Ancient text that inspired Tu

A medical text some 1,700 years old, Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies (Zhouhou Beiji Fang), has attracted the interest of amateurs of TCM as a result of Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou winning the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in October.

Nearly half a century ago, Tu discovered artemisinin and used it in the treatment of malaria. Her inspiration came from the ancient Chinese medical text.

The author, Ge Hong, was a Taoist scholar and a famous physician in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420). He introduced preventive medicine.

Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies has the earliest records of smallpox. It also documented many other infectious diseases.

China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 12/18/2015 page29)