. CBDB has Sūn Yīkuí at c_personid uncertain; the dates c. 1522 – c. 1619 are the consensus modern figure.
Sūn was the principal Huīzhōu medical author of the late Wànlì period, working in the merchant-patronage milieu of the Xīnān 新安 (Huīzhōu) school of medicine. His three principal works — Chìshuǐ xuánzhū, Yīzhǐ xùyú 醫旨緒餘 (doctrinal treatise), and Sūnshì yīàn 孫氏醫案 (clinical cases) — were assembled in his lifetime as the Sūnshì sānshū 孫氏三書 and circulated together; the Chìshuǐ xuánzhū is the clinical-formulary anchor of this set.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Chì-shuǐ xuán-zhū located. For Sūn Yī-kuí and the Huī-zhōu Xīn-ān school see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007); Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics (Routledge, 2011); for the late-Míng Mìng-mén tradition, Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin (California, 1999).
Links
- Sūn Yīkuí (zh)
- Person notes 孫一奎 (author).
- Companion works in the Sūnshì sānshū: Yīzhǐ xùyú 醫旨緒餘, Sūnshì yīàn 孫氏醫案.