Yú Wúyán 余無言 (1900–1963), of Āfù níng 阜寧 (northern Jiāngsū). Republican-period Shànghǎi jīngfāng pài 經方派 (Classical-Formulas School) physician, classical-formulas annotator, and integrative-medicine reformer — one of the so-called “three great Shànghǎi authorities” on the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (Shānghánlùn / Jīnguì yàolüè) tradition, with 曹穎甫 Cáo Yǐngfǔ and Lù Yuānléi 陸淵雷.
He came from a Northern-Jiāng-sū medical family: his father Yú Fèngxiān 余奉仙 had practised for sixty years and was reckoned one of the “Three Great Physicians of Northern Jiāngsū in the late Qīng” (with Zhào Hǎixiān of Xīnghuà and Zhāng Zǐpíng of Huáiān). After classical primary schooling in Huáiān (1909–1911) and medical training under his father, Yú began practising at 18. In 1920 — under the influence of the early-Republican zhōngxī huìtōng 衷中參西 movement — he travelled to Shànghǎi to study Western medicine: internal medicine under Yú Fèngbīn 俞鳳賓 and surgery under the German physician Vidofur. He served as a military medical officer (1927–1929, 2nd Division under Gù Zhùtóng) and settled permanently in Shànghǎi at the end of 1929.
From 1930 he was Professor of Surgery at the Shànghǎi College of Chinese Medicine (president Bāo Shìshēng 包識生); he co-founded the Shìjiè yībào 世界醫報 with Zhāng Zànchén 章贊臣 (1930), ran a joint clinic with him (1931–), and was appointed to the editorial committee of the Central National Medicine Institute (1934), where he drafted the nationally-adopted “Surgical Disease Nomenclature Schedule”. In 1936, on the invitation of 章炳麟 Zhāng Tàiyán, he became Director of Surgery at the Sūzhōu National Medicine School while concurrently teaching Shānghánlùn, Jīnguì yàolüè, and TCM surgery at multiple Shànghǎi institutions. He refused to register with the Japanese puppet government and closed his teaching activities in 1942; from 1943 he wrote on warm-disease and exanthematous typhus (Shīwēn shānghán bìng piān, Bānzhěn shānghán bìng piān) as early specimens of zhōngxī huìtōng scholarship.
His major theoretical works are the 《傷寒論新義》 Shānghánlùn xīnyì (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1939; nine reprints) and the Jīnguì yàolüè xīnyì 金匱要略新義 (1952), each using the fourfold method set out in his prefaces (“the classic interprets the classic” — “the refined interprets the classic” — “the new [Western-medical knowledge] interprets the classic” — “personal clinical insight interprets the classic”). His clinical casebook is KR3ep105 Yú Wúyán yīàn 余無言醫案. Shànghǎi colleagues popularly called him “Mr Gypsum-and-Rhubarb” 石膏、大黃先生 for his aggressive use of heavy jīngfāng dosages (gypsum to the half-jīn, rhubarb to the liǎng) against severe febrile presentations.
After 1949 he supported the PRC’s TCM policy; in spring 1956 he moved to Běijīng to head the editorial office of the Ministry of Health’s Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine 中醫研究院 (later the Literature Research Office) and lectured for the first national programme for Western-trained physicians studying TCM. From 1958 he taught at the Běijīng College of Chinese Medicine 北京中醫學院, where he was a principal editor of the “Ten Great Classical Medical Works” series, and consulted for senior central-government officials. He died of cerebral haemorrhage from hypertension in Běijīng on 7 September 1963. No CBDB record.