Source: China Traditional Chinese Medicine News
Author: Zhen Xueyan, Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine
In the long process of historical development, the ancestors of the Chinese nation created a splendid medical culture and medical technology, which made the development of Chinese medicine fruitful. A big country heavy weapon, a gentleman's fake. The same is true of the development of traditional Chinese medicine from ancient times to the present, and many medical instruments are direct physical evidence of the glorious achievements of chinese medicine. Zhen Xueyan, an expert in medical history literature at Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, selected several representative excavated TCM "heavy instruments" to write articles on appreciation and popularization of science, taking us through time and space to appreciate the beauty of ancient medical instruments.
[Gold and silver needle]
The ancients were a sharp tool for relieving pain
As one of the unique treatment methods of TCM, acupuncture has won a place for TCM in the world medical community. Acupuncture in China has a history of thousands of years, as early as the Neolithic Age, people have created more delicate stones and bone needles, the Shang Zhou Period appeared jade needles. With the development of smelting technology, bronze, gold, silver and other metal needles have appeared one after another. Among them, the tombs of Liu Sheng, the King of Zhongshan in the Western Han Dynasty, and Queen Dou Xuan have unearthed 9 gold and silver medical needles, which is the earliest ancient metal medical needle seen in China.
Among the 9 needles, there are 4 gold needles, which are well preserved, about 6.55 to 6.9 cm long, and 5 silver needles, with damage, and the length of the cripple is about 5.4 to 5.8 cm. The needle handle of the gold and silver medical needles are square cylinders, which are slightly thicker than the needle body, and the needle body has different forms such as pointed, blunt, round, and three edges. According to China's earliest medical work "Yellow Emperor Neijing", the metal needles at that time were called "nine needles" according to the shape and function, and the size, shape and function of each needle were summarized in the book, which were round needles, iron needles, needles, sharp needles, beryllium needles, round sharp needles, long needles, milline needles, and large needles. The needle is triangular and is used for bloodletting. The beryllium needle is shaped like a sword and has blades on both sides, which are used to pierce the carbuncle. The needle is the size of a millet, slightly blunt, and is used to tap acupuncture points. Round needles are used to massage muscles, similar to the action of a massager. The thinnest are millineeres, similar to the conventional needles used today. The needles excavated from Liu Sheng's tomb are considered to be part of the needles such as needles and sharp needles in the ancient Nine Needles, which are the true reflections of medical needles in the Western Han Dynasty.
[Acupuncture Copper Man]
A mannequin of ancient acupuncture teachings
On January 18, 2017, President Xi Jinping presented the Chinese acupuncture bronze figure sculpture to the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and the acupuncture bronze figure once again attracted the world's attention as a postcard of Chinese acupuncture to the world.
In 1027 AD, Wang Wang, the medical officer of the Hanlin Medical Official's Hospital of the Northern Song Dynasty, designed and presided over the casting of two acupuncture bronze figures, known as the "Tiansheng Acupuncture Copper Man", which is the earliest acupuncture copper man in Chinese history. The two bronze figures are hollow, and the body surface is marked with 354 acupuncture points, all of which are chiseled into small holes. Whenever the medical office conducts an acupuncture examination, the examiner will inject mercury into the copper body, and then coat the copper body surface with yellow wax to completely cover the meridian acupuncture points. Once the test taker accurately hits the acupuncture point, mercury will flow out of the acupuncture point. Medical history books refer to this peculiar phenomenon as "needles in and out of mercury." The emergence of the Tiansheng acupuncture copper man not only created a precedent for the teaching of acupuncture as a mannequin, but also a symbol of the ancient Chinese acupuncture culture, and since then, copper people have appeared in successive generations.
In the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor rewarded the meritorious people who compiled the "Golden Book of Medicine" and ordered craftsmen to cast a group of small acupuncture bronze people and award them. This group of bronze people is the image of an old woman, solid, the palm of the right arm is forward, the palm of the left arm is backward, and there are 580 meridians and acupoints on the surface of the body. The bronze man was placed in a book-shaped brocade box with a yellow silk cover, and there was writing on the door leaf on the left and right sides of the box, which detailed the origin of the copper man. On the back wall of the box are also the positions and names of the ministers who participated in the compilation of the book, and on both sides are the scarlet jade seals of the Qianlong Emperor. This batch of bronze figures has been handed down to this day, and only this one remains, which is preserved in the Shanghai Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
[Hernia tray]
A surgical tool for the treatment of hernias
In 1974, a Ming Dynasty tomb was discovered in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province. In the tomb, there is a "conical silver wire hood" between the thigh bone and the pelvic bone of the man, and the hood mouth faces the pelvic bone. The hood is 11.5 cm long, the mouth diameter is 11.5 cm, and the net weight is 51.4 g. Based on the shape and placement of the "conical silver wire cover", experts speculate that the owner of the tomb should have suffered from small intestinal hernia before his death. Due to local peritoneal weakness or defects, organs in the abdominal cavity protrude through the abdominal wall defect to the surface of the body to form a abdominal wall mass, or fall into the scrotum. The owner of the tomb should have used this conical silver wire cover to support the testicles that were swollen due to small intestinal hernias.
This "hernia tray" works on the same principle as the hernia belt worn by modern patients. First tie a belt at the waist, and then tie two straps at the mouth of the silver wire cover to hang on the belt at the waist to support the testicles and achieve the purpose of tightly lifting auxiliary treatment. Due to the sparse mesh, it does not have to be taken off when urinating, and there is no impact when walking. And the silver wire is soft in nature, with the characteristics of strong, durable and not easy to rust. It may also be used with a soft cloth on the inside of the upper part of the tray to avoid squeezing the testicles.
During the Jin Yuan Period, the famous physician Zhang Congzheng once recorded in the "Confucian Affairs" that an instrument specially used to treat hernias was called "hook plutonium". The "conical silver wire cover" is the "hook and plutonium" recorded in ancient medical books, and it is real.
[Eye smoker]
A good helper for drug washing and treatment of eye diseases
The Tang Dynasty poet Bai Ju was prone to eye diseases, and he once wrote a poem: "The case is full of dragon tree theory, and the cassia pills are stored in the box; the prescription medicine in the world should be useless, and the golden grate should be tried to scratch it." The Nagarjuna treatise mentioned in the poem is an ophthalmic monograph, and Bai Juyi looks at ophthalmology medical books, takes cassia pills to heal, and considers treating eye diseases through surgery to scrape the eye barrier with a golden grate. It can be seen that the operation of treating cataracts with "golden needle disfigurement" already existed in the Tang Dynasty.
In addition to surgery, ophthalmology should also be cleaned and treated with external medications. The Capital Museum has a Jin Dynasty porcelain eyewash cup with an oval arc on the upper edge of the cup, and the curvature coincides with the human orbit for cleaning eye diseases. The Palace Museum preserves an exquisite smoker from the Qing Dynasty Tai Hospital, which consists of a silver smoking pot and a mahogany smoker. The smoker is 8 cm high, 6.5 cm in diameter, 9.5 cm in diameter, 24 cm high in the smoker, and the lower part is a concave semicircle that coincides with the mouth of the pot. When using, the liquid medicine is poured into a silver medicine jar, slowly heated and then connected to the wooden catheter, the patient will be close to the mouth of the catheter, and the medicinal gas will be smoked through the smoke tube upwards to cure the eye disease. Drug steam fumigation is one of the unique external treatment methods of Chinese medicine, and can often achieve good results.
[Pulse pillow]
An essential object for TCM to put the pulse
Chinese medicine pays attention to "looking, hearing and cutting", first looking at the patient's look and form, second smelling its breath sound, then asking about its pain, and finally combining pulse diagnosis to clarify the diagnosis. Pulse is a symbol that reflects the changes in the qi and blood of the internal organs, and pulse diagnosis is not only a symbol of Chinese medicine, but also a manifestation of the depth of Chinese medicine to a certain extent.
The pulse pillow is the "small pillow" that is cushioned under the patient's wrist during the diagnosis of chinese medicine. The medical pulse pillow is mainly used to support the wrist and is much smaller than the size of the sleeping pillow. Porcelain vein pillows appeared around the Sui Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, the pillow shape was small, and the three-colored pulse pillow was mostly. In the Song Dynasty, due to the wide firing of kilns in the north and south, the types and shapes of the pulse pillows gradually diversified, including rectangular, waist-shaped, cloud-headed, petal-shaped, oval-shaped, silver ingot-shaped, and even baby, fuhu and other shapes. A porcelain vein pillow excavated from Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, is 14 cm long, 9.5 cm wide and 9 cm high. The pillow surface is oval in shape, decorated with a reishi motif, and the whole body is glazed with blue glaze and glaze color. The beast symbolizes warding off evil spirits, and the lingzhi symbolizes longevity, which is in line with the purpose of medical treatment.
[Pestle]
A vessel essential for the processing of traditional Chinese medicine
"Pestles" and "mortars" were originally striking agricultural tools, processing tools used to scoop up food crops. In the "Zhou Yi ZhiXia", there is a saying that "broken wood is a pestle, and digging the ground is a mortar". As early as the Yao Shun period, people broke wooden sticks as pestles, and cut out small pits on the ground as mortars, that is, ground mortars and wooden pestles.
With the development of the pestle-mortar system, at least since the Han Dynasty, it has been used in the field of medicine to play the role of processing drugs. Because some of the medicinal materials are hard, they need to be mashed and ground in order to facilitate the entry of the medicine. Zhang Zhongjing of the Eastern Han Dynasty mentioned when recording the preparation method of Wumei Pill: "... Nausushin, with two thousand pestles. In Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases", there are also many places that require the practice of "pounding it with a pestle" to make powders and other dosage forms. At present, it is found that the main types of pestles used for pounding medicine are stone pestle mortar, copper and iron pestle mortar, pottery wood pestle mortar and so on. The shape of the pestle is generally cylindrical, and the shape of the mortar is more diverse, including cup shape, bowl shape, round and so on.
Shandong Juye once unearthed a set of Western Han copper pestles. The pestle is rod-shaped, the mortar is cylindrical, the molar is about 13.6 cm high, and the molar diameter is about 15 cm. Pills and a little powder were also found in the copper bowl next to the copper pestle. As a simple pharmaceutical tool, medicinal mortars and pestles can still be seen in pharmacies.
[Fire Tank]
The crystallization of the wisdom of external treatment of Traditional Chinese medicine
Cupping is a commonly used therapy in China's folk, and it was called "horn method" in the early days. "Horns" refers to the horns of beasts, mainly bull horns. The Early Western Han Dynasty's "Fifty-Two Sick Prescriptions" recorded the process of treating external hemorrhoids with animal horns. During treatment, a hole is drilled in the top of the horn, the lower mouth of the horn is buckled at the site to be sucked, and then the hole at the top of the horn is sucked with the mouth to pull out the hemorrhoid nucleus, and then the hemorrhoid nucleus is tied with a thread and the hemorrhoid nucleus is cut with a knife. Therefore, the horn method was originally a method of using the horns of the beast to create suction power to discharge pus and blood. With the development of clay firing technology, various forms, specifications and sizes of clay pots are becoming more and more abundant, and there are more convenient bamboo pots, which have also developed into boiling water or medicinal water to form negative pressure in the use of boiling water or medicinal water, and at the same time play the dual role of suction and external treatment of drugs. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, people began to use the fire throwing method, eliminating the inconvenience of boiling, and the "fire pot" officially appeared. As applications became more widespread, many cellar owners began firing clay or porcelain jars specifically for cupping. At the same time, the role of cupping therapy has gradually expanded to dredge meridians, circulate qi and blood, activate blood and dissolve stasis.
[Orthopedic appliances]
An aid in the reduction of bone injuries in ancient times
The development of TCM orthopedics has a long history. The Eastern Jin Dynasty physician Ge Hong first recorded the method of fixing fractures with bamboo plates in the "Saving The Party after the Elbow", thus creating a history of external fixation by the department of orthopedics and traumatology of Traditional Chinese medicine using instruments. Developed to the Qing Dynasty, various orthopedic fixation instruments became more and more abundant, and the usage became more and more mature.
Ancient orthopedic appliances are generally made of local materials, including wooden planks, bark (fir bark, mulberry bark, yellow cedar bark, etc.), willow branches, bamboo, cowhide, cloth, silk, hemp and so on. According to different functions, it is divided into shawls, through wood, waist column, knee hugging, etc., to correspond to different fracture sites. The shawl is made of a piece of cooked cowhide about five inches long and three inches wide, with two holes at each end, worn with cotton rope, and bound to the wound. Cowhide is softer than wooden planks and is especially suitable for shoulder and back injuries. The lumbar column is to fix the waist, treat lumbar misalignment or sprain rickets, etc., according to the condition of the affected area, with four fir trees about one inch wide and five points thick, side holes, with rope tandem, tied to fix the waist. Knee hugging, also known as knee hugging ring, is mainly used for knee joint injuries and patella fracture fixation. Make a circle slightly larger than the knee with a bamboo piece, and then use four bamboo pieces to tie the circle with twine, like "four feet", wrap the white cloth strips around the bamboo circle and the four feet, and then use the white cloth broadband to firmly fix the knees.
Correct and effective fixation can not only maintain the effect of fracture reduction, but also have the effect of assisting reduction. These ancient orthopedic instruments also have important inspiration for the development of modern Orthopedic instruments of traditional Chinese medicine.
Editor: Dong Juntong
Review: Zhu Fengzheng
Capital TCM ID:
bjtcm010
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