The Yuzuan yizong jinjian (Chinese: 御纂醫宗金鑑; pinyin: Yùzuǎn yīzōng jīnjiàn)[a] is a Chinese medical compendium published in 1742 AD, during the Qing dynasty. Described as "one of the best treatises on general medicine of modern times", it was a project sanctioned by the Qianlong Emperor and published by the Imperial Printing Office.
The text is divided into ninety juan or volumes: seventy-four volumes pertain to internal medicine, while the remaining sixteen concern general surgery.[4] More than a quarter of the text reproduces, with added commentary, two parts of an earlier work written by Zhang Zhongjing, the Shanghan zabing lun (Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Disorders);[5] Zhang's work is presented by the authors of the Yuzuan yizong jinjian as foundational to Chinese medical orthodoxy.[6]
It also contains what is "probably the largest ensemble of illustrations in a single Chinese medical text", with some 484 such depictions of the human body, ranging from images of children's hands to a "one-page array of 24 anuses".[7] Depictions of smallpox—a disease that was especially deadly to the ruling Manchurians—are particularly prominent and detailed.[8]
An initiative of the Qianlong Emperor that was announced on 17 December 1739,[9] the Yuzuan yizong jinjian was published in 1742 by the Imperial Printing Office,[2] which designated it as a national textbook.[10] The text had some eighty contributors, including thirty-nine members of the Imperial Academy of Medicine,[2] most of whom came from the Jiangnan region,[3] specifically the southern provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang.[11] Imperial Physicians[b] Wu Qian (吳謙) and Liu Yuduo (劉裕鐸) served as editors-in-chief,[12] under the supervision of Manchu official Ortai.[4]
The Yuzuan yizong jinjian has been noted for "its breadth, editorial accuracy, medical coverage, and use of mnemonic rhymes".[13] Moreover, it has "attained the status of a canonical medical classic which, even today, remains obligatory reading for scholars and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine."[14] K. Chimin Wong and Liande Wu, writing in the History of Chinese Medicine (1973), describe the text as "one of the best treatises on general medicine of modern times."[15]
