Makers › Physician / Medical Master
Wu Jutong
Qing physician from Huaiyin whose Systematic Differentiation of Warm Diseases divides them by the upper, middle and lower burners and gives the Yinqiao and Sangju formulas
In a dispensary, a tall wooden cabinet of many small drawers stands behind a stone mortar and pestle, with herbs hanging from the beams; a copper scale, a clay pot on a small lit stove and baskets of leaves sit in front, and one person with a basket walks in the herb garden.
Also known as Ming Tang · Zi Peiheng · Hao Jutong
Wu Jutong, personal name Tang, courtesy name Peiheng, came from Huaiyin in Jiangsu. According to the preface to his main work, his father died of illness when Wu was nineteen, and in remorse at knowing no medicine he abandoned the examinations to study medical books. In 1783 he went to Beijing to work as a copyist checking the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, where he read Wu Youxing's Treatise on Pestilence and studied Ye Gui's case records. During the epidemic in the capital in 1793 he saved dozens of gravely ill patients, and he then wrote his Systematic Differentiation of Warm Diseases (Wenbing tiaobian), which traces warm diseases through the upper, middle and lower burners and includes the Sangju and Yinqiao formulas; it was printed in 1813. He later wrote a book on doctors' errors, and his pupils collected his case records. The Draft History of Qing (Qingshi gao) says he built his theory of warm diseases on Ye Gui's cases.
Life and times
Dates 1758 CE–1836 CE