Yījīn yī fá 醫津一筏
A Single Raft on the Ferry of Medicine by 江之蘭 Jiāng Zhīlán (zì Hánzhēng 含徵 / Hánwéi 含微, early-Qīng physician of Shèxiàn 歙縣, Huīzhōu).
About the work
A one-juǎn early-Qīng treatise on the therapeutic-method (zhìfǎ 治法) chapters of the Nèijīng, in fourteen essays, by the Huīzhōu (Xīnān 新安) physician Jiāng Zhīlán, conventionally dated Kāngxī 1 / 1662. Each essay takes a single concise Nèijīng therapeutic-principle passage as its topic-line and unfolds a topical exposition below — e.g., the opening essay on Sùwèn 5 zhì bìng bì qiú qí běn 治病必求其本 (“in treating illness one must seek its root”) develops Jiāng’s exegesis of the yǒu / wú (existence / non-existence), shèng / xū (fullness / depletion), shū qí qìxuè (dredging the qì-and-blood), shì shì wéi gù (taking the circumstance as one’s principle), fú qí suǒzhǔ (suppressing what is dominant), and cóng / nì (with-the-grain / against-the-grain) principles.
The work is one of the principal early-Qīng monographs of the zhìfǎ 治法 (therapeutic-method) exegetical tradition — a sub-genre of Nèijīng commentary that takes the Sùwèn and Língshū therapeutic-principle passages as the locus for systematic clinical exposition. The Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào characterises the work as shuōlǐ jīngquè, cuòcí jiǎnmíng 說理精確，措詞簡明 (“its reasoning is precise, its diction concise”).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt is severely corrupted — the available transcription preserves only the heavily-garbled text of the work’s prefatory frame and the opening of the first essay (zhì bìng bì qiú qí běn), with punctuation and paragraph-breaks scrambled. The full text is preserved cleanly in the Zhāodài cóngshū 昭代叢書 (Yuán Yángshēng 沈楙德 / Wújiāng Shěnshì 吳江沈氏 Shìkǎi táng 世楷堂 edition, Dàoguāng era), in KR3er105 Yījīng mìzhǐ 醫經秘旨 (a re-titled pirated version, see below), and in the 1925 裘吉生 Qiú Jíshēng Sānsān yīshū 三三醫書 series edition (the source of the catalog attribution of the proofreaders Gāo Sīqián 高思潛 of Héxiàn 和縣 and Zhāng Bǐngxiáng 張炳翔 of Wúxiàn).
Abstract
The c. 1662 dating is the consensus modern figure; Jiāng’s lifedates are not securely fixed but he is documented as early-Qīng (probably Shùnzhì / Kāngxī-era). The Sìkù quánshū committee gave Jiāng’s zì as Hánwéi 含微; most other sources give Hánzhēng 含徵 / 含征. Both readings represent the same name; the Sìkù reading is a defensible variant. Jiāng’s other documented work is Nèijīng shìyào 內經釋要 (one juǎn) — possibly a separate work, possibly an alternate title for the same.
The work’s textual history is unusually complex: at some point in the late Kāngxī or Yōngzhèng era, the first ten chapters were extracted, re-attributed to “Shèng [Yín] / Gāo / Gù 盛、高、顧 three physicians,” and re-titled Yījīng mìzhǐ 醫經秘旨 (= KR3er105), thereby obscuring Jiāng’s authorship. Gāo Sīqián’s 1925 kǎo (philological-investigation) for the Sānsān yīshū edition restored the true attribution. The hxwd recension descends through the Sānsān yīshū line.
The work was famously discussed by the early-20th-c. míngyī Wèi Chángchūn 魏長春 as cuòcí jiǎnmíng, shuōlǐ jīngzhàn, pō duō xīndé 措辭簡明，說理精湛，頗多心得 (“concise in diction, profound in reasoning, with many original insights”).
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Yī-jīn yī fá located. The work is treated in modern Xīn-ān yī-xué (Huī-zhōu medicine) scholarship, e.g. Wáng Zhèn-guó 王振國, ed., Xīn-ān yī-xué jí-chéng 新安醫學集成 (various volumes, 1990s–2010s).
Other points of interest
- Title-metaphor: yījīn yī fá 醫津一筏 — “a single raft on the ferry of medicine” — figures the work as a small-craft transport for the student crossing the great river of medical knowledge.
- The work was extensively cited and pirated in the late Kāngxī era; its appearance in three different titles (KR3er103 Yījīn yī fá, KR3er105 Yījīng mìzhǐ, and Nèijīng shìyào) is a notable case of late-Imperial textual misattribution.
Links
- 醫津一筏 (Wikisource)
- 醫津一筏 (Jìchéng 笈成)
- 醫津一筏 (ctext)
- Person notes 江之蘭 (author), 高思潛 (1925 collator), 張炳翔 (1925 proofreader).
- Re-titled pirated variant: KR3er105 Yījīng mìzhǐ 醫經秘旨.