Collated and Annotated Edition of Guide to Cold Damage

Shanghan Zhigui Jiaozhu is a scholarly monograph by Professor Zhao Hongyan that systematically collates, organizes, and studies the Qing physician Ge Songping's Shanghan Zhigui. As an important achievement of the People's Medical Publishing House's "Series on the Collation of Ancient Chinese Medical Texts," the book is not only a rescue excavation of a classic of Cold Damage studies on the verge of being lost, but also reflects contemporary scholars' rigorous attitude and scholarly depth in the study of traditional medical literature. Ge Songping, a leading figure in late Qing Cold Damage studies, deconstructs Shanghan Lun through his distinctive "theory of qi transformation of the six channels," emphasizing the profound connection between the ascending, descending, exiting, and entering movements of yin-yang qi in the human body and the pathology of the six channels. His theoretical system is unique, but in the course of transmission the editions became mixed and riddled with errors. Professor Zhao Hongyan used the Qing block-printed edition held by the National Library as the base text, consulted multiple manuscript copies, carried out meticulous collation of the original text, corrected a large number of errors and omissions from successive transcriptions, and added detailed annotations to clarify the meaning, thus enabling this scholarly treasure, silent for a century, to be presented clearly. The book's most outstanding value lies in the fact that the collator did not merely correct wording, but, drawing on his profound grounding in Chinese medical theory and clinical experience, provided in-depth exposition of Ge's doctrines, integrating comparisons with the views of Cold Damage commentators of successive dynasties into the annotations and appending numerous editorial notes exploring the clinical guiding significance of Ge's theories. For modern students of Shanghan Lun, the book offers a new perspective different from the mainstream commentary systems; in particular, the idea of "pattern identification by qi transformation" is highly instructive for understanding the nature of six-channel diseases and expanding clinical thinking. The volume is thread-bound in hardcover, with spacious typesetting; the traditional characters and vertical arrangement preserve the original appearance of the ancient text, while punctuation is clear and easy to read. Although the book involves many traditional medical terms and philosophical speculation that may seem daunting to first-time readers, it is precisely this scholarly depth that makes it a landmark achievement in textual organization in Cold Damage studies that cannot be bypassed.