Qīngnáng suǒtàn 青囊瑣探
Petty Inquiries from the Green Bag by 片倉元周 (撰)
About the work
The Qīngnáng suǒtàn 青囊瑣探 (Japanese Seinō sasaguri), 3 juàn, is the clinical-philological miscellany of 片倉元周 Katakura Genshū 片倉元周 (sobriquet Kakuryō 鶴陵, zì 周伯 Shūhaku, 1751–1822), the Kagawa-school obstetrician who also authored the obstetric textbook Chǎnkē fāméng 產科發蒙 (1799), the syphilis treatise Méilì xīnshū KR3eu058 (1788), and the Shānghán commentary Shānghán qǐwēi 傷寒啟微. The title qīngnáng 青囊 (“the green bag”) is a venerable metonym for medical practice, from the legendary green bag that the Hàn-period physician Huà Tuó 華佗 carried his prescriptions in; suǒtàn (“petty inquiries”) signals the work’s modest miscellany format. The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3eq053 in the present knowledgebase.
Abstract
The author’s preface, dated Kyōwa 1 / 2 / 13 = spring 1801 (享和改元白雞春二月十三日, signed 鶴陵片倉元周), gives the composition history. Katakura had collected in his “young and middle years” some clinical-experiential notes which he had drafted as a manuscript of several juàn under the present title but had not seen through to printing. Subsequently, “as events touched him” over the years, he continued to add new entries; the eventual draft expanded to more than ten juàn, which he sorted into five collections (五集) by topic. Of these, two — Shānghán qǐwēi and Chǎnkē fāméng — had been published already as separate books. The present work is the residue: the note-form material that did not warrant its own dedicated treatise but was too valuable to lose.
The second preface, by Sakai Tadamichi 酒井忠道 (the daimyō of Himeji 姫路 = Shirosagi-jō 白鷺城 in Harima 播磨, Bunseiwō / Tokugawa-Bakumatsu official, 1777–1837), dated Kyōwa 2 / 2 / late = early summer 1802 (享和弟二杏月下浣 [杏月 = 2nd lunar month]; the orthographic slip 弟二 for 第二 is preserved in the source), records that Sakai had read Katakura’s Chǎnkē fāméng in manuscript and that Katakura is institutionally a pupil of the Bakufu Taiyīlíng 太醫令 = the Taki / Tamba house of the Igakukan. The “Taki Hōin” 多紀法眼 mentioned in Sakai’s preface as having recommended the present work is 丹波元簡 Tamba no Genkan — Sakai’s connection to the Taki house through hereditary family-friendship is invoked as Sakai’s qualification to write a preface despite not being a physician himself.
The content of the work is the standard late-Edo philological-clinical miscellany: short essays on drug-name etymology and substitution, on anatomical and physiological terms (with reference to both the Língshū / Sùwèn canonical anatomy and the Dutch rangaku 蘭學 dissection-based anatomy that was becoming available in late-18th-century Japan), on obstetric clinical findings continuing Katakura’s Chǎnkē fāméng programme, on commentary on the Shānghán lùn received text, and on scattered medical-historical anecdotes. The format is one short numbered essay per topic, with Katakura’s habitual broad-spectrum reference to Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch (via rangaku) sources.
Composition is therefore securely 1801 (author’s preface), published 1802 (Sakai preface). 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 book-length Western-language monograph located.
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2013. “Native and Foreign in Tokugawa Medicine.” Journal of Japanese Studies 39 (2): 299–324 — for the late-Edo kanpō / rangaku dialogue Katakura embodies.
- Macé, Mieko. 2003. “L’évolution de la médecine japonaise face au modèle chinois.” Daruma: Revue d’études japonaises.
Other points of interest
The Qīngnáng suǒtàn is one of the principal late-Edo kanpō-school documents of the integration of Dutch rangaku anatomical knowledge into a fundamentally classical-medical practice. Katakura was institutionally a Taki / Tamba Igakukan pupil but operated in the same Kyoto-area medical environment as the rangaku surgeons, and his work shows the same selective accommodation to Western anatomy that characterises 二宮獻’s contemporaneous Zhōngguó jiēgǔ túshuō KR3eu054 (1807–1808) — a use of Western anatomy as a complement, not a replacement, of the inherited Chinese medical doctrine.
Links
- Author: 片倉元周.
- Preface authors: Sakai Tadamichi 酒井忠道 (Himeji daimyō); commendation by 丹波元簡 (Taki / Tamba Hōin).
- Sibling works by same author: KR3eu058 Méilì xīnshū (1786–1788), KR3ei065 Chǎnkē fāméng (1799), Shānghán qǐwēi 傷寒啟微.
- Parallel listing: KR3eq053.
- Series: HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. 陳存仁.