New Acupuncture Blog with a nod to Zhang Zhongjing and the Shan Hun Lun

Oct 1, 2012 by admin

Hi Everyone!

At last, I am becoming a blogger. Thanks to my newly redesigned website. I will try to not to labor you with my personal musings or what I ate for breakfast. Instead, I intend to have the blog entries related to Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture and sometimes useful and interesting information related to other aspects of acupuncture, East Asian Medicine, naturopathy, health and wellness. I am always researching for my teaching and writing and will share some of the gems that I have found. I will also have the blog help keep you up to date on what is new in the field and in my own work. Soon, i will  integrate this blog on to my Facebook and Twitter postings. It remains to be seen how frequent the posts will be or how quickly I will be able to respond with an intense work and travel schedule, but then again, I imagine you don’t time to read endless blogging either.

Your feedback is welcome!

People have been asking me about some of the images i have included on my website which i may address in future posts. I have searched for many years to find images that appealed to me and obviously appeal to others especially acupuncture practitioners. While trying to find images relevant to the specific pages on the website, many called for artistic license for relevance. For example, have you seen a historical image from China or Japan of a blog or a shopping cart?

This particular blog post image is of Zhang Zhongjing, the renowned Chinese herbal medicine doctor from the Han Dynasty who is sometimes referred to as the “Sage of Chinese Medicine”. I would speculate that if he were alive in this modern day, we would be following his wisdom on a blog, through Linked In, Twitter, etc. Looks to me like he could reading a blog..

Zhang Zhongjing, also written as Chang Chung Ching, is said to have lived approximately from  150-219 AD. Very little is known about his actual life. His legacy mostly stems from his book, Shanghan Zabing Lun translated as, “Treatise on Cold Pathogenic and Miscellaneous Diseases“. Later this was divided into  Jin Gui Yao Lue and the Shang Han Lun. The Shang Han Lun (literally, “On Cold Damage”) is probably known to all acupuncture and especially Chinese herbal practitioners as a foundational text for herbal prescribing with over 100 formulas, many of which are typically prescribed to this day. Furthermore, his text created a basis from which Chinese herbal medicine has since been explained, analyzed, and reformed. Fevers were often very dangerous and even lethal in his lifetime; and his family was not immune to them, perhaps inspiring him to write his medical masterpiece on epidemic and infectious diseases. Zhang Zhongjing is credited as having founded the Cold Damage or Cold Disease School of Chinese Medicine. He is sometimes described as a “doctor for the people”.

Perhaps not as well known, the Jin Gui Yao Lue contains herbal formulas still in wide use, such as the Tang-kuei and Peony Formula (Dang Gui Shaoyao San) for gynecological conditions (pregnancy disorders, infertility, etc.)

Fortunately, his works were not lost for all time though they were said to be lost during the  period of the Three Kingdoms due to wars that were then ravaging China. Through the efforts of the Chinese medicine physician, Wang Shu-He of the Jing Dynasty, and certain court physicians of the Song Dynasty, the Shang Han Lun survived to guide us in herbal prescribing ever since.