The Sources of Medicine

The Sources of Medicine is a work of medical discourse by the Qing dynasty physician Shi Shoutang (courtesy name Funan, 1823–1869, a native of Andong in Jiangsu, present-day Lianshui), completed in the eleventh year of the Xianfeng reign (1861) in three volumes and twenty essays. The "sources" of the title means tracing things to their origins: Shi Shoutang was dissatisfied with the prevailing tendency among physicians of his day to be "blind to the source and chase only the branches" and to "state what is so without understanding why it is so," and so he resolved to inquire into the origins of disease and the methods of treating the root. The book is clearly structured. The first volume contains nine essays, moving from "The Human Body as a Small World," "On the Mutual Rooting of Yin and Yang," "On the Generation and Overcoming of the Five Phases," and "On the General Principles of Treating Yin and Yang" to "On the Pivot," "On the Course of Defensive Qi: One Channel Like a Star Crossing the Sky," "On the Course of Nutritive Qi: One Channel Like Water Moving Over the Earth," "On the Outline of the Hundred Diseases," and "On Observing the Spirit in Inspection." Grounded in the holistic view of the correspondence between heaven and humanity, they sort out the physiology and pathology of the organs, qi and blood, and nutritive and defensive qi. The second volume contains five essays: "On Distinguishing Yin and Yang When Listening to the Voice," "On Seeking the Disease Through Questioning," "On the Origins and Development of Pulse Diagnosis," "On the Essentials of Internal Injury," and "On Dampness." They focus on the sequence of diagnosis by inspection, listening, questioning, and palpation and on distinguishing and treating internal injury. The third volume contains six essays: "On Dryness," "On Zhang Zhongjing's Treatise on Cold Damage," "On Gynecology," "On Pediatrics," "On the Essentials of Pharmacy," and "On the Need for Physicians to Know Characters." They cover dry syndromes, cold damage, gynecology, pediatrics, and the theory of medicinal properties. The book's most distinctive scholarly feature is its taking "the two qi of dryness and dampness" as the outline of the hundred diseases, with two essays, "On Dryness" and "On Dampness," devoted to detailed exposition and many original views on etiology, pathogenesis, treatment methods, and prescriptions. It also advances the holistic view that "the human body is a small world" and stresses the key role of observing the spirit in diagnosing disease. The whole book consists of discourse without prescriptions, concentrating on medical theory rather than set formulas, and has been praised as a quintessential work of Qing medical discourse. This edition is the annotated edition published by Shanghai Pujiang Education Press in 2011.