introduction
You can't talk about TCM without mentioning acupuncture. The Book of Bian Que's Heart records: "The use of moxibustion for medical treatment, such as cooking vegetables requires salary, and today's people cannot cure serious diseases. There are more than a hundred kinds of serious diseases in the world, without moxibustion and elixir, how to save lives and get sick back? "It shows that our ancestors used acupuncture point stimulation methods for a long time to treat various incurable diseases.
01
Acupuncture methods have always been a great test for doctors, just the various acupuncture points of the human body are magnificent and complex, and we must consider the diseases and knots of patients to be able to inject the right needles. So in order to learn the art of acupuncture, ancient doctors created the "acupuncture copper man." According to research, the earliest acupuncture copper man came from the fifth year of the Song Dynasty (1027), when the study of acupuncture techniques was entirely based on medical books circulated in previous lives, but some of these medical books were full of errors and omissions, some were incomplete, which was very easy to cause misleading, light qi and blood were not smooth, heavy was paralyzing and dead.
▲Needles for acupuncture in Traditional Chinese medicine
In order to change this situation, Song Renzong ordered Wang Wei, an acupuncture expert at Tai Hospital, to preside over the construction of two acupuncture copper men. One was placed in the imperial palace for Song Renzong's appreciation, and one was placed in the Taiyi Pavilion for people to study and use. According to historical records, the size of the bronze man is no different from that of a real person, naked, equipped with five internal organs, and the internal organs of the limbs can be removed. There are also three hundred and fifty-four acupuncture points engraved on the outside of the bronze man, and the names of each acupuncture point are marked with gold characters next to each acupuncture point.
▲Portrait of Song Renzong
It is said that the copper body is also injected with water, the acupuncture points are sealed with yellow wax, and the acupuncture points are inserted with a needle, if the insertion is correct, the water inside will flow out, and if it is wrong, the needle will not pierce it. This bronze figure became an important prop to test the technical ability of acupuncture doctors at that time, which greatly improved the students' medical ability and had to admire the wisdom of the ancients. These two bronze figures have also been regarded as heirlooms in the medical field and have been passed down from generation to generation for people to learn.
However, unfortunately, because China has been in war for a long time, these two bronze bodies have also been lost with the war. It was not until modern times that news came out that one of the "acupuncture bronze men" was lost in a museum in Japan.
02
In 1952, an old Chinese medicine doctor was invited to Japan to attend a medical expo conference and stumbled upon an acupuncture bronze man on display. According to the old man's description, this bronze man is an ancient copper man model flowing out of China. In order to find out whether this copper man is the "Heavenly Saint Copper Man" of the Northern Song Dynasty, a Chinese medicine doctor named Chen Cunren conducted a detailed investigation of the copper man in the Japanese Museum more than thirty years later. After returning to China, Chen Cunren pointed out in an article that the Japanese acupuncture copper man is the "Heavenly Saint Copper Man" who has been lost for many years. ”
▲Chinese medicine to see the pulse
Chen Cunren's article set off a huge wave in the Chinese medical community, and for a time countless medical experts talked about whether this copper man was a real "Heavenly Sacred Copper Man", and if so, how did such a national treasure get to Japan? In order to make more rigorous judgments, in 1979, the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine formed a team of experts to study in Japan, but the purpose of their trip was to investigate the bronze people in Japanese museums.
▲ Acupuncture copper man
After arriving in Japan, the experts rushed to the Japanese Museum. Through the description of the appearance of the copper man in the Qi Dongye Language, they found that the copper man here is very similar to the copper man described in the Qi Dongye Language. So they took out Wang's only "Copper Man Diagram Sutra" and compared the acupuncture points on the copper man's body one by one, and found that most of the acupuncture point positions and acupuncture methods recorded in the book were almost the same. From this, experts deduce that the bronze figure in the Japanese museum is the earliest copper man in China, the "Tiansheng Copper Man". So, how did the Celestial Bronze Man spread to Japan?
03
According to the inference of Mr. Ma Jixing, a well-known medical historian, in the first year of the Northern Song Dynasty Jingkang (1126 AD), the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed, and the Jin people snatched the acupuncture copper man after entering the city, in the 16th century, the bronze man was once again lost in Korea, and decades later Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched the Korean War, and the bronze statue also came to Japan with the army across the ocean.
▲Night view of Tokyo, Japan
However, with the in-depth investigation of the Japanese acupuncture copper man, the experts found a series of doubts, making the identity of the copper man once again confusing. First of all, the bronze man's left hand posed a palm backwards, and the middle finger of the thumb was buckled into a ring, and the experts immediately recognized that this was the "middle finger same body" in Chinese medicine. However, the saying that "the middle finger is the same body" first appeared in the Ming Dynasty, and was proposed by Xu Feng, a great physician of the Ming Dynasty.
Another is that this bronze man has eleven more acupuncture points than the bronze man recorded in the Qi DongYe Language. And experts believe that "Qi Dong Ye Yu" is a wild history after all, lacking authenticity, but some people still firmly believe that this copper man is the Heavenly Saint Copper Man, so a large number of domestic experts quarreled endlessly about the identity of the copper man.
It was not until 1962 that experts understood that the Japanese copper man was not a "copper man" based on various data research, and responded: this is an acupuncture copper man made by the Japanese themselves in the Edo period. The mystery of the Celestial Bronze Man was solved, and people were proud that the Chinese art of acupuncture had spread to Japan, and at the same time they were sad about the national treasures and cultural relics that had been lost.
epilogue
The development of Chinese medicine has gone through thousands of years, many of which have long been lost and disappeared in the long river of history, and today's medical scientists can only rely on going through ancient books and using modern means to find the hidden treasures in Chinese medicine. We hope that Chinese medicine can once again shine a brilliant light in the history of world medicine and provide immortal credit for the development of mankind.
Resources:
Bian Que Heart Book
Qi DongYe Language
The Bronze Man Sutra