Yīxué jíchéng 醫學集成
A Comprehensive Compilation of Medical Learning by 劉仕廉 Liú Shìlián (zì Qīngchén 清臣, c. 1804 – after 1874, Shuāngliú 雙流, Chéngdū prefecture, Sìchuān).
About the work
A four-juǎn late-Tóng-zhì-era Sìchuān medical compendium by the Shuāngliú physician Liú Shìlián, completed in Tóngzhì 12 / 1873 and printed in Tóngzhì 13 / 1874 with a preface by Liú’s neighbour Luò Shìxīn. The work is organised as: juǎn 1 — general doctrinal preliminaries (yīnyáng, viscera, diagnostic method); juǎn 2 — shānghán, wēnyì, internal-medicine miscellany; juǎn 3 — gynaecology, obstetrics, paediatrics, sores and abscesses; juǎn 4 — medical cases, the fourteen-channel jīngmài 經脈 diagrams, jīngxué gē 經穴歌 (acupuncture-point mnemonic verses), and an appendix of the eight medical methods of Chéng Zhōnglíng 程鍾齡 (the bāfǎ 八法 of Yīxué xīnwù 醫學心悟, 1732).
Liú’s medical position is a deliberate practical eclecticism: he draws on the Sì dàjiā (Liú Héjiàn, Lǐ Dōngyuán, Zhāng Cóngzhèng, Zhū Dānxī) plus the late-Míng/early-Qīng synthesisers (Zhāng Jièbīn, Lǐ Zhōngzǐ, Yè Tiānshì) according to clinical category — wēnbǔ (warm-tonifying), gōngxià (offensive-purgative), qīngliáng (cool-clearing), héjiě (resolving), fúyáng (yang-supplementing), yǎngyīn (yin-cultivating), bǔxiāntiān and péihòutiān (pre- and post-celestial supplementation) — with the bīngjiā 兵家 maxim that “the masters each have a specialty; I select the specialties of each and record them.” The work is a working physician’s practical pocket-handbook, not a doctrinal polemic; its emphasis is on clarity, brevity, and clinical actionability.
A distinctive feature is the juǎn 4 acupuncture-and-channel material: Liú reports that in Dàoguāng 28 / 1848 he obtained four tóngrén 銅人 diagrams from Yáng Zǐjiān 楊子堅, identical to those of the Yīzōng jīnjiàn 醫宗金鑑 and Zhēnjiǔ dàchéng 針灸大成 traditions, and spent thirty-some years studying them; the juǎn 4 bronzeman diagrams are these.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries two prefaces:
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Xù 敘 by Luò Shìxīn 駱世馨 (hào Xiāngpǔ 香圃), dated Tóngzhì shísān nián suìzài jiǎxū qīnghé jìwàng 同治十三年歲在甲戌清和既望 (= Tóngzhì 13 / 1874 fourth month, day after the full moon). Luò identifies the author as wú yì Qīngchén xiānshēng 吾邑清臣先生 (“Mr. Qīngchén of my own district”) and narrates the author’s life: a child tóngjūn 童軍 examination prodigy who would have continued in the examination track but for a leg disability; turned to poetry (Zuìyín shīcǎo 醉吟詩草, published in his earlier life); came to medicine in middle age. Patrons named in the preface include the Sìchuān officials Zhōngchéng 中丞 Yán Wèichūn 嚴渭春, Fāngbó 方伯 Wú Liánshēng 吳廉生, and Míngfǔ 明府 Chén Xiāngchí 陳薌墀 (the magistrate of Shuāngyì 雙邑 = Shuāngliú).
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Self-preface (Zì xù 自敘) by Liú Shìlián signed Qīngchén zì jì 清臣自記, dated Tóngzhì guǐyǒu 同治癸酉 = Tóngzhì 12 / 1873 (the cyclical guǐyǒu year). Liú narrates: at Tóngzhì 12 he is 70 suì, putting his birth at c. 1804 (Jiāqìng 9); his father died in Dàoguāng bǐngshēn 道光丙申 = 1836; he developed crippling jiǎojí 腳疾 (leg-disease) in Dàoguāng rényín 道光壬寅 = 1842; the disease lasted five years and was finally cured by self-treatment using the Sùwèn 痿躄 chapter as guide. He then opened a pharmacy, practised for ten years, retired to teach his children and grandchildren, was drawn back to practice when the local magistrate Chén Xiāngchí’s secretary Wú Yòuxiāng 吳又香 fell ill, and through this began an eight-year clinical relationship with the Sìchuān officials. The publication was urged on him by Chén Xiāngchí and by Wú Guànchá 吳貫槎, finally agreed to under the editorial labour of his fellow xùndǎo 訓導 Jì Fùyuán 季馥垣, his cousin Jì Shìpéng 仕鵬, and his third son Liú Yǒngzhōng 永鐘.
Abstract
The 1873 Tóngzhì guǐyǒu composition and 1874 Tóngzhì jiǎxū publication dating is established beyond doubt by the two prefaces. Note on authorship: the catalog metadata gives Luò Shìxīn 駱世馨 as the author, but Luò is in fact only the preface-writer; the actual author, securely identified by the self-preface, is Liú Shìlián 劉仕廉 (zì Qīngchén 清臣) of Shuāngliú, Sìchuān. Modern Chinese-medical bibliography is unanimous on this attribution. The author and preface-writer are both retained here in the persons: list with their proper functions.
Liú’s birth year of c. 1804 is derived from his self-preface statement of age 70 suì in 1873. The work was reprinted multiple times in the late Qīng and Republican periods: the editio princeps of Tóngzhì 13 / 1874, a Guāngxù 12 / 1886 Yìyuántáng 益元堂 reprint, a 1921 Liú-family Shuāngliú reprint with the bronze-man diagrams, and a Yìxīn shūjú 益新書局 lithographic reprint under the alternate title Yīxué zhǐnán 醫學指南.
The hxwd recension descends from one of these Qīng or Republican editions repatriated from a Japanese collection.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Yī-xué jí-chéng located. The work is locally important in Sì-chuān regional medical history but has not received substantial international study.
Other points of interest
The work’s fánlì 凡例 (editorial principles) include a strikingly forthright statement of clinical-ethical principles, attacking three contemporary clinical abuses: (i) the obsession with showpiece formulae using cān, róng, guì, fù 參茸桂附 (ginseng, antler, cinnamon, aconite) and the resulting iatrogenic damage; (ii) the late-Qīng fashion for proliferating diagnostic categories (shé yǒu sānshíliù, hóu zhèng qīshíèr, jū yǒu èrshísì — “thirty-six tongue-signs, seventy-two throat-categories, twenty-four abscess-categories” — all of which Liú reduces to yīnyáng alone); (iii) the late-Qīng vogue for elaborate pulse-classification systems at the expense of wàngwénwèn 望聞問 (observation, listening, questioning). The fánlì is one of the more lucid statements of mid-19th-c. anti-baroque clinical-pedagogical position.