Text: Old Werther (author original authorization)
The famous physician group of the Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty, the most famous is the "Three Divine Doctors of Jian'an": Hua Tuo, Zhang Ji (or Zhang Jie) and Dong Feng. Among the three, the one who left the most writing was Zhang Ji (Zhang Zhongjing), who was once the Taishou of Changsha, who probably lived with Hua Tuo, and may have died before and after the Battle of Chibi, so what was the life of this famous doctor?
Because Zhang Zhongjing's works are scattered too much, and he does not have many social celebrities in contact, there is no record of this person in Chen Shou's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and Fan Ye's "Book of the Later Han". His life can only be found in a variety of scattered sources.
Zhang Ji, the character Zhongjing, was often referred to by later generations as his epithet. He was a native of Neiyang, Nanyang (present-day Yongdong Town, Dengzhou, Henan). His family, which is a large family in Nanyang County, is likely to be related to Zhang Heng, a famous predecessor. However, due to the scatteredness of his works, the most famous of which was "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases", which was sorted out by Wang Shuhe, a Tai physician of the Jin Dynasty, and the book "On Typhoid Fever" was formed, and Wang Su, Lin Yi, Sun Qi and others of the Song Dynasty compiled the fragments of the "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases" they found into the "Outline of the Golden Plateau". In addition, his writings are all scattered. The Tang Dynasty Gan Bozong mentioned in the "Record of Famous Doctors" that Zhang Zhongjing's master was Zhang Bozu of the same county as him, and his master may be the elder of his clan. However, the turmoil since the princes beg Dong had also killed most of the people in his clan, and Zhang Zhongjing himself sadly stated in the preface to the Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases: "The Yu clan is multiply, xiang Yu two hundred, since the Jian'an Chronicle, it has not been ten years, and its death has been two out of three, and typhoid fever is seven out of ten." What he called "typhoid fever" was actually a collective name for a series of febrile infectious diseases, in fact, such diseases, long before the full-scale turmoil at the end of the Han Dynasty, had already made the people miserable. Its original source is probably due to the two Han Dynasties fighting with nomadic peoples such as the Xiongnu and Qiang people for many years, and the introduction of infectious diseases such as plague from the steppe areas. This type of plague was the most harmful in various prefectures and counties in Hebei, and also triggered the prevalence of the half-witch and half-doctor Taiping Road, which led to the Yellow Turban Army rebellion of the three Zhangjiao brothers. And Zhang Zhongjing's hometown of Nanyang County, since the princes begged Dong dong to the Battle of Chibi, has been fighting endlessly, the people have been displaced, naturally everyone will also be due to insufficient nutritional intake or overwork and cause physical resistance decline, so Zhang Zhongjing's clan, in less than ten years, due to the epidemic "typhoid fever" more than half of the population.
When Zhang Zhongjing was young, he also came into contact with He Hao, who had fled back to his hometown of Nanyang County because of the "disaster of the party", and this celebrity later conspired with Wang Yun to assassinate Dong Zhuo. At that time, the elders predicted that he would become a famous doctor in the future, and probably, at that time, Zhang Zhongjing was interested in and understood the art of medicine.
In the early days of Jian'an, Zhang Zhongjing also came into contact with a famous patient, that is, Wang Cang, one of Liu Biao's "Seven Sons of Jian'an" who fled to Jingzhou and followed Liu Biao. At that time, Wang Cang was only in his 20s, and Zhang Zhongjing saw that he was ill, and said that Wang Cang would lose his eyebrows after he was 40 years old, and he would die in half a year. He was also prescribed a pair of medicines, "Five Stone Soup" for him to take. This "five-stone soup" contains five poisons from the ore, namely dansha (mercury sulfide), xionghuang (tetrasulfide tetraarsenic), bai zhen (iron sulfide), Zeng Qing (copper sulfate), and Cishi (natural magnet, that is, ferric oxide). Unexpectedly, Wang Yue accepted this medicine, but refused to take it, and after three days, Zhang Zhongjing had to see Wang Yue again and asked him if he had taken the medicine, and Wang Yue replied that he had taken it. Zhang Zhongjing saw that Wang Yue's face was not right, and asked Wang Yue why he despised his own life. Wang Cang did not answer. In the next twenty years, Wang Cang's illness was as Zhang Zhongjing had said earlier, and the disease that led to Wang Yue's death was probably due to the old disease inherent in his body, but later in the year when he died of illness, a great plague occurred in Yicheng, the stronghold of Cao Cao's clique, and Xu Gan, Chen Lin, Ying Yue, and Liu Zhen of the "Seven Sons of Jian'an" all died in the plague.
Zhang Zhongjing's most praised deed in later generations is that when he was serving as a Taishou in Changsha, he personally sat in the lobby of the Taishou Mansion to practice medicine. However, when he will serve in Changsha County is also a big question. Because Changsha County at that time, in the whole of Jingzhou, was a relatively remote county, most of the residents of the county were "barbarians" in the mountains, and many of them did not obey the rule of the imperial court, not to mention Liu Biao's division of princes. At the same time, the Sun brothers in the east are also eyeing this place, which is really not a peaceful place. Therefore, some people in the Qing Dynasty suspected that during the Battle of Guandu, Zhang Xian, a Changsha Taishou Nanyang man who was lobbied by Huan Jie to lead the rebellion of Liu Biao in the three counties of Changsha, Lingling, and Guiyang, was Zhang Ji Zhang Zhongjing. However, when Zhang Xian rebelled, it was still the fifth year of Jian'an, although it was in line with the description of "since the Jian'an Era, it was not yet ten years", but there was still a gap in time, in addition, Zhang Xian had already died of illness during the rebellion against Liu Biao, and Changsha supported his son Zhang Yi as a taishou, but soon he was also defeated by Liu Biao and killed. Therefore, this Zhang Xian and his son Zhang Yi probably will not be Zhang Ji Zhang Zhongjingqi, but it is possible that they are all his people.
Zhang Zhongjing became the Taishou of Changsha, probably after this turmoil. Or, it is possible that Zhang Zhongjing had only been active in Changsha for a long time, and later people felt that the local people also needed celebrities, so they made up his brain as Changsha Taishou. After all, Zhang Zhongjing's appointment as the Taishou of Changsha first appeared in the "Records of Famous Doctors" made by Gan Bozong in the Tang Dynasty, which was a long time away from the Three Kingdoms, and I was afraid that the reliability of the records was not as good as the records left over from the two Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties. If he had really served as the Taishou of Changsha, I am afraid that it was also before Han Xuan that he was replaced by Han Xuan, and I am afraid that it was also because Liu Biao saw that he was fine and practiced medical treatment, and he lacked defense against the threat of force of the Sun clique. Or perhaps before and after the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao felt that Han Xuan was more obedient, so he let Han Xuan take his place. If Zhang Zhongjing was still alive at the Battle of Chibi, he probably did not follow Wang Yue to the north, but may have followed Liu Bei. His final outcome may be to follow Liu Bei into Shuzhong, or to die at the hands of Lü Mengjun when Guan Yu lost Jingzhou. In addition, compared with Hua Tuo, Zhang Zhongjing's disciples were also much fewer, and only one of them, Wei Feng (or Wei Xun), was famous.
Zhang Zhongjing's life deeds are a confused account, and his works are too half-lost. However, judging from his works, his "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases" is the first classic in the history of Chinese medicine that has the principle, law, prescription and medicine, and Yu Jiayan called this book:"The ancestor of the many parties and the ancestors of the group". In terms of actual content, this book also combines the ideas of the two schools of medicine (practical operation school) and the jingfang school (empirical medicine school). After the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Zhongjing was enshrined as a "medical saint", and even in his hometown of Nanyang, there was a temple offering incense, which showed the degree of respect.