Yīxué sānxìn biān 醫學三信編
A Compilation in Three Tenets on Medicine by 毛世洪 Máo Shìhóng (hào Fēngshān xiānshēng 楓山先生, late 18th – early 19th c., probably Rénhé 仁和 / Hángzhōu).
About the work
A late-Qián-lóng / early-Jiā-qìng clinical-doctrinal work by the elderly physician Máo Shìhóng, written in his ninth decade and conceived as a companion to his earlier formulary Yǎngshēng jīngyàn héjí 養生經驗合集. The title sānxìn 三信 (“three [things to be] trusted” / “three tenets of trust”) refers to Máo’s threefold methodological commitment, articulated in the work: trust in the ancient fǎ 法 (medical method) of Huángdì / Qíbó / Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (the Chángshā 長沙 tradition); trust in the ancient fāng 方 (formulae) of the Shānghán lùn and the pre-Sòng formulary corpus; and trust in the clinical experience of the experienced senior physician over the textual ingenuities of the bookish cūgōng 粗工 (the crude practitioner). The work is therefore a polemic of the QiánlóngJiāqìng gǔfāng 古方 (ancient-formula) revival — paralleling the Japanese kohō-ha (cf. KR3er094) in its anti-Sòng-Yuán-scholastic intellectual stance, though grounded in the Chinese clinical-philological tradition.
The work develops particular themes from the Sùwèn — most importantly the Bìngjī shíjiǔ tiáo 病機十九條 (Nineteen Articles of Pathomechanism) of Sùwèn 74, the Sānyīn 三陰 and jiǔzhēn 九針 doctrines, and the qìhuà 氣化 / cāngtiān qiántiān 蒼天黔天 cosmographic-medical correspondences of Sùwèn 5 — and applies them to the standard internal-medicine clinical categories.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a single short bá 跋 (postface) by Qián Méi 錢枚 (zì Shítíng 實庭, 1761–1804, of Rénhé 仁和 / Hángzhōu — a documented Qiánlóng / Jiā-qìng-era poet and literatus). Qián identifies Máo as wúlǐ Fēngshān Máo xiānshēng 吾里楓山毛先生 (“Mr. Máo of Fēngshān, of my own hamlet”) — placing Máo’s residence at Fēngshān 楓山 in the Hángzhōu region. Qián narrates: Máo had been a wide-ranging student of medicine, “with the ancients as his companions”; his earlier Yǎngshēng jīngyàn héjí had presented “the time-tested formulae of the ancients in selected form”; and the present Sānxìn biān, written when he was over eighty, develops the fǎ 法 side of his medical position more systematically. Qián compares Máo to the Nánshǐ 南史 figure of Xú Yěrén 徐野人, who at eighty read through the Five Classics annually. The postface implies a publication date in the Qiánlóng late 50s or early Jiāqìng (Qián Méi died in 1804, providing a terminus ante quem).
Abstract
Máo Shìhóng is poorly documented in standard biographical sources. Internal evidence places him in the Hángzhōu region (the Fēngshān 楓山 is plausibly the Fēngshān within the Hángzhōu prefectural area). His other documented work is Yǎngshēng jīngyàn héjí 養生經驗合集. The 1790–1810 date-bracket adopted here covers the plausible composition-and-publication window given Máo’s eighth-decade age at composition and Qián Méi’s death-date of 1804 as terminus ante quem for the postface. Not in CBDB.
The work was rare in Chinese transmission, surviving primarily through a Japanese imprint repatriated via the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū (hxwd) series.
Translations and research
No European-language translation or substantial secondary study of the Yī-xué sān-xìn biān located. The work is not treated in the standard English-language histories of Qīng medicine.
Other points of interest
Máo’s three-trust framework — trust in ancient fǎ, ancient fāng, and senior clinical experience — is a distinctively Chinese Qiánlóng formulation of intellectual positions that paralleled, in Japan, the kohō-ha return to Chángshā 長沙 [Zhòngjǐng] sources. The two movements appear to have been intellectually independent but historically synchronous; they share a common rejection of the SòngYuán scholastic accretions and a common return to the HànTáng formulary as the clinical standard.