Zhōu Yán 周岩 (1832–1905, 清), zì Bódù 伯度, hào Lùqǐ shānrén 鹿起山人. Native of Shānyīn 山陰 county (modern Shàoxīng 紹興, Zhèjiāng). Late-Qīng physician and minor official; author of Liùqì gǎnzhèng yàoyì 六氣感證要義 (KR3eg018) and Běncǎo sībiàn lù 本草思辨錄 (1904).
The biographical anecdote that defined his career: in Xiánfēng 6 (1856), as a young man travelling to Beijing, Zhōu Yán contracted cold dysentery and was nearly killed by a misdiagnosing physician. The experience determined him to study medicine to save lives himself. He worked through the Nèijīng, Shānghán lùn, and Jīnguì yàoluè canons and built up his clinical practice; he also served as county magistrate at Qíxiàn 祁縣 (Shānxī), Shūchéng 舒城 and Xūyí 盱眙 (Ānhuī), returning in old age to his native place to devote himself to medical writing.
Doctrinally Zhōu stood within the Qīng zūnjīng pài 尊經派 (“revere-the-classics” school) — the late-Qīng tendency to anchor medical practice strictly in the Nèijīng, Shānghán, and Jīnguì canons rather than in the JīnYuán and Qīng wēnbìng commentaries. He esteemed Xú Dàchūn 徐大椿, Chén Xiūyuán 陳修園, and Yóu Zàijīng 尤在涇; he was critical of Wáng Qīngrèn 王清任. He also endorsed Táng Róngchuān 唐容川’s project of integrating Chinese and Western medicine — “holding the balance between Chinese and Western medicine and revealing the secrets of creation”.
His Běncǎo sībiàn lù 本草思辨錄 (1904) is a pharmacological monograph focused on the materia medica of the Shānghán and Jīnguì prescriptions, on the principle that “the failure of a prescription is half from misidentifying the syndrome and half from misidentifying the drug” (方之不效，半由於不識證，半由於不識藥). The Liùqì gǎnzhèng yàoyì applies the same close-textual method to the Nèijīng’s six-qi pathology.
Native place from Wikipedia (zh); doctrinal position from book prefaces and Zhōng yī rén wù cí diǎn. No CBDB record.