bubble_chart Description This book is a forensic medicine work in five volumes, written by Song Ci of the Southern Song Dynasty. It was published in the seventh year of the Chunyou era (1247), and the Song Dynasty edition has been lost. The Yongle Encyclopedia of the Ming Dynasty once included this book, and the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries of the Qing Dynasty recompiled it into two volumes based on the encyclopedia edition.
The oldest extant version is the Yuan Dynasty edition of Song Tixing Xiyuan Jilu, housed in the Rare Books Room of Peking University Library. Sun Xingyan of the Qing Dynasty collated and published it in the twelfth year of the Jiaqing era (1807) based on the Yuan edition, titled Xiyuan Jilu, and included it in the Dainan Pavilion Collection. Later, it was included in the pocket edition Song Yuan Jianyan Sanlu by Wu in the seventeenth year of the Jiaqing era (1812). In 1937, the Commercial Press reprinted the Dainan Pavilion's imitation of the Yuan edition, compiling it into the initial series of the Collection of Collectanea. After liberation, there were reprints by the Legal Publishing House, Yang Fengkun's annotated translation, Luo Shirun and Tian Yimin's translation and interpretation, and Jia Jingtao's traditional Chinese character annotated edition. In 1981, American McKnight B.E. translated it into The Washing Away of Wrongs based on the Wuyuan reprint.
Xiyuan Jilu is the world's first extant systematic forensic medicine monograph, predating Europe's first systematic forensic medicine work, The Doctor's Report by Fortunato Fedele of Italy, published in 1598, by more than 350 years.
The main contents of the book include: Song Dynasty regulations on corpse examination; methods and precautions for corpse examination; postmortem phenomena; various types of mechanical asphyxiation deaths; blunt and sharp instrument injuries; ancient traffic accidents; deaths from high temperatures; poisoning; deaths from illness and sudden deaths; exhumation of corpses; and more, covering most of the central content of forensic pathology. Its main achievements include: the occurrence and distribution of livor mortis; the manifestations and influencing conditions of decomposition; the relationship between postmortem phenomena and the time since death; the discovery of childbirth in coffins; the classification of ligature marks in hanging; the characteristics and influencing conditions of hanging furrows; the characteristics of strangulation and its differentiation from suicide; the postmortem findings in drowning and deaths from foreign objects blocking the nose and mouth; the discovery of asphyxial rose teeth; the differentiation between ante-mortem and post-mortem fractures; the injury characteristics of various blade wounds; the differentiation between ante-mortem and post-mortem injuries and between suicide and homicide; the determination of fatal injuries; and the methods of on-site investigation in various death scenarios.
This book systematically summarizes the experience of external corpse examination, compiling the forensic corpse examination experience before Song Ci, and serves as a systematic guide to external corpse examination in forensic medicine. Its content spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and other countries, and until the end of the 19th century, it remained the basis for corpse examination in these countries.