Zhang Zhongjing
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Zhang Zhongjing or Chang Chung Ching (Wades-Giles) (張仲景, 150 - 219) , also known as Zhang Ji (張機), was one of the most eminent Chinese physicians during the later years of the Eastern Han era. He lived in today's Nanyang in Henan Province. During his time, with warlords fighting for their own territories, many people were infected with febrile disease. Zhang's family was no exception. He learned medicine by studying from his townsfellow Zhang Bozu, assimilating from previous medicinal literature, and collecting many prescriptions elsewhere, finally writing the medical masterpiece Shanghan Zabing Lun. Unfortunately, shortly after its publication the book was lost during wartime. Due to Zhang's contribution to Traditional Chinese medicine he is often regarded as the sage of Chinese medicine.
Zhang's masterpiece was collected by later people and compiled into two books, namely the Shanghan Lun (in full, Shanghan Zabing Lun or "Treatise on Febrile Diseases") which was a discourse on how to treat epidemic infectious diseases causing fevers prevalent during his era, and the other, highly influential doctrine Jingui yaolue ("Synoptic Essentials from the Golden Cabinet"), a compendium of his clinical experiences. He established medication principles and summed up the medicinal experience up until the Han Dynasty, thus making a great contribution to the development of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
