Makers › Physician / Medical Master
Zhang Xichun
Physician from Yanshan who argued for combining Western drugs with Chinese medicine in his Records of Heart-Felt Experiences and founded the Lida hospital in Mukden
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 Zi Shoufu
Zhang Xichun, courtesy name Shoufu, came from a scholarly family in Yanshan, Hebei; after failing the provincial examination twice he devoted himself to medicine while also reading translated Western medical works. In the early Republic he served as a military doctor, and in 1918 he was invited to Mukden to found the Lida hospital of Chinese medicine, which he directed. From 1918 his essays and case records appeared in instalments as Records of Heart-Felt Experiences in Medicine with Reference to the West (Yixue zhongzhong canxi lu), arguing that Chinese medical theory should remain the basis while drawing on Western physiology and drugs; one of its formulas pairs gypsum with aspirin. In later years he practised in Tianjin, where in 1930 he opened a correspondence school of Chinese medicine. He died in Tianjin in 1933, and further parts of his book were issued after his death and later gathered into a single edition.
Life and times
Dates 1860 CE–1933 CE