Qian Yi

Also known as Zi Zhongyang

Qian Yi, courtesy name Zhongyang, descended from a collateral branch of the Wuyue royal house that had moved north to Yunzhou. The History of the Song (Songshi) says his father went off to sea when Qian was three and never returned; raised by an aunt, he learned medicine from her husband and first became known in Shandong for a book on infants' ailments. In the Yuanfeng reign he cured a daughter of the senior princess and was given a post in the Hanlin medical service; the following year, when a prince of the blood suffered convulsions, his yellow-earth decoction cured the boy, and Emperor Shenzong received him and made him assistant director of the imperial medical office. He did not keep rigidly to old formulas, treated his own crippling arthritis in later life, and died at eighty-two after retiring home. His pupil Yan Jizhong edited his writings as Key to Medicines and Patterns of Children's Diseases (Xiao'er yaozheng zhijue), whose rehmannia pill later became the familiar Liuwei dihuang wan.