作者：罗希文
出版社：中国中医药出版社
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PREFACE
Huangdi Neijing(Neijing),the Canon of Medicine of the Yellow Emperor,magnum opus of traditional Chinese medicine,is a great treasure bestowed on us by our ancestors living some 2000 years ago. It is almost impossible to really discuss such a greatwork within such a length.But itmay serve as a useful introduction to Neijing to those who are interested in thework but do not knowthe Chinese language. In other words,this dissertation aims at telling the readers what a book HuangdiNeijing is and what it is talking about.Therefore,it is entitled Introductory Study of Huangdi Neijing.After reading this Introductory Study,the reader is given an overall viewof this classic.Then naturally,the reader is prepared to dig into Neijing to search for valuable ideas and useful information from this ancient work for the sake of modern people.My translation of the first 22 chapters of Suwen[plain Questions,one of the two parts of Neijing, the other part is Lingshu(Miraculous),each consisting 81 chapters] will proceed the Introductory Study to become the first(and perhaps the most important)partof Neijing.The text is translated in full from the original text accompanied by detailed notes collected from famous scholars and annotators in history and at present.
The translation is based on Gu Congde′s edition photo-offset by the People′s Medical Publishing House,Beijing.Lu o Xi we n,Ph.Datt he Chi nese Academy of Social SciencesBei jing,China2008Part OneIntroduction
Yellow Emperor:Iheard that there were a kind of SpiritualMen in remote antiquity who could manipulate the Heaven and the Earth, master the Yin and Yang,breathe the Vital Essence and maintain their Spirit with their body.Such people could live as long as the Heaven and the Earth.This is a longevity resulting from practice of the Tao.In medieval times,Men of Cultivation with high morality and self cultivation to the Tao,harmonized the mselves with Yin and Yang,followed the change of the four seasons,got rid of all mundane affairs,so that they could accumulate their Vital Essence and preserve their Spirit,stroll leisurely in the world and amuse the mselves by observing and hearing happenings far and wide.And that was the way they preserved their health and maintained their vitality.In adoration to the Tao,they are only next to the Spiritual Men.And then there are the Sages.They live in accord with the harmony of Heaven and Earth,in obedience to the eight winds. They restrict their addictions and followed the mundane customs, always keeping their minds from anger and hatred.They had no intention to imitate others in their behavior and refrained from toils and hard labor.They contented the mselves with ease and nothingness and preferred self cultivation to any accomplishment.Thus,they could maintain their body and spirit sound and full all the time.Such people could well live to their full span.And then there are the Men of Virtue.They followed the change of the Heaven and the Earth, pursued the movement of the sun and the moon,observed the stars, harmonized the mselves with the Yin and Yang and regulated their behaviors according to the change of the four seasons.In this way, they followed the ancient people in their endeavor to livewith the Tao and prolonged their life span to the utmost.*
The above quotation is a passage in Chapter 1 of Suwen.Theway the Spiritual Men,the Sages,the Men of Cultivation and the Men of Virtue had lived was understood by the authors of Neijing as ideal life and the mundane people should all follow.There seems to be some truth in it.
*Itmight be difficult to understand the original text without notes.Please refer to the notes in the translation that corresponds to the quotation in this Introductory Study.
The art of healing,one of the most important and long-lasting arts in the world,is an art cherished by all people,professional and non-professional,an art with the largest followers and amateurs,an art that none of us can do without and an art that has seen a persistent and continuous development and amelioration in the whole process of human′s recorded history of several thousand years.The world medicine,or the modern medicine,is consisted of medical progresses from all countries.In the eyes of the Western people, mainstream of the world medicine lies in the development of medical tradition originated from ancient Greece and updated in Europe after the industrial revolution,and the furthering of the science relies on the technical and scientific improvement the world is achieving.This is only partially true to the past,the present and future.Oriental medicine,especially Chinese medicine,originated 5 000 years ago, has been making tremendous contributions to the health of one fourth of the world′s population and ismaking even greater contributions to the one billion people here and will exert further contributions to the people all over the world.This is no exaggeration.
The world outside of China(and to a lesser extent Japan,Korea and some Southeast Asian countries)knows little about traditional Chinese medicine.Although international medical circles have recently begun to pay attention to traditional Chinese medicine,theirknowledge of it is not yet adequate to understand its actual theoretical system.There are even such cases as when a Western scholar stated, "Traditional Chinese pathology is also dependent on the theory of the Yin and Yang,this led to an elaborate classification of diseases in which most of the types listed are without any scientific foundation." (Encyclopedia Britannica,15th edition,page 825)This kind of statement is largely due to an ignorance of traditional Chinese medicine.The reason why Napoleon so cherished the book Military Strategy and Tactics of Sunzi(Sunzi Bingfa)was that he had read it after its translation into a Western language and thus was able to appreciate the quintessence of the treatise.The same is true in the case of works of literature,philosophy,and history.But Chinese medical works have not,as a rule,been translated into Western languages systematically.As a result,many Western commentaries are based on a scanty knowledge of Chinese medicine.
Western medicine is a kind of experimental medicine based on scientific research. With the help of modern medical equipment and instrument,various indexes can be easily observed.Thus it is an easily accessible subject.Traditional Chinese medicine,however,is a science based on the conception of the organism as a whole.Its principal theoretical foundation,the Yin and Yang,the Five Elements,Viscera and Bowels,Channels and Collaterals,diagnosis and therapy,and diagnosis and treatment based on overall analysis of symptoms and signs are characterized by dialectical thinking.Over a long period of time an integrated theoretical system has resulted from the gradual accumulation of experience and has thus earned the attention of the world.
Einstein′s theory is a newdevelopment to Newtonian theory which essentially means observing the world from a different angle.The application of Einstein′s theory has done no harm to Newtonian theory,but rather has further developed the science of physics.Such will also be the case with Chinese medicine and Western medicine. The worldwide study and application of traditional Chinese medicine is sure to open up a newera in the development of modernmedicine.
Traditional Chinese medicine is still newto the world beyond China.As a general rule,man can not appreciate the full significance of a subjectunless he understands its actual implications.According to some Western scholars,Chinesemedical treatment has three points of interest:the materia medica(pharmacopia),moxibustion and acupuncture(Encyclopedia Britannica,15th edition,page 825).But they do not know,the three spheres they are interested all have their theoretical background.It is strange that if they are"without any scientific foundation",howcan they be used as a powerfulweapon in man′s struggle against various diseases in the past thousands of years.
In recent years,the study of"outer Vital Energy"of QiGong,a type of traditional Chinese breathing exercises,usingmodern scientific means has revealed the actual existence of"Vital Energy"(Qi). This has cleared up an issue that had remained controversial during the previous thousand years. With the deepening of similar studies on the basic elements of Chinese medicine,more andmore"mysterious" conceptswill be verified.
Joseph Needham,in his work Science and Civilization China, said that one of the early missionaries working in China, hypothesized that the Chinese theory of the activity of Vital Energy might have spread to Europe and influenced the formation of the ether theory by Descartes.Although this is only conjectural,it is still likely that China′s understanding of such sciences predates that of Europe.
It is difficult for Western learners to understand the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements of traditional Chinese medicine.This was also true when Newton,Galileo,Copernicus,Hegel,Marx, and Einstein introduced their theories.Fortunately,their theories have been put into practice and thus contributed to human progress. The theory of traditional Chinese medicine is sure to be accepted by the scientific world,for the several thousand year history of its application is an advantage that none of the above theories could have had.
We are happy to point out that Western scholars have,to a certain extent,realized the importance of accepting Chinese medicine as a part of the world medicine.One of the m says:"Is it possible to consider ancient Chinese medicine as a real science?This is a troublesome question.To the moderns,indeed,there seems nothing scientific about it.On the contrary,it is covered with a prehistoric mystic patina,and sometimes appears to be scarcely comprehensible. Nevertheless,when one is aware of its great therapeutic efficacy, one can not deny its value."(T.Nakayama as quoted by Ilza Veith in her Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen,University of California Press, 1949,page 2.)
In the Forward written by Dr.Joseph Needham for my translation of Shanghan Lun(Treatise on Febrile Diseases Caused by Cold,NewWorld Press,Beijing,1986),it states:
"Nevertheless,one understands perfectly well that for two thousand years ormore,Chinese physicians,whose clinical insights were truly profound,used these concepts as a trelliswork on which to hang their ideas about diseases.The fact that the terminology and the concepts are really mediaeval,whereas the concepts of modern-Western medicine are essentially scientific,does not mean that we cannot look forward to an oecumenical medicine of the future,whichI think will embody all the clinical insights as well as the techniques characteristic of Chinese and Japanese medicine,while remaining firm ly based on modern biological science.For example,medicine could becomemuch more organic or holistic than it is,and it could avoid active principles too powerful acting by the mselves;it could use non-isolated active principles,such as those in the prescriptions which Zhang Zhongjing(Chang Chung-Ching)gave in his book. Thus there are many ways in which traditional-Chinese medicine could fuse with modern-Western medicine.
Iam quite sure thatwe should never talk about′westernmedicine′and′Chinese medicine′—because there was also a traditionalmedicine in the West,the medicine of antiquity and the Middle Ages.But modern-Western medicine is based on modern science,and it came into being only after the Scientific Revolution at the time of Galileo when,as some have said,the most effective method of discovery was itself discovered.modern-Western medicine is not ethnically bound as antique Western,medieval Western,traditional Chinese, traditional Indian,or traditional Tibetan are ethnic-bound.The Scientific Revolution,the mathe matization of hypotheses about Nature,combined with relentless experimentation,hasmademodern science absolutely international.So we never talk about Western medicine,as opposed to Chinese medicine,but rather of modern-Western medicine,as opposed to traditional-Chinese."
To facilitate our understanding,it is necessary to recallbriefly to the historical development of both Western and Chinese medicines.
Western medicine is said to commence from the time of Asclepiuswho lived about 1 200 BC and is said to have performed many miracles of healing.In the 5th century BC,Empedocles set forth the viewthat the universe is composed of four elements—fire,air,earth and water;this conception led to the doctrine of the four bodily humors:blood,phlegm,choler,or yellowbile,and melancholy,or black bile.The maintenance of health was held to depend upon the harmony of the four humors.Then the greatmedical work Hippocratic Collection,or the Corpus Hippocraticum,came into being in the 5th century BC.Hippocrates,father of the Western medicine,once said,"Our natures are the physicians of our diseases",and that this tendency to natural cure should be fostered; he laid much stress on diet and the use of fewdrugs;he viewed diseases with the eye of the naturalist and studied the entire patient in his environment.Galen followed Hippocratic method and accepted the doctrine of the humors.He also laid stress on the value of anatomy,and he virtually founded experimental physiology.
In 1628,publication of William Harvey′s De Motu Cordia(An Anatomical Experiment Concerning theMovement of the Heart And Blood in Animals)marked a newera of medicine and the commencement of experimentalmethod.
If we compare the medicine from Hippocrates to Galen with the Chinese medicine at the same period,we may find many parallels. But newdevelopment in Western medicine after the 17th century has been so swift and effective that had actually brought Hippocrates-Galen medicine out of practical value.But this is not true to the Chinese medicine.
Chinese medicine,originated from the legendary clan leader Fu Xi(2953BC)period(an Asclepius period),established its theoretical system during the late years of the Warring States period to Chin and Han dynasties(475 BC-AD 220).The theoretical system explored in the earliest-extant Huangdi Neijing remains the mainstay of Chinese medicine up to this day.
Why should the Chinese medicine and ancient Greek medicine undergo so different a road in their development?Similar to Greek medicine,a lot of details as included in the Chinese medical theory are lacking the demonstration of modern science.In a number of theoretical analysis,Chinese medicine is using a lot of assumptions and conjectures instead of using scientific analytical methods to support its inference.Such being the case,howis it possible that the doctors and practitioners of Chinese medicine are still applying the ancient theory in their practice and are achieving satisfactory therapeutic effects?The key in the question is the coherence of medical theory with the clinical practice since its very beginning up to the present day.Numerous talented scholars and doctors in history dedicated their energy and lives to the development of Chinese medicine and have furthered the science in the course of long historical period and proved a lot of details by using their rich clinical experiences as well as dialectical reasoning.The dialectical methodology of Chinese medicine is no longer in its primitive stage of simplicity and spontaneity but has reached a stage of development based on systematic,conscious and scientific studies.To bring the theoretical system of Chinese medicine up to date so as to suit the medical need of a time has been a tradition in all historical periods in China and the process has never ceased.This is also true to this day.
It is interesting to point out the fact that in the past 2 000 years, theoretical system as embraced in Neijing had been taken as the ground of study repeatedly with each time the emergence of a better system compared to the former one.The process does not seem to cease now. Treatises and books devoted to the study of medical classics,with Neijing as the magnum opus,keep on pouring.It is no wonder that Neijing and a number of medical classics are still used among Chinesemedical scholars and students as their text books.More and more scholars from the world are joining their Chinese partners in the study of the medical classics.One of the Western forerunners in this field, Dr.Ilza Veith commented Neijing in the following way:
"This repository of Chinese classicalmedical theory and practice still remains influential.It embodies the experience of an old and great people in wrestling with the problems of mortal ills and the preservation of human health.It indicates the closest possible integration between moral and physical conduct,and is therefore an early adumbration of the relationship between mental and physical states of health.As the basis of all subsequent medical writing in China and Japan,it affected the destinies of the peoples in a large part of the oriental world for thousands of years.
If the history of Huangdi Neijing is to be compared with that of the Corpus Hippocraticum,which originated at about the same time, a curious and somewhat contradictory development may be noted. The works of the Greek tradition were composed to serve as textbooks for the practitioner,yet the practical value of their contents was superseded centuries ago.Apart from their significance for the medical historian,the value of theseworks has for centuries consisted in creating from the Western physician the moral and ethical concept of the ideal physician.On the other hand,it should be evident from the preceding discussion that China′s earliest book concerned with the art of healing was nevermeant to be a mere text-book of medicine, but rather a treatise on the philosophy of health and disease;and yet it was taken over by the physician,not simply as a guide towards an ideal of life,but as a help for the actual practice of medicine."(Ilza Veith:HUANG TI NEI CHING SU WEN,University of California Press,1949,page 76.)1 The Value of Huangdi Neijing
Among the extant ancientmedical literatures,the following can be considered the"classics"of Chinese medicine:
Huangdi Neijing(Canon of medicine of the yellowemperor);
The Classic on Eighty-one Difficulties of the yellowemperor (Huangdi Bashiyi Nanjing);
Shennong′s Herbal,The Great Herbal(Shennong Bencaojing);
Treatise on Febrile Diseases Caused by Cold(Shanghan Lun);
Synopsis of Prescriptions of the Golden Chamber(Jinkui Yaolue Fanglun);
Classic on Viscera(Zhong Zang Jing);
The Pulse Classic(Maijing);
Acupuncture Classic Jiayijing of the Yellow Emperor(Jiayijing);
Canon of medicine of the yellowemperor Annotated by Yang Shangshan(Huangdi Neijing Taisu);
All the classics,with the exception of Shennong′s Herbal,are related to Huangdi Neijing,whether it be a research or an elaboration of Neijing.From this,we can clearly see the importance of Neijing.
Neijing,magnum opus of Chinese medicine,has been taken by scholars of all time as the origin and source of Chinese medicine.But the sphere Neijing deals with is not confined with medicine only.In its exploration of the theoretical system concerning the art of healing, it absorbed the then important achievements of a number of subjects including astronomy,calendar and mathe matics,meteorology, biology,geography,anthropology,psychology,logic,philosophy,etc.This,on one hand,reflects the inexact classification of scientific studies at that time,buton the other hand,italso reflects the richness Neijing embraces.It is a colossal scientific literature radiating great splendor in the history of science and civilization not only in China but also in the world.
Aswe all know,in the analysis and understanding of human body and diseases,Chinese medicine has a number of unique diagnostic and therapeutic methods and practice with no parallels in Western medicine.The theoretical system of Chinese medicine,composed of theories of orbisconography(Visceral Manifestation),Channels and Collaterals,pathology,diagnosis,diagnosis and treatment based on overall analysis of symptoms and signs and acupuncture,has been basically established in the course of the writing of Neijing.It is surprising to find out thatmany medical principles,physiological and pathological phenomena and therapeutics as explored in Neijing,a book written 2 000 years ago,are still active in directing our clinical practice and research,and some of the m yet cannot be well explained by modern science,including Western medicine.The universally acknowledged acupuncture anaesthesia is a newpush in worldmedicine developed on the basis of serious study of the acupuncture and Channels and Collaterals theory of Neijing.More and more newdiscoveries will be made on such studies.Prolongation of life (longevity),Qi Gong(breathing exercises),meteoropathology, environmental medicine,biochronometry,bionics,treatment based on an organic conception of the human body and phytotherapy are only a fewexamples of promising future that may be developed in the course of study of Neijing.Onemay argue that in the development of science and technology,mankind is ever making progress in all spheres.So science and technology today must be on a higher footingthan that in the past.Theoretically this is not wrong.But it is inadequate.We must also realize that in the repository left by our ancestors,there always exists some elements that are valuable for today′s use.Such elements,owing to certain historical situations and obstacles,had not developed the mselves sufficiently to drawthe attention of scholars.They may just be the things we are lacking. Neijing is just such a treasure house deserving our attention.
Another factor thatmakes Neijing more precious and valuable is due to the fact that it is the only earliest extant classic.According to Hanshu(Historical Records of the Han),there existed seven classics of Chinese medicine in ancient times.They are:
Huangdi Neijing,18 volumes;
Supplement to Huangdi Neijing,37 volumes;
Canon of Medicine of Bianque,9 volumes;
Supplement to Canon of Medicine of Bianque,12 volumes;
Bai′s Canon of Medicine,38 volumes;
Supplement to Bai′s Canon of Medicine,36 volumes;
Appendix to Bai′s Canon of Medicine,25 volumes.
But all of the m,except Neijing,went extinct.
Huangdi Neijing,18 volumes,asmentioned in Hanshu,is the earliest record of the title.But in most of later literatures,it had been treated as two separate books:
Huangdi Neijing,Suwen;
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