Yè Guì 葉桂 (zì Tiānshì 天士, hào Xiāngyán 香岩 and Shàngjīn lǎorén 上津老人, 1666–1745, CBDB 65971), native of Sūzhōu 蘇州. He is the founding patriarch of the wēnbìng 溫病 (warm-disease) school proper and one of the most influential physicians of the entire Qīng dynasty.
He came from a hereditary medical family — his grandfather Yè Zǐfān 葉紫帆 and father Yè Yáng 葉陽 were both renowned Sūzhōu physicians — and continued the family’s clinical practice. He is reported to have studied under seventeen different teachers as a young man before consolidating his own clinical style. His principal works:
- Wèn yì lùn 溫熱論 — the foundational text of wēnbìng theory, dictated to his disciple Gù Jǐngwén 顧景文 during a boat journey on Lake Tài.
- Lín zhèng zhǐ nán yī àn 臨證指南醫案 — compiled posthumously by his disciples; a major casebook in 10 juǎn.
- Yè shì cún zhēn 葉氏存真 (medical-philosophical jottings).
Yè Guì is not the author of the Běncǎo jīng jiě (KR3ec044), although the work was originally circulated under his name. The actual author is Yáo Qiú 姚球; the pseudepigraphic ascription was a publishing-marketing strategy capitalising on Yè’s fame.
CBDB has multiple Yè Guì records (65971, 73063, 99088, 363603, 544194); 65971 with lifedates 1666–1745 is the relevant entry.
Principal English-language source: Hanson, Marta. 2011. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. Routledge — extensive treatment of Yè Guì.