History

During the golden age of his reign from 2696 to 2598 B.C., the Yellow Emperor is supposed by Chinese tradition to have composed his Neijing Suwen or Basic Questions of Internal Medicine, also known as the Huangdi Neijing. Modern scholarly opinion holds that the extant text of this title was compiled by an eponymous scholar between the Chou and Han dynasties more than two thousandyears later than tradition reports, although someparts of the extant work may have originated as early as 1000 B.C.

During the Han dynasty, Chang Chung-Ching, wrote a Treatise on Typhoid Fever, which contains the earliest known reference toNeijing Suwen. The Qin dynasty practitioner advocate acupuncture and moxibustion. During the Tang dynasty, Wang Ping, an official manager of emperor hospital, claimed to have located a copy of the originals of the Neijing Suwen, which he expanded and edited substantially. This work was revisited by an imperial commission during the 11th century AD.

Timeline of TCM

The history of TCM can be summarized by a list of important doctors and books.

• Time unknown, author unknown, Huang Di Nei Jing (Classic of Internal Medicine by EmperorHuang). The earliest classic of TCM passed on to the present.
• Warring States Period(5th century BC to 221 BC): Silk scrools recording channels and collaterals, Zu Bi Shi Yi Mai Jiu Jing ( Moxibustion Classic ofthe Eleven Channels of Legs and Arms), and Yin Yang Shi Yi Mai Jiu Jing (Moxibustion Classic on the Eleven Yin and YangChannels)
• Eastern Han Dynasty(206 BC–AD 220))to ThreeKingdoms Period (220 - 280 AD):
• Zhen Jiu Zhen Zhong Jing (Classic of Moxibustion and AcupuncturePreserved in a Pillow) by Hua Tuo
• Shang Han Za Bing Lun (Treatise on Febrile andMiscellaneous Diseases)by Zhang Zhongjing

• Jin Dynasty (265-420): Zhen Jiu Jia Yi Jing (Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) by Huang Fumi.

• Tang Dynasty((June 18, 618–June 4, 907))
• Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Fang (Emergency Formulas of a thousand gold worth) and Qian Jin Yi Fang (Supplement to the Formulas of a thousand gold worth)by Sun Simiao
• Wai Tai Mi Yao (Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library) byWang Tao

• Song Dynasty (960-1279.)
• Tong Ren Shu Xue Zhen Jiu Tu Jing (Illustrated Manual on the Point for Acupuncture and Moxibustion on the Bronze Figure) by Wang Weiyi.

• Yuan Dynasty(1271 to 1368): Shi Si Jing Fa Hui (Exposition of the Fourteen Channels) by Hua Shou

• Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644): Climax of acupuncture and Moxibustion. Many famous doctors and books. Only name a few:
• Zhen Jiu Da Quan (A Complete Collection of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) by Xu Feng
• Zhen Jiu Ju Ying Fa Hui (An Exemplary Collection of Acupuncture and Moxibustion and their Essentials) by Gao Wu
• Zhen Jiu Da Cheng (Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) by Yang Jizhou, a milestone book.
• Ben Cao Gang Mu (Compendium of Materia Medica)by Li Shizhen, the most complete and comprehensive herb book
• Qing Dynasty(1644-1912):
• Yi Zong Jin Jian (Golden Reference of the Medical Tradition) by Wu Quan, sponsored by the imperial.
• Zhen Jiu Feng Yuan (The Source of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) by Li Xuechuan

The tradition

As is the case with many other aspects of Chinese culture, the authorship of medical classics has been assigned to mythical personages and pushed back to times of remote antiquity.

In traditional thought, the beginning of healing art had been associated with Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor or Yellow Sovereign and the knowledge of pharmacology with Shennong, the Divine Husbandman; they hand down their wisdom in the Huangdi neijing or the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic and the Shennong bencao, the Materia Medica of the Divine Husbandry, respectively. Huangdi was the one who taught people the knowledgeof raising silk-worms, riding boats and carriages, also he was the one who invented writing, music and medicine. Chinese historical records date the reign period of Huangdi and, consequently, the Huangdi neijing to 2698 B.C., a time which by no meanscan be regarded historically reliable. The Huangdi neijing is one of the first, and undoubtedly the most important, classic in the history of Chinese medicine, which had an enormous influence on the medical thought in later centuries. The book records the dialogs between the Yellow Emperor and some of his sage physicians on medical issues; the emperor’s questions encompass every possible aspect of diagnostics, pathology, acupuncture, and moxibution, including both theory and practice, and the sage teachers givedetailed explanation on each topic.

Another important classic is the Nanjing, or Classic of Difficult Issues which is also referred to as Huangdi bashiyi nanjing, or the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Eighty-one Difficult Issues. According to the medical tradition starting from the Shiji (91 BC), this book is a work of Bien Que, a physician who is supposed to have flourished sometime between the sixth and third centuries B.C Later, the Nanjing was added to the Yellow Emperor tradition and was assigned to the Yellow Emperor himself. Until very recently, the Nanjing was thought to bea commentary to the Huangdi neijing, elaborating on certain obscure passages and issues from it. The difficult issues, however, despite their apparent similarity, cannot be found in the Huangdi neijing; in many cases they in fact do shed light on obscure parts of the Huangdi neijing, but this is due to the fact that the Nanjing explains medical theory and practice in a much more clear and lucid way than the Huangdi neijing.

Regardless of their high esteem in Chinese tradition, almost everything about these classics is uncertain, especially their authorship and date. "It must be taken for granted that our present versions of all importantmedical classics (including, of course, the Huangdi neijing) are vitiated by interpolations, lacunae, and corruptions ignored by Chinese commentators. The transmission of the principalmedical texts (including the Neijing) is submerged in utter darkness from theend of the Han well into the Sui period, that is, for a span of ten generations."

The homogeneous structure and content of the Nanjing confirms that it is not a collection of thoughts and ideas, as it is often the case with early texts in Chinese literature, but was written by one author and, therefore, belongs to one time period. Most of theWestern scholars date the book anywhere from the first to third century AD; in general, their calculations are based on the dating of the Shanghan lun, written by Zhang Ji (142-220 A.D.), which has been influenced by the Nanjing. As I mentionedabove, the Nanjing is also referred to as Huangdi bashiyi nanjing.? The Shiji quotes a book called Bashiyi nan fourteen times and all of the quotes can be identified in the present version of the Nanjing; therefore, we have a clear evidence that at the time of the compilation of the Shiji, i.e. around 90 B.C., the Nanjing was already extant. On the other hand, the Mawangdui texts, as I will attempt to prove below, demonstrate that the Nanjing was composed after the burial date (168 B.C.).

Unlike the Nanjing, the Huangdi neijing is a text that was put together over a span of several centuries by a number of individuals; one can finds esoteric and self-cultivating cosmology next to Confucian discussions on ethical considerations; there are highly rational and scientific arguments a few pages after appraisal of physiological alchemy; certainparts of the book may goback to pre-Qin times and other parts are from the Tang dynasty. There has been an extensive debate over the last few decades regarding the authorship and dating of this book, yet, to present day, no generally accepted and solidly based theory exists. Since it is a compilation, it is extremely hard to label it with a particular date. The title first appears in the "Yiwenzhi" chapter of the Hanshu, among the bibliography of medical classics. Of course, there is no way of knowing, whether that title referred to the same content and, similarly, other titles could have included parts of the present text. The name Huangdi neijingis generally prefixed to the titles of four books, Suwen, Lingshu, Taisu, and Mingtang. We do not have a Han copy of any of the texts and all of the extant texts have undergone further editing and revision after the Han. There are also two other texts, the Jiayijing (256 – 282 A.D.) and the Maijing which werestrongly influenced by the original version of the text. This shows that the Huangdi neijing was already present at least during the Latter Han, however, it is very hard to establish to what extent was this original text damaged by later revisions. A detailed analysis of the various time layers in the Huangdi neijing and the dating of these text fragments is a task far beyond the scope of this paper.

Before the Nanjing and Huangdi neijing, we do not see comprehensive works on medical theory; there are only practical manuals and reference books, entirely focusing on the practical applications of treatment. Even the Nanjing follows this tradition, closely concentrating on medical questions. The Huangdi neijing is probably the first medical book which aims to interweave medical experience with the wider cosmogonic ideology into a coherent system.

Medical theory has always been traced back to the Nanjing and Huangdi neijing which served as an absolute standard for all works after the Han; this kind of continuous authority, produced as a result of the well-known traditionalism of Chinese scholarship, resulted in an unusually homogenous and coherent conceptual structure. On this part of the world, just like in other ancient societies, the idea of evolution worked seemingly backwards, the original settings were the best and ever since the times of antiquity everything has been deteriorating. While in the modern, “scientific” West it is customary to think that the newer a thing is the better, in traditional Chinese thought this appears to be just the opposite; a new thing could be justified and accepted if one could prove that it has been already mentioned and thought of in ancient times.

As a result of this traditionalistic approach, medicine in China has been regarded as a body of knowledge which has undergone very little, if any, changes through the span of history. This conservative attitude was largely shaken by the archeological discovery of medical documents dating back to early Han or pre-Han times.

Traditional Chinese medicine has been practically unknown in the West until very recently. The pioneers in this subject were the Jesuit missionaries traveling and living in China starting from the 17th century; this was also the time when Western medicine was introduced to China for the first time. In later centuries, as political and cultural connections between East and West grew stronger and became more frequent, most aspects of Chinese culture, including traditional medicine and pharmacology, came to be an object of increasing curiosity in the Western world.

Despite the growing interest, even in our times, and despite the fact that the major works of ancient European medical science have been translated into Western languages with dependable philological and medical annotations, the ancient Chinese medical writings, with a very few exceptions, are still not available in any of the main European languages. Thus the range of specialists who could make serious and reliable researchin comparing medical systems of different cultures, when it comes to Chinese medicine, is limited to those few people who are able to read the original texts.