A Study of the Treatise on Cold Damage

A Study of the Treatise on Cold Damage is the fruit of decades of research on the Treatise on Cold Damage by the Lingnan physician Chen Botan (1863–1938) of the late Qing and early Republic. It was first published in 1930. The work comprises eighteen juan, preceded by two introductory sections, "Gateway" and "How to Read." "Gateway" explains in turn more than twenty basic concepts—cold, disease, transformation, qi, pulse, exterior and interior, cold and heat, deficiency and excess, sweating, purging, and descending, restlessness, stuffiness and fullness, counterflow, construction and defense, fluids, and the three yin and three yang—with diagrams to aid explanation. "How to Read" offers thirty-five points on punctuation and reading method, teaching readers how to understand the Treatise on Cold Damage. The main text employs the method of "using the classic to annotate the classic," providing a "penetrating explanation"—an integrated, thorough interpretation—of each passage of the original text. It emphasizes yin and yang as the guiding principle, develops the theories of qi transformation of the three yin and three yang and of root, branch, and central qi, so as to embody the holistic view of Chinese medicine, and also evaluates the merits and shortcomings of commentaries by various authors after the Jin dynasty. The book was originally used for medical instruction; extensive in scope and original in insight, it is, together with A Study of Fascicle Nineteen of the Synopsis of the Golden Chamber and Brief Remarks on Measles and Smallpox, one of Chen's representative works, and is regarded as an important achievement in Treatise on Cold Damage studies of the 1920s and 1930s. Xueyuan Press published a simplified-character collated edition based on old editions in 2011, included in the series Ten Books on the Treatise on Cold Damage by Modern Master Physicians.