Yú Lín 余霖 (1723–1795), zì Shīyú 師愚 (universally cited as Yú Shīyú 余師愚). Active during Yōngzhèng – Qiánlóng. Native of Tóngxī 桐溪 in Chángzhōu 常州 (Jiāngsū); resided long-term in Tóngchéng 桐城 (Ānhuī) during the Qiánlóng era.
He had failed the kējǔ examinations in his youth and turned to medicine; his clinical orientation was sharpened by a personal tragedy — his father contracted an epidemic disease and was misdiagnosed as Shānghán and killed by an incompetent physician. Yú returned home in mourning, studied the materia medica for thirty years, and developed his characteristic clinical approach centred on massive doses of gypsum (石膏 shígāo) to clear qì-level heat in epidemic fever.
In Qiánlóng jiǎshēn 甲申 (1764), Tóngchéng was struck by a major epidemic; Yú’s clinical practice took shape against this disaster.
His principal innovations:
- The doctrinal position that “without gypsum one cannot treat hot epidemic” (非石膏不能治熱疫). Yú broke decisively with the Wú Yǒuxìng prescription apparatus (which centred on purgation with dàhuáng) and built his own apparatus around large-dose gypsum.
- The composite prescription Qīngwēn bàidú yǐn 清瘟敗毒飲 — heavy shígāo combined with cooling-the-blood (qīngyíngliángxuè) drugs — for compound epidemic warm-disease presentations with both qì-level and xuè-level involvement. This prescription is one of the cornerstones of the modern TCM apparatus for severe febrile epidemic disease.
- The work Yìzhěn yīdé 疫疹一得 (KR3eg031) (2 juǎn, 1785), focusing on epidemic rash (yìzhěn 疫疹) — distinct from Wú Yǒuxìng’s wēnyì in clinical orientation.
Yú’s reputation was cemented by the Qiánlóng guǐchǒu 癸丑 (1793) Běijīng epidemic, recorded by Jì Xiǎolán 紀曉嵐 in Yuèwēi cǎotáng bǐjì 閱微草堂筆記: many physicians treated the epidemic by Zhāng Jǐngyuè’s methods without effect; Wú Yǒuxìng’s protocols also failed; the concubine of Féng Hónglú of Tóngxiāng was near death when a Tóngxiāng physician administered a large dose of gypsum and she recovered immediately. That physician was Yú Lín.
The same 1793 Běijīng epidemic is what brought 吳塘 Wú Jūtōng to fame (see KR3eg010); Yú Lín and Wú Jūtōng worked through the outbreak in the same city, contributing to the doctrinal-clinical synthesis that became the canonical Qīng wēnbìng tradition.
Lifedates from baidu baike (jendow / 維基), Zhōng yī rén wù cí diǎn, A+醫學百科.