Lìyáng jī yào 癘瘍機要
Mechanism-Essentials of Leprous Ulcers by 薛己 (撰)
About the work
The Lìyáng jī yào 癘瘍機要 (“Mechanism-Essentials of Lìyáng / Leprous Ulcers”), 3 juàn, is 薛己 Xuē Jǐ’s specialist treatise on lìyáng — the broad pre-modern Chinese disease-category covering leprosy in the modern Hansen’s-disease sense together with several other chronic ulcerative skin diseases. It is the ninth sub-title of the Xuēshì yīàn corpus (KR3e0070); the work is the earliest specialist Chinese monograph devoted to this disease-cluster after Sòng general-medical treatments.
Abstract
The three juàn are organised: (j. 1) general doctrine, aetiology and basic prescription strategy; (j. 2) detailed symptom-types and prescriptions; (j. 3) case records (醫案). Xuē frames lìyáng as an internal-medicine problem with skin-surface manifestation rather than a purely external/skin disease — a doctrinal move characteristic of his integration of yángyī (surgery) into the broader Spleen-and-Stomach / Mìngmén clinical frame. The recommended treatment couples external surgical management of the ulcers with systematic internal warming-tonifying regimens (Liùwèi wán, Bǔzhōng yìqì tāng, Guīpí tāng) targeting the underlying qì-and-blood and kidney deficiencies. Composition window 1529–1554 is inferred from Xuē’s mature-career chronology; the work is incorporated into the Sìkù Xuēshì yīàn recension.
The work’s significance lies in being one of the most substantial premodern East-Asian treatments of leprosy and related chronic skin diseases; it was extensively cited by Edo Japanese kanpō dermatologists, including in 片倉元周 Katakura Motoshū’s Méilì xīnshū 黴癘新書 (cf. KR3eu058 in the present batch), which is a direct lineal descendant of Xuē’s frame.
Translations and research
No substantial Western translation located.
- Leung, Angela Ki Che. 2009. Leprosy in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press — the standard English-language history of Chinese leprosy, treating Xuē’s Lì-yáng jī yào as a foundational Míng monograph.
- Wáng Yáng 王陽 (ed.). 1999. Xuē Jǐ yī-xué quán-shū 薛己醫學全書. Beijing: Zhōng-yī Gǔjí.