Hua Tuo, a famous physician at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, was born in the area of present-day Bozhou, Anhui Province. He was knowledgeable at a young age, and local officials repeatedly recommended him as an official, but he did not agree, but devoted himself to the study of medicine and health.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, eunuchs came to power, political corruption, and warlord regimes in various places were divided, with Cao Cao, Yuan Shao and others being the most powerful, they all had their own army subordinates and their own fiefdoms, of which Cao Cao's power was the largest. Cao Cao, a historical figure, is very familiar to people who have seen the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and he is suspicious and has great military ability, but he has a serious headache, and he is dizzy and dizzy, and the pain is unbearable. When Cao Cao heard of Hua Tuo's fame, he sent someone to recruit him to see him specifically. Hua Tuo used decoction with the method of needle pricking, which greatly alleviated Cao Cao's condition, and Cao Cao was very happy and rewarded Hua Tuo with many things. However, Hua Tuo believes that if the disease is to be cured, surgery must be performed to remove the lesions in his brain. Cao Cao was very dismissive after hearing this, believing that this was the doctor's alarmist remarks, coupled with his own suspicious nature, he even more doubted whether Hua Tuo wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to harm himself, laying the groundwork for the later killing of Hua Tuo.
The reason why Hua Tuo proposed to perform surgery on Cao Cao was because he had already invented the famous "Ma Boiling Powder", which was equivalent to the anesthetic of modern surgery, and the invention of Ma Boiling Powder was undoubtedly a great miracle in the history of world medicine. According to the "Later Han Shu Hua Tuo Biography" record, if Hua Tuo encounters a disease born in the patient's body, when the treatment with acupuncture medicine does not work, he will first give the patient wine to take hemp boiling powder, and when the patient is drunk and has no consciousness, he will cut open his belly and abdomen, remove the lump in the body, and often get rid of the disease by hand. However, it is a pity that the formula of hemp boiling has long been lost, and later generations of doctors generally believe that it is composed of mandala flowers, grass wu, which have a calming and anesthetic effect, but now it is clinically unprofitable.
When Hua Tuo treats patients, he often surprises and wins, highlighting a "clever" word. Once, a county sheriff asked him to see a doctor, and Hua Tuo judged that there was bruises in the county sheriff's stomach based on his condition, and he had to be angry to be cured. Therefore, Hua Tuo deliberately spoke arrogantly, and asked the county sheriff for a lot of money, but dragged on not to treat him, and finally simply ran away, and also left a letter scolding the sheriff for being stupid. The sheriff was very angry and sent someone to chase him, because Hua Tuo had greeted the son of the sheriff in advance, so the son of the sheriff quietly told the soldiers not to chase, but only to report to the sheriff that no one could be found. The county guard was extremely angry, and in a fit of rage, he vomited out a few liters of black blood, and the illness was indeed cured.
Another time, huatuo road met a rogue surnamed Li, this scoundrel often ran rampant in the township, stealing chickens and dogs, Hua Tuo had long wanted to teach him a lesson. Coincidentally, this day the surname Li fell, flashed his waist and legs, the pain was unbearable, came to ask Hua Tuo for diagnosis and treatment, Hua Tuo said that the treatment was OK, but how to cure must listen to him, the rogue agreed. Therefore, Hua Tuo tied his hands and hung them on the tree, broke a mulberry branch, and began to beat him, the rogue cried out in pain and struggled desperately, attracting the neighbors around him to watch, and after half an hour, Hua Tuo put the rogue down, the rogue surnamed Li had to fight with Hua Tuo, Hua Tuo did not hurry to say, are your waist and legs all right? This scoundrel tried, sure enough, it didn't hurt, it turned out that the mulberry branch had the effect of relieving the muscles and activating the network, coupled with his desperate struggle before, the muscles that were originally cramped were stretched out, and the scoundrel was dumbfounded, so he had to thank him in a gray and slippery way. Hua Tuo not only cured the rogue's disease, but also gave the people a blow, and everyone praised it.
However, Hua Tuo's personality was straight and difficult to tame, he was tired of being Cao Cao's attendant, so he lied that his wife was ill and fled home, Cao Cao sent people to invite him many times, Hua Tuo used various reasons to refuse to prevaricate, and finally Cao Cao was angry, arrested him back to Xuchang (the capital at that time), and executed him in prison. Later, Cao Cao's head wind disease occurred many times, and each time when he was ill, he scolded Hua Tuo for not curing him, only when his most beloved young son Cao Chong fell ill, he regretted killing Hua Tuo, and as a result, the other doctors were helpless, and Cao Chong died of this disease. Ye Shi also has a saying that Hua Tuo foresaw that Cao Chong was going to have a very serious illness, so he left a bag of medicine for him in advance, but this matter was known to Cao Cao's second son Cao Pi, who had always been worried about Cao Cao's favor for Cao Chong, and was also jealous of Cao Chong's cleverness. According to legend, there were once foreign envoys who paid tribute to an elephant, but they offered to know the exact weight of the elephant, because there was no such a large scale, and the Manchu Dynasty was helpless. After Cao Chong heard about it, he confidently let people drive the elephant to the boat, make a mark on the side of the ship, and then catch the elephant ashore, and then load the ship with stones, so that the hull draft reached the position of the line, and used buoyancy conversion to solve the elephant's weight problem, which is the allusion of "Cao Chong called the elephant", and this story was also filmed into an animation.
Although Hua Tuo was killed, his superb medical skills have been circulated in the folk, and to this day, many medicines are still named after Hua Tuo, such as "Hua Tuo Reconstruction Pill" and so on. As mentioned earlier, In addition to Hua Tuo's study of medical techniques, he also has a lot of research on health maintenance, he proposed that the human body should exercise, but it must be appropriate, "improper to make the ear", excessive exercise is harmful to the body, which is still of guiding significance for modern sports medicine. He also invented the famous "Five Birds Play". Five Birds Is a fitness method that imitates the movements of five animals: tiger, deer, bear, ape, and crane. Inspired by the behavior of animals in nature, Hua Tuo choreographed the movements coherently, so that there was stillness in the movement and movement in the stillness, so as to achieve the purpose of strengthening the body. Shi Zaihuatuo's disciples insisted on practicing the Five Birds Play according to the master's instructions, and when they reached their nineties, they were still deaf and blind, and their bodies were healthy. According to reports, there are now a number of "Five Poultry Opera Associations" in China are actively promoting this movement, I believe that in the near future, Five Birds Opera will also become one of the fitness sports popularized by the whole people like Tai Chi, which may be the best memorial to the famous doctor Hua Tuo.