Yīzōng jīnjiàn · Dòuzhěn xīnfǎ yàojué 醫宗金鑑·痘疹心法要訣
Heart-Method Essentials for Smallpox and Measles by 吳謙 (奉敕撰) and 劉裕鐸 (奉敕撰), under imperial commission
About the work
The Dòuzhěn xīnfǎ yàojué 痘疹心法要訣 (6 juàn) is the smallpox-and-measles chapter of the Yīzōng jīnjiàn compendium (KR3e0090 / KR3eu016). The chapter consolidates the SòngYuánMíng smallpox / dòuzhěn 痘疹 specialist literature — building on 錢乙 Qián Yǐ’s foundational work, the 陳文中 Chén Wénzhōng Xiǎo’ér dòuzhěn fānglùn (a Sòng pediatric specialist title transmitted in 薛己 Xuē Jǐ’s collated form), the Míng Dòuzhěn jīnjìng lù tradition, and the Qīng pre-Yīzōng smallpox revivalists (especially 張琰 Zhāng Yǎn’s Zhǒngdòu xīnfǎ 種痘新法, 1741) — and importantly is the first official imperial Qīng work to incorporate a section on inoculation by réndòu 人痘 (variolation) using either hànmiáo 旱苗 (dry-powder), shuǐmiáo 水苗 (wet-soaked), yīmiáo 衣苗 (garment), or dòujiāngfǎ 痘漿法 (lymph-fluid) techniques.
Abstract
The Qīng imperial endorsement of variolation in this chapter is one of the most consequential decisions of Qián-lóng-era medical policy: it consolidated official approval of the practice that the Kāngxī emperor had championed (with his own children inoculated in the 1670s) and provided the technical-and-doctrinal manual through which variolation spread throughout the Qīng empire in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The chapter’s careful presentation of multiple inoculation techniques and its detailed discussion of clinical complications is a major piece of practical medical-policy literature, not just a synthesis of prior doctrine.
Composition window 1742–1749. For the parent compendium see KR3e0090 / KR3eu016; cf. duplicate entry KR3eu034.
Translations and research
- Chang, Chia-Feng 張嘉鳳. 1996. “Aspects of smallpox and its significance in Chinese history.” PhD thesis, SOAS, University of London.
- Hopkins, Donald R. 2002. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press — full chapter on Chinese variolation derived from the Yīzōng jīn-jiàn.
- Leung, Angela Ki Che. 2011. “The Business of Vaccination in Nineteenth-Century Canton.” Late Imperial China 32 (1): 7–39.
- Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge.
- Needham, Joseph, and Lu Gwei-djen. 2000. Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 6.6: Medicine. Cambridge University Press — treats Chinese variolation.