Yīyì yīlǐ 醫易一理
Medicine and the Changes Are of One Principle by 邵葆丞 Shào Bǎochéng (hào Sìjiǔ jūshì 四九居士, late-19th-c. cìshǐ 剌史 of Húběi, Jiāngxià 江夏 = Wǔhàn area).
About the work
A one-juǎn late-Guāng-xù-era treatise applying Yìjīng hexagrammic-and-trigrammic doctrine to medical theory, completed in Guāngxù 23 / 1897 by the retired cìshǐ Shào Bǎochéng. The work is the principal late-Qīng monument of the yīyì tóngyuán 醫易同源 (“medicine and the Yìjīng share a single source”) tradition, a doctrinal strand running through the SòngYuán medical literature and revived in the late Míng (cf. Sūn Yīkuí’s Yīzhǐ xùyú 醫旨緒餘 and Zhāng Jièbīn’s Lèijīng túyì 類經圖翼).
The work’s signature methodological move is to systematically map the human body and its physiological processes onto the Yìjīng trigrammic and hexagrammic apparatus:
- The Tàijí 太極 is identified with the spleen-and-stomach (píwèi 脾胃) at the centre — explicitly with the zhōnggōng 中宮 (central courtyard) — figured as the regulating-master of all life-processes.
- The Liǎngyí 兩儀 (the binary yīnyáng) are mapped to the liver (gān, yīnyí, tàiyīn) and the lung (fèi, yángyí, tàiyáng), positioned at the zuǒ shēng yòu jiàng 左升右降 (left-rising, right-descending) axis.
- The Sìxiàng 四象 (four images) are mapped to the five-viscera by adding the heart (xīn, shǎoyīn) and the kidney (shèn, shǎoyáng).
- The Bāguà 八卦 are mapped systematically to the body’s gross morphology — qián 乾 (head, lung), kūn 坤 (abdomen, liver), lí 離 (fire, heart), kǎn 坎 (water, kidney), duì 兌 (left hand), xùn 巽 (right hand), zhèn 震 (left foot), gèn 艮 (right foot).
- The xiāntiān 先天 (“pre-celestial”) and hòutiān 後天 (“post-celestial”) Bāguà arrangements are distinguished, with the pre-celestial figured as the body’s tǐ 體 (substance, governed by the zhēnhuǒ 真火 yuányáng of the Mìngmén) and the post-celestial as the yòng 用 (function, the circulation of qì and xuè).
The work integrates Western anatomical detail (Shào draws on the late-Qīng Sinographic-translated Western anatomical texts, citing brain, spinal cord, the optic and acoustic nerves, the rhythmic structure of cardiac systole and diastole, the gastric food-absorption mechanism, and the venous-versus-arterial blood circulation), and reconciles these with the Sùwèn / Língshū canonical anatomy plus the Yìjīng trigrammic mappings. The eclectic synthesis is one of the more philosophically ambitious late-Qīng zhōngxī huìtōng 中西匯通 (Sino-Western integrative medicine) projects.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries:
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Self-preface signed Zhèngchéng Sìjiǔ jūshì zìxù yú Xiǎoān yàowō zhōng 鄭城四九居士自敘於小安藥窩中 (“self-prefaced by the Sìjiǔ jūshì of Zhèngchéng, in his Xiǎoān yàowō [Little Peaceful Medicine-Nest]”), dated Guāngxù èrshísān nián suì cì dīngyǒu mèngdōng shànghuàn 光緒二十三年歲次丁酉孟冬上浣 = Guāngxù 23 / 1897 winter (tenth) month, early decade. Shào narrates: his family was Confucian and hereditarily medical; he and his younger brother Chǔbái 楚白 were raised on the Língshū / Sùwèn / Jīnguì / Qiānjīn corpus during the DàoXián turmoil; he had long doubted the traditional anatomical doctrines, and after seeing Wáng Qīngrèn’s Yīlín gǎicuò 醫林改錯 (KR3er008) had further doubted the post-mortem appearance of organs; now over seventy, in retirement at Zhèjiāng (one son had a xūcì 需次 official appointment in Zhèjiāng), he had taken up the works of Zhōu Dūnyí, Shào Yōng, the Cāntóng qì 參同契, and other Daoist alchemical and yìxué sources, and through them resolved his anatomical doubts and arrived at the yīyì yīlǐ synthesis.
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Preface by Wáng Jǐngyí 王景彝 (yīnxiǎodì 姻小弟 = junior in-law), dated Guāngxù wùxū jìqiū 光緒戊戍季秋 = Guāngxù 24 / 1898 late autumn. Wáng identifies the author as a descendant of 邵雍 Shào Yōng (Shào Kāngjié, 1011–1077) — “truly worthy of his Kāngjié hòuyì 康節後裔 lineage” — and gives biographical detail: Shào abandoned his cìshǐ office in order to practise medicine, holding daily half-day free clinics for the poor; he is “of the people of Mt. Fúxī, of Shénnóng, of the Ānlè wō 安樂窩” (Shào Yōng’s famous studio-name).
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Preface by Chén Qióng 陳璚 (zì Liùshēng 六笙, of Yùpíng 郁平), dated Guāngxù xīnchǒu qī yuè shuò 光緒辛丑七月朔 = Guāngxù 27 / 1901 seventh-month new-moon, written at Hàngāo 漢皋 (Wǔhàn). Chén notes that Shào’s son Shào Zhīgào 邵芝誥 (a Húběi xūcì official, fond of Yìjīng learning) had introduced Shào to him; Chén had been treated by Shào in 1901 for a foot-ailment; the published work showed him in detail; Chén defends the work against the criticism that “it elucidates tǐ but not yòng” by noting Shào’s own pre/post-celestial tǐ/yòng distinction.
Abstract
The 1897 composition date is established by the self-preface; the 1898 Wáng Jǐngyí and 1901 Chén Qióng prefaces document the work’s circulation and 1901 publication (in Hubei). Shào Bǎochéng (hào Sìjiǔ jūshì) is a documented late-Qīng minor official-turned-physician of the Wǔhàn region. His claim of descent from Shào Yōng of the Northern Sòng is conventional (Shào-clan figures of late Imperial times routinely claimed Kāngjié descent) and need not be taken literally. Not in CBDB under this identification.
The work was rare in Chinese transmission, surviving primarily through a Japanese imprint repatriated via hxwd.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Yī-yì yī-lǐ located. For the yī-yì tóng-yuán tradition in English see Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine (MIT, 1974); for late-Qīng zhōng-xī huì-tōng integrative medicine, Bridie Andrews, The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine (UBC, 2014); for the brain-and-nerve anatomical material specifically, Marta Hanson and Vincent Goossaert’s various studies of late-Qīng anatomical knowledge.
Other points of interest
The work’s integration of Western anatomy (the brain, spinal cord, optic and acoustic nerves, food-absorption in the stomach lining, distinction between arterial chìxuè 赤血 and venous zǐxuè 紫血) with the Yìjīng hexagrammic apparatus is one of the more philosophically ambitious late-Qīng zhōngxī huìtōng syntheses, antedating Zhāng Xīchún’s Yīxué zhōngzhōng cānxī lù 醫學中西參西錄 (1909–1934) and showing that the Western-anatomy / Chinese-doctrine integration project had multiple distinct paths in the 1890s–1900s.