Wǔ Zhīwàng 武之望 (zì Shūqīng 叔卿, hào Yángyū 陽紆, 1552–1629, CBDB 347912 — entry without dates), late-Míng official-physician of Sānyuán 三原 (Shǎnxī). Jìnshì 1589; held a series of magistrate, prefect, and circuit posts; ultimately governor-general of Shǎnxī (Sānbiān zǒngdū 三邊總督), in which capacity he took his own life in 1629 after the loss of Yúlín 榆林 to rebels — a dramatic late-Míng official-suicide of the kind that became increasingly common in the dynasty’s final two decades.
His medical reputation rests on two great encyclopedic works in the late-Míng gāngmù 綱目 (“outline-and-detail”) tradition: the Jǐyīn gāngmù 濟陰綱目 (1620; on women’s medicine, the male-counterpart pair to the present work) and the Jǐyáng gāngmù 濟陽綱目 (KR3eh024, 108 juǎn; on male / general internal medicine, completed but printed posthumously). Together with 王肯堂 Wáng Kěntáng’s Liùkē zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng (see KR3eh011), they represent the apex of the late-Míng gāngmù compilation genre.
The Jǐyīn / Jǐyáng pair is doctrinally significant as one of the principal late-Míng systematic articulations of yīnyáng therapeutic balance applied to gender-medicine: Wǔ argues that women’s medicine and men’s medicine are not different kē (specialty) but the same medicine differentiated by yīn and yáng substrate, and the two works are intentionally pendant.