Chapter 17: A Wasted Treasure

“I see,” the middle-aged man said.

Pleased to find him listening, Zuo Shaoyang continued, “Yes! And it isn’t just Ephedra Decoction. Exterior-releasing medicines for externally contracted illnesses—Ephedra Decoction, Kudzu Decoction (Ge Gen Tang) and the rest—should be taken three times within half a day like this. If that still doesn’t work, have the prescription filled again and continue in the same way. You can even shorten the interval to an hour and a half, or an hour. Drink porridge after the medicine. Keep going until sweating begins, then stop.”

Understanding dawned on the man. He raised a thumb.

“Now that you’ve explained it, I see! I’ve lived half my life and taken more of these decoctions than I can count. Sometimes they worked; sometimes they didn’t. Perhaps I wasn’t taking them properly. I’ll follow your method from now on. Thank you!”

“Glad to help.”

Zuo Shaoyang handed him the packets.

“Watch your diet while you’re taking it. Avoid raw and cold food, sticky or slippery foods, rich meat and fish, anything hard to digest, and anything irritating.”

“Why?”

“Raw or cold food can injure defensive yang; irritating food can harm stomach qi. And if you eat something difficult to digest, the body has to divert some of its healthy qi from the surface to help with digestion. That weakens the force resisting pathogenic wind and interferes with releasing the exterior.

“Think of a country fighting off an invasion. If it mistreats its people and they rise in revolt, troops must be pulled away to put down the rebellion. That leaves fewer to fight the invaders. Same principle.”

The man laughed. “That’s a clear way to put it. I understand. How much altogether?”

“Eight wen.”

The man took out his purse, drew out a little string of ten copper coins and set it on the counter.

“Here. Keep the extra.”

“Thank you.”

“You deserve it. You took the trouble to explain things patiently and helped me understand so much. If I have another headache or fever, I’ll come here.”

“We’ll be happy to see you. Take care!”

Zuo Shaoyang accompanied him to the door and waved him off before coming back.

“Zhong,” his father said, “that long explanation sounded plausible enough. Where did you learn it?”

“From books. You keep telling me to read more, don’t you?”

“Books?” Zuo Gui looked doubtful. “You used to refuse to open a medical book however hard I pushed. Since when have you changed?”

Hearing what sounded like praise, Madam Liang came happily out of the bedroom.

“Our Zhong has always been a good boy. You pushed him so hard that he wouldn’t study in front of you. He’s been reading quietly on his own.”

“Reading is a good thing. No need to hide it from me.”

Zuo Gui studied his son.

“This ‘earlier is better’ business, and taking exterior-releasing decoctions three times in half a day—where did you read that?”

“The *Inner Canon* and the *Treatise on Cold Damage*.”

“The *Inner Canon*? The *Treatise on Cold Damage*?”

His father was more astonished than ever.

“We don’t own either! I’ve never read them myself. Where did you see them?”

Before the Tang, medical training passed from master to apprentice. There were no specialist medical schools. Students generally began with clinical practice: this symptom, that formula. Apart from the great physicians, many practitioners worked empirically. Of the four elements—theory, method, formula and medicine—their learning chiefly concerned the last two, with little attention to the first.

The reason lay largely in the limitations of papermaking and printing before the Tang. Medical works could not be reproduced and circulated on a large scale. Many physicians spent their entire careers without reading a specialist text such as the *Treatise on Cold Damage*. They practised from experience taught directly by their masters.

Zuo Gui was rather better placed than some. He had attended a private school for several years before learning medicine from his father, beginning directly with patients. His father had owned a few handwritten formula books and left them to him on his deathbed. He had used them to teach his own son, but Zuo Zhong disliked reading and had not even studied those few volumes.

Zuo Gui’s knowledge went little beyond them. He had never read either the *Inner Canon* or the *Treatise on Cold Damage*.

The *Inner Canon*, or *Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon*, ranked with the *Treatise on Cold Damage* among the four great classics of Chinese medicine. Compiled during the Warring States period, it laid the foundations of medical theory. Yet it contained only thirteen formulas. Its immediate clinical usefulness was consequently limited, and ordinary practitioners had little interest in copying it. It had not circulated widely.

The *Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases* dated to the Eastern Han. There had been neither printing nor papermaking in the Warring States period. Cai Lun’s invention of papermaking in the Eastern Han was still far from universal, while printing remained unrealised. Books continued to spread by handwritten copies, few in number and narrow in reach. Neither classic had enjoyed its present fame when it first appeared; admirers and copyists were correspondingly few.

Indeed, the *Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases* had disappeared for several decades after its completion. Wang Shuhe, serving as director of the imperial medical service under the Jin, used his position to search throughout the country. After immense effort, he recovered only the cold-damage sections and compiled them as the *Treatise on Cold Damage*. The material on miscellaneous diseases remained missing.

Not until the Song did a Hanlin scholar find it among heaps of worm-eaten bamboo slips. After further work, it became the *Essentials from the Golden Cabinet*: the miscellaneous-disease portion of the original text.

One book had become two.

Before the Tang, without printing, good medical works were rarely accessible to ordinary practitioners outside the court’s senior medical establishment. Woodblock printing appeared only in the early Tang, and movable type not until Emperor Renzong’s reign in the Song. The widespread circulation of medical books truly began in the Song.

So Zuo Gui had never read the *Treatise on Cold Damage*. Many famous formulas from it had reached the public through handwritten extracts, but the copyists often preserved the prescriptions without the accompanying discussions. Physicians knew which formula to use for certain symptoms without understanding why.

Zuo Shaoyang had studied medical history and understood his father’s surprise. He regretted speaking so readily. His eyes shifted, and he invented an explanation.

“A few months ago, I saw them in an old travelling doctor’s book. He was almost fainting with hunger, so I gave him some wild-vegetable buns. Afterwards he said fate had brought us together and took out a dirty old book. He let me read it for a day, but wouldn’t let me copy anything. There was a lot I couldn’t understand, so… this was what I remembered.”

His father’s eyes shone.

“Really? Where is this doctor?”

“Gone. I don’t know where.”

“And the book?”

“He took it with him. He only gave me the day. I wanted to get home, so I returned it when it grew dark.”

“You! Did you remember any formulas?”

“No. I only had half a day or so. I couldn’t remember much.”

“Think harder!”

“I really can’t!”

Zuo Gui stamped his foot.

“You fool! There isn’t a greater fool under heaven! Heaven sent you that opportunity. If you’d memorised the whole book—or persuaded him to give it to you—you could have become a physician famous throughout the land. Instead, you read for half a day, then went home because it was dark! Hopeless. Utterly hopeless!”

His fury was understandable. Physicians of the past guarded formula books and rarely shared them. Sun Simiao, the Medicine King of the Tang, had once lamented the way practitioners hid their manuscript copies of Zhang Zhongjing’s formulas: “The masters south of the river keep Zhongjing’s essential prescriptions secret and will not pass them on!”

That showed how difficult medical books were to obtain in the early Tang—let alone a treasure such as Zhang Zhongjing’s *Treatise on Cold Damage*.

Seeing Zuo Gui’s grizzled beard shaking as he sighed and stamped, Madam Liang came to soothe him.

“He’s still young. Remembering so much after only half a day is quite good…”

“What do you know?”

Zuo Gui beat his chest and turned on his son.

“Do you know what a single formula can sell for? Your grandfather—your medical grandmaster—once paid a physician a whole plough ox for a remedy for diarrhoea. A fine, sturdy ox! And a good life-saving formula can be impossible to buy at any price. That travelling doctor’s book must have contained any number of them. You ignored the formulas and remembered these useless directions for taking medicine instead!

“What a waste of a treasure!”

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