Méilì xīnshū 黴癘新書
A New Treatise on Syphilis and Leprosy by 片倉元周 (撰)
About the work
The Méilì xīnshū 黴癘新書 (Japanese Bairei shinsho), 2 juàn, is one of the major Edo-period Japanese monographs on syphilis (méichuāng 黴瘡) and leprosy / lepromatous disease (lìfēng 癘風), composed by 片倉元周 Katakura Genshū 片倉元周 (sobriquet Kakuryō 鶴陵, 1751–1822), the obstetrician-physician of the Kagawa-school lineage. The title pairs the two diseases under the heading méilì — the “méi” of méichuāng 黴瘡 (syphilis) and the “lì” of lìfēng 癘風 (leprosy / Hansen’s disease) — reflecting Katakura’s clinical observation that the two diseases overlapped in symptom-pattern and were jointly the most difficult chronic dermatological disorders of his practice. The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3eq052 (where applicable) in the present knowledgebase.
Abstract
The composition history is documented in three dated prefaces. The author’s original preface is dated Tenmei 6 / 11 / winter solstice = late 1786 (天明六年歲次丙午, 冬十有一月南至), reporting that the manuscript was completed when Katakura’s house was struck by fire and he himself nearly died of a current epidemic disease — the brush with death prompting him to prepare the manuscript for publication “lest this method be lost with me to the underworld.” A second author’s preface, dated Tenmei 7 / 12 = winter 1787/8 (天明七年丁未歲臘月), gives the doctrinal manifesto (see below) and was added at the Seikendō 靜儉堂 (Katakura’s study). The senior preface, by 丹波元簡 Tamba no Genkan 丹波元簡 (then a young Bakufu medical official, later director of the Igakukan) and dated early summer Tenmei 8 = 1788 (天明七年歲在戊申夏五之初 — though the apparent year-name slip 天明七年戊申 should be read either as a transmission error for 天明八年戊申 = 1788 or as 天明七年丁未 = 1787; the gānzhī 戊申 fixes the absolute year as 1788), records Katakura as a former pupil of Tamba Genkan’s father — the Igakukan founder Tamba Genkō 元孝 — and praises Katakura’s two-decade clinical study of the disease.
The author’s doctrinal stance, set out in the Tenmei 7 second preface, is a defense of empirical innovation against doctrinal canonism, framed in classical Confucian terms: just as Xià, Shāng, and Zhōu mutually adjusted their ritual systems, so the medical regulations must adjust to changing diseases. Syphilis is the controlling example: it is unattested in Língshū 靈樞 / Sùwèn 素問, in the Jīnguì yàolüè, in the Shénnóng běncǎo and in the Zhūbìng yuánhòu lùn; the closest analogues (yīnshí 陰蝕, yīnchuāng 陰瘡) are only partial homologues. The Chinese name méichuāng itself “arose only in the early Yuán and flourished in later dynasties” (今之稱謂, 肇起元初, 而盛於後世) — i.e. the disease is a post-1492 New-World import in modern epidemiological terms, though Katakura does not have that information. The contemporary Chinese tradition is divided: one party fears the strong drugs (mirabilite, calomel) needed to treat the disease and uses only “mild” methods; the opposite party uses only purgation. Katakura proposes to mediate: heavy purgation when the constitution and pulse warrant, tonification when the constitution is exhausted — and to derive the protocol from twenty years of personal clinical trial.
Substantive content: the work systematises 24 general theses (總論二十四舉) followed by detailed case-protocol and formula listings. The treatment regime — drawn (per the prefaces) from an obscure “Yu-province hidden physician” (羽之隱醫) whose secret formula Katakura purchased at considerable expense — combines purgative-drug-induced expulsion of intestinal parasites (毒藥以下蛔蠍) with moxa-needling to remove blood stasis (燔針以去⿰血亏蔑) — internal and external attack applied in coordination until the patient is restored to wholeness. The work also reports Katakura’s observation that the disease tracks the maternal line in some cases (congenital syphilis) and gives a separate paediatric / obstetric section.
Composition is therefore securely bracketed 1786–1788: the original 1786 manuscript, expanded with the 1787 second preface, published with the senior preface of 1788. The work was transmitted to China and entered the Shanghai HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936) — ed. Chén Cúnrén 陳存仁 — the immediate vector for the hxwd-series text.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language scholarship of the work specifically located.
- Suzuki, Akihito. 2011. “Smallpox and the Epidemiological Heritage of Modern Japan.” Medical History 55 (3): 313–18 — relevant Edo-period epidemiology.
- Burns, Susan L. 2020. Kingdom of the Sick: A History of Leprosy and Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press — the standard English-language history of Japanese leprosy and the principal modern source for the long arc from Katakura’s méi-lì synthesis to the late-19th-century Hansen’s-disease segregation policy.
- Hashimoto Tetsuo 橋本鐵雄. Studies of Edo-period syphilis (Kanpō igaku journal articles).
Other points of interest
The Méilì xīnshū is a key witness in the modern Japanese historiography of how Edo-period medicine identified syphilis (which was perceived as both a major chronic-disease burden and a question of public morality) without explicit knowledge of its New-World origin. Katakura’s grouping of syphilis and leprosy under a single nosological heading was later challenged when the Hansen-bacillus pathogenesis was established in the late 19th century, but it accurately registered the Edo clinical reality of indistinguishable lesion patterns in the chronic stage.