The Dangers of ‘Warming and Replenishing’ (wenbu 溫補): A Discussion on Safety and Effectiveness in The Context of Ming-Qing (Epistemic) Change

During the 17th-18th centuries, Chinese scholarly medicine echoed the epistemic shift from ‘Song learning’ (songxue 宋學) towards ‘Han learning’ (hanxue 漢學) and ‘evidential research’ (kaozheng 考證). Xu Dachun 徐大椿 (1693-1771), an important Han learning doctor, fiercely attacked 'warming and replenishing' (wenbu 溫補) medicine, which was popular throughout Jiangnan. Xu considered, this style of medicine, of which Zhao Xianke's 趙獻可 (16th-17th C.) Yiguan 醫貫 (1617?) was exemplary, to be utterly dangerous, for it propagated a simplistic use of a limited number of formulas based on shallow cosmological principles. Yet, safe and effective medical treatment was the main preoccupation in Yiguan, as well.

In this article, I first discuss Zhao Xianke’s objections against the prevalent cooling therapies of Zhu Zhenheng 朱震亨 (1282-1358). Legitimising wenbu alternatives, Zhao referred to cosmological principles, which were implicitly understood by Zhang Ji 長機 in the Han dynasty. In the second section, I show why Xu Dachun considered this medicine invalid. Xu pleaded for a return to the correct reading of the Han medical classics. Formulas should be administered after clearly distinguishing illnesses and their manifestations, as was discussed in Zhang Ji’s texts. In the final section, I elaborate on Xu Dachun's epistemic virtue, contextualised in the political aftermath of the Ming-Qing transition. Zooming in on Zhao and Xu's divergent discourses on safety and effectiveness, I expose some of the complex interactions shaping medical knowledge in late imperial China.