Yīxué tǐyòng 醫學體用
The Substance and Function of Medicine recorded by 盧雲乘 Lú Yúnchéng (mid-19th-c. disciple) from the oral teachings of 王香岩 Wáng Xiāngyán (míng Pǔyào 普耀, 1787–1857, Zhènhǎi 鎮海 → Hángzhōu, Zhèjiāng).
About the work
A single-juǎn compilation of twenty-some clinical-doctrinal essays — each treating one major internal-medicine category with discussions of yīnzhèng màishé 因證脈舌 (etiology / pattern / pulse / tongue), formula-selection, and explanation of formula meaning — compiled from the oral teachings of the Hángzhōu míngyī 名醫 Wáng Xiāngyán by his disciples during his clinical lifetime (i.e., c. 1830–1857). Wáng’s clinical specialty was wēnbìng 溫病 (warm-disease) — he was a disciple of the Húzhōu master Líng Xiǎowǔ 凌曉五 and built on the legacy of Yè Tiānshì, Xuē Shēngbái 薛生白, Wú Jūtōng 吳鞠通, and Wáng Mèngyīng 王孟英 (the Sì dàjiā of Qīng wēnbìng 溫病四大家), and on the Guǎng wēnrè lùn 廣溫熱論 and Shānghán zhǐzhǎng 傷寒指掌. The work also covers zábìng 雜病 (miscellaneous patterns), with substantial discussions of the fēngláogǔgé 風勞臌膈 (wind-strike / consumption / drum-distention / diaphragm-occlusion) four-great-pattern doctrine.
The pedagogical organisation — each essay’s “yīnzhèng màishé → fāng → fāngyì” three-stratum structure — is the signature methodology of the late-Qīng / early-Republican wēnbìng clinical curriculum that Wáng established in his Hángzhōu practice.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries a single biànyán 弁言 (foreword) by Shěn Zhòngguī 沈仲圭 (1901–1986, Hángzhōu, a later disciple of Wáng’s school and a major Republican-era TCM educator), dated Mínguó shísān nián shíèr yuè zhōngxún 民國十三年十二月中旬 = ROC 13 / 1924 December middle period. Shěn narrates: Wáng practised in Wǔlín 武林 (Hángzhōu) for some forty years, combining xuélǐ 學理 (doctrinal theory) and jīngyàn 經驗 (clinical experience); during his lifetime he transmitted his clinical methods orally and the disciples wrote them down, producing the present 20-some essays. Shěn compares the work to Zhāng Xīchún 張錫純’s contemporary Yīxué zhōngzhōng cānxī lù 醫學中西參西錄 (1909–1934), placing Wáng’s work in the same modernist clinical-curriculum stream. Shěn states that he is now sending a fair copy to Qiú Jíshēng 裘吉生 (1873–1947, founder of the Sānsān yībào 三三醫報 and editor of the Sānsān yīshū 三三醫書 series, one of the most important Republican-period TCM publication projects) with a request to include it in the Sānsān yīshū — the work’s first printed circulation.
Abstract
Note on authorship: the catalog metadata gives Lú Yúnchéng 盧雲乘 as the work’s author. Lú is the disciple-amanuensis whose name is attached to the editio princeps; the substantive author is Wáng Xiāngyán, whose oral teachings the work transcribes. Wáng Xiāngyán (míng Pǔyào 普耀, 1787–1857) was from Zhènhǎi 鎮海 (Níngbō prefecture, Zhèjiāng) and practised in Hángzhōu for forty years, becoming one of the principal Qīng late-period wēnbìng masters of the lower-Yangzi region. The composition window of the recorded oral teachings is therefore Wáng’s clinical maturity, c. 1830–1857.
The work’s medical-historical significance is twofold: (i) it is one of the most coherent extant statements of the lower-Yangzi wēnbìng clinical curriculum at mid-19th c., a generation after Wáng Mèngyīng’s Wēnrè jīngwěi 溫熱經緯 (1852) consolidation; (ii) it documents the master–disciple oral-transmission mode of late-Qīng medical pedagogy, in which the yīyàn 醫案 (case-record) and yīlùn 醫論 (doctrinal-discussion) modes were transmitted orally with disciple-transcription rather than through formal authorial composition. Shěn Zhòngguī, the 1924 preface-writer, was the most distinguished of the later Wáng-school disciples and a major figure in Republican-period TCM education.
The 1924 publication in the Sānsān yīshū is the editio princeps. The hxwd recension descends from this print through a Japanese reprint.
Wáng Xiāngyán is not in CBDB (which is a pre-modern database). His scattered Guìxīnlú yīàn 桂馨廬醫案 case-records were published in instalments in Zhōngyī zázhì 中醫雜志 in 1922–1926.
Translations and research
No European-language translation or substantial secondary study of the Yī-xué tǐ-yòng located. For the late-Qīng wēn-bìng tradition more broadly see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011), and Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition (Eastland, 2007). For Republican-period TCM and the Sān-sān yī-shū publication context see Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850–1960 (UBC, 2014).
Other points of interest
The work is one of the principal documented sources for the Hángzhōu mid-19th-c. wēnbìng school’s clinical curriculum, and through the 1924 Shěn Zhòngguī preface and Sānsān yīshū publication, one of the texts that mediated late-Qīng wēnbìng clinical-doctrine into the Republican-era TCM-education establishment.