Yīxué yányuè 醫學研悅
Researches in Medicine, Delighted in by 李盛春 Lǐ Shèngchūn (early-17th c., Húběi).
About the work
A ten-juǎn late-Wàn-lì / Tiānqǐ clinical handbook by Lǐ Shèngchūn, completed at his Lǜbō tíng 綠波亭 studio in Tiānqǐ 6 / 1626 (the date of the Yīxué yányuè yǐn 醫學研悅引 = self-introduction). The title is a self-deprecating reference to the Lùnyǔ 1.1 xué ér shí xí zhī, bù yì yuè hū 學而時習之，不亦悅乎: medicine, like classical learning, is grounded in yuè 悅 (delight) and patient yán 研 (research). The work is organised in a pedagogically compressed mnemonic-verse format — a gējué 歌訣 (rhymed mnemonic) clinical handbook of the kind associated with the late-Wàn-lì Tàiyī yuàn tradition (cf. KR3er084 Yúnlín shéngòu of Gōng Tíngxián, 1591) — but with substantially more doctrinal exposition than the mnemonic-verse format usually accommodates.
The structure is: (i) pulse-and-symptom mnemonic verses covering all the major internal-medicine, gynaecological, paediatric, and surgical categories (the bulk of juǎn 1, preserved in _000.txt); (ii) cold-damage and seasonal-fever doctrine, expanding on Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán lùn via the late-Míng synthesiser Tāo Huá 陶華 (節庵) — Lǐ explicitly cites Jiéān 節庵’s clinical work as a principal source; (iii) treatments of the xiàhú jí 暑全書 (heat-stroke disorders), based on Lǐ’s teacher Jiāngjīn Zhōu lǎoshī 江津周老師’s separately-published Zhìshǔ quánshū 治暑全書, which Lǐ supplemented with his own Zhìhán quánshū 治寒全書 (cold-treatment treatise) and Yìnsì quánshū 胤嗣全書 (heir-securing / fertility treatise) and submitted to his teacher for review; (iv) materia medica and prescription appendices, with selected formulae from the materia of his teacher Rénshòu Huáng fùshī 仁壽黃父師.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries the Yīxué yányuè yǐn 醫學研悅引 (self-introduction) of Lǐ Shèngchūn, dated Tiānqǐ bǐngyín shí dōng yīngzhōng zhī jí 天啟丙寅時冬應鐘之吉 = Tiānqǐ 6 / 1626 yīngzhōng (tenth lunar month) auspicious day, written Yú Lǜbō tíng 於綠波亭. Lǐ narrates: his father Yānshān 燕山 was a celebrated Húběi 楚 physician with mastery of pulse-diagnosis and the Sùwèn / Nánjīng; Lǐ himself initially preferred examination-track learning over medicine, “regarding it as a minor Way” (xiǎodào 小道), but turned to medicine in adulthood; his teachers were the Jiāngjīn Zhōu lǎoshī 江津周老師 (the master of Zhìshǔ quánshū) and the Rénshòu Huáng fùshī 仁壽黃父師.
Abstract
Lǐ Shèngchūn is documented essentially only through his self-preface. The geographical references — Jiāngjīn 江津 (Sìchuān, on the Yangzi above Chóngqìng) for his teacher Zhōu, Rénshòu 仁壽 (Sìchuān) for his teacher Huáng, and the Húběi (Chǔ 楚) location of his father’s practice — suggest Lǐ was a Húběi / Sìchuān regional physician working in the upper-Yangzi medical milieu. The 1626 dating is firmly established by the self-preface and is not in dispute.
The work was not widely circulated in China and survives principally through a Japanese (Edo-period) reprint repatriated via the hxwd series. CBDB has no entry for Lǐ Shèngchūn under this identification.
Translations and research
No European-language translation or substantial secondary study of the Yī-xué yán-yuè located. For the late-Wàn-lì / Tiān-qǐ mnemonic-verse clinical-handbook tradition see Angela Ki Che Leung, “Medical Instruction and Popularization in Ming-Qing China,” Late Imperial China 24.1 (2003).
Other points of interest
The work documents an otherwise poorly-attested upper-Yangzi (Húběi–Sìchuān) regional medical network of the Tiānqǐ era, particularly the lost Zhìshǔ quánshū of Zhōu of Jiāngjīn (Sìchuān), which Lǐ describes as the principal contemporary work on heat-stroke disorders. The mention of Lǐ’s own three quánshū — Zhìhán 治寒, Yìnsì 胤嗣, and (implicitly) the heat-stroke work — points to a planned multi-volume opus of which the present Yīxué yányuè may be the sole survivor.