Wenzhai Medical Case Records

Wenzhai Medical Case Records is a collection of clinical case records by the Qing dynasty physician Jiang Baosu (courtesy name Wenzhai, sobriquet Dishu; a native of Dantu, Jiangsu; 1795–1873), compiled and printed under his own hand in the thirtieth year of the Daoguang reign (1850). Jiang Baosu came from a family of physicians; his father was Jiang Chuntian. He studied medicine under his father in his early years and later studied under the renowned physicians Pan Shudong and Wang Jiufeng, practicing for more than forty years in the Xinghua and Jiangdu areas of northern Jiangsu, where he earned a considerable reputation. This book is a selection of his more than forty years of diagnostic and treatment experience; "Wenzhai," the title, is both his courtesy name and the name of his study. The book takes the five viscera as its framework, divided into five volumes—heart, spleen, lung, kidney, and liver (modern punctuated editions list women's miscellaneous diseases and other content separately), with forty-three categories under them: the heart section contains summerheat patterns, fire patterns, intermittent fevers, dysentery, mania and epilepsy, insomnia, palpitations and fright, the three types of wasting and thirst, various sweating patterns, and hiccup; the spleen section contains dampness patterns, cholera, shayu, vomiting, regurgitation, dysphagia, diarrhea, phlegm-rheum, swelling and distention, jaundice, accumulations, and stuffiness; the lung section contains panting, asthma, cough, lung abscess and lung atrophy, flaccidity and foot weakness, various blood patterns, and various orifice patterns; the kidney section contains cold damage, latent pathogenic factors, consumption, constipation, urinary retention, seminal emission, and strangury and turbid urine; the liver section contains true stroke, wind-stroke-like conditions, wind dizziness, wind painful obstruction, wind tetany, epilepsy and convulsions, the seven types of hernia, various pains, and women's miscellaneous diseases. Each case first states the disease name, then identifies the cause and pathogenesis, then discusses treatment and formulates a prescription, citing the Inner Canon, the Classic of Difficult Issues, the Treatise on Cold Damage, and other classics, while drawing on the doctrines of various schools. The treatment methods mostly use Zhang Zhongjing's classical formulas, together with family experiential formulas recorded in his father's Chuntian Medical Talks, such as Sheying Tang, Jiaotai Wan, and Taohua Wan; he had particular insight into the phlegm-rheum category, proposing therapeutic principles such as "ten parts supplement, one part clear" and "combining suppression and appeasement," focusing on the lung, spleen, and kidney in swelling and distention, emphasizing wind and dual supplementation of spleen and kidney in asthma, and offering systematic discussion of latent pathogenic factors. This edition uses Gao Zhenying's punctuated edition as its base text and is included in Xueyuan Publishing House's "Pleasure Reading Medical Case Records Series," set in simplified characters in horizontal format with modern punctuation, making it convenient for modern readers to study. Its case records are concise in wording and strike directly at the pathogenesis, with clear discussions that are always grounded in evidence; it is an important document for studying the clinical thinking and the viscera-pattern differentiation system of the Jiangnan medical school in the Qing dynasty.