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Shang Han Lun: On Cold Damage, Translation and Commentaries. Edited and translated by CRAIG MITCHELL, FENG YE, and NIGEL WISEMAN. Brookline, Mass.: Paradigm Publications, 1999. 746 pp. $79.95.
The collection of writings and commentaries here given the title Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) has a complex history. Thought to be based upon Wang Shuhe's (265-316) re-working of Zhang Zhongjing's (ca. 150-219) Shang Han Zabing Lun (the section on zabing, "miscellaneous illnesses," having been hived off separately), this translation is of a modern reconstruction according to clinical priorities, based on a Ming reprint of the Song version.
As the authors point out, since the main text of Shang Han Lun has a limited vocabulary and relatively simple grammar, it lends itself as a text for beginners reading classical medical Chinese. A parallel text in simplified Chinese characters is given, together with a full form reproduction of the Song version written in traditional characters in the appendices. Other appendices include a useful materia medica, a list of formulae and common medical terminology, as well as an elementary language study. The introduction sketches Zhang Zhong.jing's history, gives some background to Shang Han textual exegesis, and a retrospective systematization of diagnostic patterns.
Cold damage is identified broadly as illnesses contracted...