Preface
In the year 208 AD, on a night of torrential rain, in the death row of the northern part of Xuchang city, an old man with a thin frame and white beard handed a cloth bundle to the prison warden under the flickering oil lamp light. He whispered, “This can save lives.” The warden quietly tucked the bundle into his chest.
1700 years later, a traveler arrived at the Hua Tuo Temple in Pei County, Jiangsu. In front of the temple was a couplet:
“Physicians who cut open the abdomen, truly pioneers in the path of Qisheng, yet who knew a mediocre jailer would cause the precious book to be lost to flames. Scholars value their integrity, how could they serve by the side of a treacherous lord, only to be falsely accused by biased historians and slandered for millennia.”
This refers to the legendary physician Hua Tuo of the Three Kingdoms period, who compiled his life’s work, the “Qing Nang Jing”. On the night before his death, he entrusted it to the prison warden. Little did he know that the warden’s wife would burn it, causing the loss of this invaluable medical text, a tragedy that has been lamented ever since.
As time flows by and the world changes, this event has long been buried in the vast dust of history.
