Shěnshì zūnshēng shū 沈氏尊生書
Master Shěn’s Book on Honouring Life by 沈金鰲 Shěn Jīnáo (zì Qínyuán 芹源, hào Zūnshēng lǎorén 尊生老人 / Rètiān cǎotáng 熱天草堂, 1717–1776, Wúxī 無錫, Chángzhōu prefecture, Jiāngsū).
About the work
A 72-juǎn comprehensive medical compendium — actually a cóngshū 叢書 (collected works) of eight separate but interrelated medical treatises — composed by the polymath Wúxī physician Shěn Jīnáo over decades and conventionally dated to Qiánlóng 38 / 1773 (the date of the publication preface). The eight constituent works, organised as a unified curriculum, are:
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Màixiàng tǒnglèi 脈象統類 (1 juǎn, the opening juǎnshǒu 卷首 of the present hxwd recension): Shěn’s pulse-classification monograph, organising the 28 (or 30, in some recensions) classical pulse-categories under the six grand rubrics fúchénchíshùhuásè 浮沉遲數滑澀 — the basis of Shěn’s diagnostic-system reform.
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Zhū mài zhǔbìng shītú 諸脈主病詩圖 (1 juǎn): the verse mnemonic supplement to the Màixiàng.
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Zábìng yuánliú xīzhú 雜病源流犀燭 (30 juǎn): the great miscellany of internal-medicine pathomechanism — Shěn’s principal doctrinal-and-clinical work, organised by disease-category with detailed yuánliú 源流 (etiology-and-development) discussion.
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Shānghán lùn gāngmù 傷寒論綱目 (16 juǎn): Shěn’s systematic re-organisation of Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán lùn under the gāngmù (outline-and-items) format, with a heavy assimilation of Wú Jūtōng’s Wēnbìng tiáobiàn protocols.
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Yàoyào fēnjì 藥要分劑 (10 juǎn): Shěn’s materia-medica, organised by the qīfāng shíjì 七方十劑 (seven-formula-types, ten-formulary-functions) classification of the Sòng tradition.
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Fùkē yùrěn 婦科玉尺 (6 juǎn): obstetrics-and-gynaecology — Shěn’s principal women’s-medicine work, widely cited in subsequent Qīng gynaecological literature.
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Yòukē shìjīngbǎo lù 幼科釋謎 (6 juǎn): paediatrics.
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Yàofāng dàilěi 藥方代累 (2 juǎn): a closing formulary appendix.
(The Sìkù quánshū committee characterised the Zūnshēng shū as one of the most ambitious individually-authored medical compendia of the high Qīng.)
The work’s title — zūnshēng 尊生 (“honouring life”) — invokes the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 Shànshēng 善生 (“benefiting life”) tradition and the early-Qīng yǎngshēng 養生 literature, but Shěn’s emphasis is firmly clinical rather than longevity-philosophical: the doctrinal preliminaries, the pulse-diagnosis, and the formulary together constitute a complete clinical-pedagogical curriculum.
Shěn’s clinical-doctrinal position is an eclectic synthesis: he draws on the late-Míng / early-Qīng Mìngmén / xiāntiān tradition (Xuē Jǐ → Zhào Xiànkě → Zhāng Jièbīn) for the constitutional-fortifying framework; on the Sì dàjiā for the differentiation of clinical patterns; on Yè Tiānshì and Wú Jūtōng for the wēnbìng protocols; and on his own clinical experience for the specific drug-and-formula recommendations. The eclecticism is characteristic of the high-Qīng (Qián-lóng-era) mainstream medical curriculum.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt is absent (no _000.txt file in the source directory); the available transcription enters directly into the Màixiàng tǒnglèi of juǎnshǒu. The standard prefatory matter — Shěn’s own self-preface, the Qiánlóng 38 / 1773 publication preface by Shěn’s senior colleague Qián Dàxīn 錢大昕, and the Shùnzhì re-cut prefaces of the various Qīng reprints — is not preserved here. The hxwd recension may descend from a defective Japanese reprint.
Abstract
The 1773 editio princeps dating of the unified Zūnshēng shū is the consensus modern figure; individual constituent works were composed over a longer period (the Zábìng yuánliú xīzhú and Màixiàng are documentable to the 1760s). Shěn was a jǔrén (provincial-examination graduate) of Qiánlóng 9 / 1744 but never advanced further in the examination track; he practised medicine in Wúxī and acquired major patronage from the Qián-lóng-era Chángzhōu cultural establishment.
CBDB has Shěn Jīnáo at c_personid 0099034.
The work was reprinted multiple times in the late Qīng and early Republican periods and remains a standard reference in Chinese-medical curricula today.
Translations and research
No full European-language translation of the Shěn-shì zūn-shēng shū located. Particular chapters of the Fù-kē yù-rěn have been studied: Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960–1665 (California, 1999), and Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (California, 2010). For Shěn’s place in high-Qīng Jiāng-nán medicine see Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics (Routledge, 2011), and Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition (Eastland, 2007).
Other points of interest
The work’s 72-juǎn scope and integrated curricular organisation make it one of the half-dozen most-ambitious individually-authored Chinese medical compendia (alongside the Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng 證治準繩 of Wáng Kěntáng, the Jǐngyuè quánshū of Zhāng Jièbīn, the Yīzōng jīnjiàn 醫宗金鑑 imperial compilation, and the Féngshì jǐnnáng mìlù of Féng Zhàozhāng).
Links
- Shěn Jīnáo (zh)
- Person notes 沈金鰲 (author).