Nèikē zhāi yào 內科摘要
Selected Essentials of Internal Medicine by 薛己 (撰)
About the work
The Nèikē zhāi yào 內科摘要 (“Selected Essentials of Internal Medicine”) is the principal internal-medicine treatise by 薛己 Xuē Jǐ — 2 juàn, the opening work in the standard sequence of his collected medical case-and-essay corpus Xuēshì yīàn KR3e0070. It is the earliest extant Chinese medical work to carry “nèikē” (內科, “internal medicine”) in its title — Xuē thereby naming a clinical specialty distinct from his original training in yángyī 瘍醫 (external / surgical medicine). The work consists of two parts: an upper juàn presenting Xuē’s clinical doctrine on Spleen-and-Stomach, Mìngmén 命門 deficiency, yīnhuǒ 陰火, qì-and-blood patterns, and the differential application of the warming-tonifying signature prescriptions Bāwèi yuán 八味元 (kidney-yáng), Liùwèi wán 六味丸 (kidney-yīn), Bǔzhōng yìqì tāng 補中益氣湯 (centre-tonifying) and Guīpí tāng 歸脾湯 (heart-spleen tonifying); and a lower juàn of case records (醫案) illustrating these doctrines in practice.
Abstract
The work is one of the foundational documents of late-Míng warming-tonifying clinical practice and a major proximate source of the Mìngmén doctrine later systematized by 趙獻可 Zhào Xiànkě’s Yī guàn 醫貫 (cf. KR3e0070 tíyào) and 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn’s Jǐngyuè quánshū. Xuē presents the integration of 李杲 Lǐ Gǎo’s Spleen-and-Stomach school with the kidney-yīn / kidney-yáng tonification programme of Liùwèi / Bāwèi, arguing — in case after case — that the apparent excess-heat or excess-fire conditions diagnosed by the cold-cooling Dānxī school are, in many adults, the surface manifestation of underlying Mìngmén deficiency that requires warming tonification rather than cooling-purging.
Composition window 1510–1529 is inferred from Xuē’s biographical sequence: he served as a Tàiyīyuàn 太醫院 medical officer from 1506 and is documented in Sūzhōu clinical practice from c. 1510; the Nèikē zhāi yào, the Wàikē shū yào 外科樞要 and the Nǚkē cuō yào 女科撮要 form the doctrinal core of his early–middle career, all composed before his major editorial revisions of the works of 錢乙 Qián Yǐ, 陳自明 Chén Zìmíng and others. The text appears as the opening sub-title of the standard Sìkù Xuēshì yīàn recension. For the parent compendium see KR3e0070.
Translations and research
- Furth, Charlotte. 1999. A Flourishing Yin. Berkeley: University of California Press — discusses Xuē’s clinical doctrine, including Nèi-kē zhāi yào material.
- Wáng Yáng 王陽 (ed.). 1999. Xuē Jǐ yī-xué quán-shū 薛己醫學全書. Beijing: Zhōng-yī Gǔjí. — standard modern critical edition.
- Volker Scheid. 2007. Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006. Seattle: Eastland Press. — frames the post-Xuē warming-tonifying lineage.
Links
- Parent compendium: KR3e0070 Xuēshì yīàn.
- ctext: https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&res=80637