Traditional Chinese Medicine Classics
2 min readTraditional Chinese Medicine Classics
Traditional Chinese Medicine has a long history，and in the Shang Dynasty the Chinese already knew how to make decoctions of medicinal plants for patients.The collection of the classics is vast，but a large part of these works was either destroyed or burnt every time the country had a dynastic change.In spite of the brutality of some generals and soldiers，the classic medical works were rewritten or re-codified and kept until today，among which some are very famous and important.
The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor
The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor is one of the earliest books found in the TCM corpus.It enunciates the systematic structure of the theoretical system of TCM andreflects the theoretical principles and academic thoughts associated with it.This theoretical system has formed the basis for the development of TCM since its establishment.Nearly allacademic thoughts of many well-known medical masters and medical schools appearing duringthe history of TCM have grown out of the theoretical system of The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor.
Many historians and physicians throughout Chinese history verified that the major contents of The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor had appeared in the Warring States Period and the other contents had been added during the Qin Dynasty and the Western Han Dynasty.
.This book was titled with the Yellow Emperor’s name in order to lead it to fame and authority.The academic divergence of thoughts in this book sufficiently indicates that it is neither a work of a single individual，nor medical achievement of a certain period or a local region，but rather the summarization of experiences of many medical practitioners over a long time.9 However，it received lavish attention from medical practitioners throughout Chinese history and was venerated as an ancestral work of physicians.
