Hua Tuo 華佗

Hua Tuo, courtesy name Yuanhua, was a native of Qiao County in Pei State, also known by the name Fu. He traveled to study in the region of Xu and became versed in several classics. Chen Gui, Chancellor of Pei, recommended him as Filial and Incorrupt and the Grand Commandant Huang Wan summoned him, but he took up neither. He understood the arts of nurturing life, and although people of the time thought he was nearly a hundred years old, his face still looked like that of a man in his prime. Records, Wei 29 §2

He was expert in prescriptions and drugs; his decoctions used only a few ingredients, and he gauged the doses without weighing them on a scale. When he applied moxibustion it was seven or eight cones at one or two points, and when he used acupuncture it was likewise at no more than one or two points. When a disease was knotted inside where needles and drugs could not reach, he had the patient drink mafeisan, and when the patient lay as if drunk or dead, aware of nothing, he cut open the abdomen and removed the diseased part. If the disease was in the intestines, he cut and washed the intestines, sewed up the abdomen and applied ointment; it healed in four or five days, and within a month the patient was fully recovered. Records, Wei 29 §2–4

Chen Shou recorded many cases in which Hua Tuo's diagnoses proved right. When the wife of a former Chancellor of Ganling had abdominal pain six months into her pregnancy, he took her pulse, said the fetus was already dead, and had it expelled with a decoction. To the clerks Ni Xun and Li Yan, who suffered from the same symptoms, he said, 'Ni Xun is replete on the outside and Li Yan is replete on the inside,' gave one a purgative and made the other sweat, and the next morning both were up. He told Yan Xin of Yandu that an acute illness showed in his face and that he should not drink much wine; on his way home Yan Xin fell from his carriage and died that night. Records, Wei 29 §5 · 7–8

Seeing on the road a sick man whose throat was so blocked that he could not swallow food, he had him drink three sheng of minced garlic and strong vinegar from a cake seller's shop, and the man vomited up a snake; on the north wall of Hua Tuo's house dozens of such snakes were hanging. Believing that a certain Administrator would recover if he flew into a great rage, he took his goods without treating him and left with a letter abusing him; the Administrator's fury reached its height, and he vomited several sheng of black blood and recovered. Records, Wei 29 §14–15

When Chen Deng, Administrator of Guangling, felt oppressed in his chest, flushed in the face and unable to eat, Hua Tuo said that from eating raw food several sheng of worms had formed in his stomach, and had him take two sheng of a decoction, whereupon he vomited about three sheng of worms, half of whose bodies were raw fish slices. Hua Tuo said that the disease would recur in three years and that he could be saved only if he found a good physician; when the time came and the disease recurred, Hua Tuo was not at hand, and Chen Deng died as he had said. Records, Wei 29 §17

Taizu (Cao Cao) heard of him and summoned him, and Hua Tuo was always at his side. Taizu suffered from a head-wind ailment, and at every attack his mind grew confused and his eyes dizzy, but when Hua Tuo needled him at the diaphragm he recovered as soon as the needle went in. Hua Tuo, however, had originally been a scholar, and he always regretted in his heart that he had come to make his living by medicine. Records, Wei 29 §18 · 21

Later, when Taizu took personal charge of affairs, his illness grew grave and he had Hua Tuo attend to him exclusively, and Hua Tuo said, 'This illness is hard to cure at once, but with constant treatment your years can be prolonged.' Having been away from home a long time, Hua Tuo said he had received a letter from home and went back for a while, and once home he repeatedly asked for extensions on the pretext of his wife's illness and did not return. Taizu summoned him by letter many times and ordered the commanderies and counties to send him, but Hua Tuo, relying on his skill and disliking serving others, still did not set out. Records, Wei 29 §21–22

Taizu flew into a great rage and sent men to investigate, ordering that if the wife really was ill, forty hu of small beans should be granted and the deadline extended, but that if it was a lie, he should be arrested and sent. Hua Tuo was then handed over to the prison at Xu, interrogated, and confessed his crime. Xun Yu pleaded, 'Hua Tuo's skill is truly excellent and men's lives depend on him; he should be leniently pardoned,' but Taizu said, 'Will the world lack rats of this kind?' and in the end had Hua Tuo tortured to death. Records, Wei 29 §22

Facing death, Hua Tuo gave a volume of writings to the jailer, saying it could save lives, but when the jailer, fearing the law, would not accept it, he did not press him, asked for fire and burned it. Even after Hua Tuo's death Taizu's head-wind ailment was not cured, and Taizu said that Hua Tuo had nurtured his illness to raise his own worth, and that even had he not killed him, Hua Tuo would never have cut out its root for him. Later, when his beloved son Cangshu fell critically ill, Taizu lamented, 'I regret having killed Hua Tuo.' Cangshu was the courtesy name of Cao Chong, who died of illness in the 13th year of Jian'an (208) at the age of thirteen. Records, Wei 29 §23Records, Wei 20 §9 · 12

The army clerk Li Cheng had once been cured by Hua Tuo of an illness in which he coughed up pus and blood, and had received a powder to take when it recurred eighteen years later. He lent the medicine, however, to a relative suffering from the same illness, and when he went to Qiao County to ask for more, it happened to be just when Hua Tuo had been arrested, so he could not ask. When the illness recurred eighteen years later, Li Cheng had no medicine to take and died. Records, Wei 29 §24–25

Wu Pu of Guangling and Fan A of Pengcheng studied under Hua Tuo. Hua Tuo taught Wu Pu that the body should be moved and worked but not to the point of exhaustion, and taught him the Five Animals Exercise, modeled on the tiger, deer, bear, monkey and bird; practicing it, Wu Pu still had sharp ears and eyes and sound teeth past the age of ninety. Fan A, skilled in acupuncture, cured illnesses by needling deep into the back and chest, which other physicians avoided, and by taking the lacquer-leaf and qingnian powder he had received from Hua Tuo he lived past a hundred. Records, Wei 29 §26–29

In his assessment in the Biographies of Technicians, Chen Shou called Hua Tuo's medicine and diagnosis, together with Du Kui's music, Zhu Jianping's physiognomy, Zhou Xuan's dream interpretation and Guan Lu's divination, subtle and singular skills and extraordinary arts, and said that he recorded them here to bring wondrous things to light, just as Sima Qian had written the biographies of Bian Que and Canggong. Records, Wei 29 §86