Shānghán zhī yánjiū 傷寒之研究
A Study of the Shāng-hán Tradition by 中西惟忠 (撰)
About the work
The Shānghán zhī yánjiū 傷寒之研究 (Japanese Shōkan no kenkyū), 10 juàn, is a major monograph on Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán lùn by the Kyoto-based late-Edo physician 中西惟忠 Nakanishi Iyū 中西惟忠 (1724–1803), a second-generation disciple of 吉益東洞 Yoshimasu Tōdō 吉益東洞 and a senior figure of the koihō 古醫方 (Ancient-Formula School) of Kyōto medicine. The work belongs to the philological-and-clinical recovery programme of late-18th-century Edo koihō: rejecting Sòng zàngfǔ / qì-physiological accretions and JīnYuán doctrinal speculation, returning to the formula-and-symptom-pattern reasoning of the Shānghán / Jīnguì texts themselves. The same work is independently catalogued as KR3ef029 in the present knowledgebase.
Abstract
Composition is securely 1789 (preface dated). The work is one of the longest and most thoroughgoing Edo koihō-school Shānghán studies, working systematically through the channel-and-syndrome chapters with detailed clinical commentary on prescription application. The koihō school’s distinctive fùzhèng 腹證 (abdominal-palpation diagnostics) is here developed as the central diagnostic technique — Yoshimasu Tōdō’s signature contribution — and the work is one of the principal late-Edo elaborations of the fùzhèng method.
The koihō school’s pragmatic clinical orientation — distinguishing classical-formula prescription (kohō 古方) from contemporary-formula prescription (kōhō 後方 / jihō) and insisting on the demonstrable effectiveness of the former — became one of the most influential currents in modern Japanese kanpō and a major influence on the late-Qīng Chinese jīngfāngpài 經方派 revival via Yáng Shǒujìng’s 1880s importation of Edo medical literature.
For Nakanishi’s biographical context and his Yào zhēng zhì jí 藥徵績集 see his person note.
Translations and research
- Marushima Eisuke 丸島英祐. Multiple Japanese studies of Yoshimasu Tōdō and the koihō school.
- Otsuka Yasuo 大塚敬節. 1989. Kanpō ishi no negaikoto 漢方医師の願いごと. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō.
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2013. “Native and Foreign in Tokugawa Medicine.” Journal of Japanese Studies 39 (2): 299–324.
- Hattori Toshirō 服部敏良. Edo jidai igakushi no kenkyū 江戸時代醫學史の研究. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1978.