Guòtíng lù cún 過庭錄存
Records Preserved from the Hall Crossing oral teachings of 曹存心 Cáo Cúnxīn (zì Rénbó 仁伯, hào Yǎocǎo shì 樂叟室, 1767–1834, Chángshú 常熟, Sūzhōu prefecture, Jiāngsū), recorded by his disciples.
About the work
A one-juǎn clinical case-record collection (yīàn 醫案) preserving the oral consultations and treatment records of the great early-19th-c. Chángshú physician Cáo Cúnxīn (Cáo Rénbó 曹仁伯), recorded by his apprentice-disciples during his teaching. The title — Guòtíng lù cún 過庭錄存 — alludes to the Lùnyǔ 16.13 episode (Confucius’s son Lǐ crossing the courtyard and being instructed) and figures the work as the recorded jiāxùn 家訓 / shīxùn 師訓 (“family / master’s instructions”) of Cáo’s clinical method, preserved by his disciples. The note appended at the close confirms the textual origin: zǒngjiē běnshū suī yǒu yǔ qiánjí Cáo Rénbó yīàn zhōng léitóng zhě shù zé, rán yú yàofāng huò shāo yǒu chūrù, xiāngjiàn dāngshí méndìzǐ gè yǒu chāolù, huò shì huò fēi, tè liǎng cún zhī 總接本書雖有與前集曹仁伯醫案中雷同者數則，然於藥方或稍有出入，相見當時門弟子各有鈔錄，或是或非，特兩存之 (“In general, this book contains a few cases that overlap with the previous Cáo Rénbó yīàn, but the formulae differ slightly — evidently the disciples each made their own records at the time, with variants both correct and incorrect, so both are preserved”).
The case-records cover Cáo’s principal clinical specialties: damp-heat consumption (the celebrated case of Mr. Chéng of Ānhuī, with constitutional damp-heat plus yīn-deficiency); aphasia / huāngluàn mental cases (with the famous Sūzhōu / Chángshú method of constitutional reading); women’s complaints; jiāocháng 交腸 (the rare “exchanging-bowel” complaint where bowel contents exit through the urinary tract — Cáo treats the famous Wújiā 吳家 case of Jiāshàn 嘉善); zhènzhèn 顫振 (Parkinson-like tremor — Cáo treats the Lǐjiā 李家 case of Chángshú); wèiwǎn 胃脘 epigastric complaints (the Chénjiā 陳家 case of Kūnshān 崑山); and many regional case-references that document the geography of Cáo’s SūzhōuChángshú practice (Píngwàng 平望, Sōngjiāng, Xīhuì 西匯, Chángshú western suburb, Hángzhōu, Jiāshàn, Píngjiāng, Kūnshān).
The case-records are presented in the canonical yīàn format: a discursive analysis of the case (ànyǔ 案語), followed by the formula or formulae prescribed, and where appropriate the second and third visits with revised treatments.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt contains no separate preface; the available transcription enters directly into the case-records. The standard prefatory matter — the disciple-editor’s account of how the records were compiled, and any external preface by a contemporary scholar — is not preserved here. The hxwd recension descends from a Japanese imprint.
Abstract
Cáo Cúnxīn was the principal Chángshú clinician of the early 19th c., active from c. 1790 to his death in 1834. His clinical-doctrinal position was an eclectic synthesis of the Yè Tiānshì / Wú Jūtōng wēnbìng tradition with the Mìngmén / xiāntiān constitutional doctrine of the late-Míng / early-Qīng synthesisers (Zhāng Jièbīn, Lǐ Zhōngzǐ). His principal works are: Yīàn 醫案 (the canonical collection — “qiánjí” referred to in the present work’s closing note); Guòtíng lù cún (the present work, the case-records preserved by his apprentice-disciples); and Yǎocǎoshì zájì 樂叟室雜記 (his miscellaneous notes).
The composition window of the present work is the period of Cáo’s most active teaching, c. 1800–1834 (his death year as terminus ante quem). The disciples who recorded the cases included 費伯雄 Fèi Bóxióng (a future Wǔjìn 武進 master, 1800–1879) — the most distinguished of Cáo’s apprentices and a major Dào-guāng-Xián-fēng-era figure.
CBDB has Cáo Cúnxīn at c_personid unknown to author; the dates 1767–1834 are the consensus modern figure.
Translations and research
For Cáo Cún-xīn and the early-19th-c. Cháng-shú medical school in English see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007), ch. 4 (the Mèng-hé 孟河 medical lineage to which Cáo’s disciple Fèi Bó-xióng contributed). No European-language translation of the Guò-tíng lù cún specifically located.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the principal sources for the reconstruction of the early-19th-c. Chángshú clinical tradition that fed into the great mid-19th-c. Mènghé school of Wǔjìn 武進 (the school of Fèi Bóxióng, Mǎ Páizhī 馬培之, Yú Jǐnghé 余景和). The cases document Cáo’s regional practice geography (the ChángshúSūzhōuHúzhōuHángzhōu network) and his clinical-doctrinal handling of the major early-19th-c. epidemic challenges (the cholera-like jiǎojiǎo of 1820, the damp-heat consumption complex of the rich landowner class).
Links
- Person notes 曹存心 (oral-teaching author).
- Companion work: Cáo Rénbó yīàn 曹仁伯醫案 (the parallel yīàn collection).