Sun Simiao

Sun Simiao the Chinese physician, alchemist and writer of the Tang dynasty (581-682), traditionally honoured as the King of Medicine, whose compendia of medical knowledge and ethical teaching shaped the practice of Chinese healing for more than a millennium. He lived, by tradition, to the extraordinary age of a hundred and one years.

Life and Legendary Longevity

Sun Simiao was born in 581 in Jingzhao, near the Tang capital Chang'an, in the year that saw the founding of the Sui dynasty. According to the histories he was a sickly child, and the expense and difficulty of curing his own illnesses turned him toward medicine at an early age. He resolved to master the healing art so that others need not suffer as he had, and he devoted the whole of a very long life to that aim.

He lived through the fall of the Sui, the rise of the Tang and the reigns of several Tang emperors, declining repeated offers of high office. Tradition holds that he refused the summons of at least three emperors, preferring the life of a scholar and physician to the honours of the court. He was said to have reached the age of a hundred and one, dying in 682, a longevity that became part of his legend.

Accounts of his life mingle history with legend. He is described as a recluse who studied the classics, the medical texts and the practices of longevity, and who wandered in the mountains gathering herbs and observing the methods of country healers. Whether or not every detail is reliable, the portrait that emerges is of an unusually learned and compassionate man whose authority rested on both knowledge and virtue.

Medical Compilations

His greatest work is the Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold, a vast compendium that gathered together the medical knowledge of his age. It covers a huge range of subjects, from internal medicine, surgery and gynaecology to acupuncture, drugs, diet and first aid, and it preserves many prescriptions that would otherwise have been lost. Its comprehensiveness made it a standard reference for centuries.

A supplement, the Supplement to the Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold, followed and extended the earlier work, adding remedies and observations drawn from further experience. In these pages Sun Simiao recorded treatments for deficiency diseases, for the illnesses of women and children, and for conditions of the eyes, the teeth and the skin, and he discussed the diagnosis of disorders by careful attention to the pulse and the complexion.

He gave particular attention to the care of women and children, insisting that childbirth and the diseases of childhood deserved the same serious study as the ailments of adults. He also wrote on the prevention of illness, on hygiene, on the proper use of food and on the regulation of sleep, exercise and emotion, anticipating ideas that later medicine would develop at length. His works were copied and reprinted for more than a thousand years.

Ethics and the Medical Vocation

Sun Simiao is as famous for his medical ethics as for his remedies. In a celebrated passage he set out the conduct proper to a physician, urging that the sick be treated with equal care whether rich or poor, noble or humble, friend or stranger, Chinese or foreign. No patient, he wrote, should be refused or slighted, and the physician should approach every case with a heart of compassion.

He compared the good physician to a parent caring for a beloved child, and he condemned the pursuit of wealth, reputation and pleasure by those who practised medicine. He advised physicians to be calm and free of vanity, to concentrate the mind on the patient, and to consider the suffering of the sick as their own. These precepts have been compared to the later oaths and codes of professional medicine elsewhere in the world.

He also insisted on the dignity of the physician's calling and on the need for constant study. A good doctor, he taught, must master the classical texts and the accumulated experience of the past, must observe carefully, and must be willing to acknowledge the limits of his knowledge. His ethical writings shaped the ideal of the physician in China and are still quoted in discussions of medical conduct.

Acupuncture, Drugs and Longevity Practices

Sun Simiao made important contributions to acupuncture and moxibustion. He prepared charts showing the location of the channels and points, and he helped to standardise the names and positions of the points at a time when different traditions disagreed on these matters. He also wrote on the techniques of inserting the needles and on the selection of points for particular illnesses, and he discussed the use of moxa for warming and strengthening the body.

In pharmacology he was a tireless collector of remedies. He recorded hundreds of medicinal substances, describing their properties, their preparation and their proper dosage, and he warned against the careless use of powerful drugs. He investigated the use of mineral and animal substances as well as plants, and he is associated with early work on the treatment of goitre using thyroid tissue and with remedies for night blindness, for which he prescribed the liver of animals.

He was also deeply interested in the practices of longevity and in alchemy, the search for substances that would preserve health and prolong life. He studied breathing exercises, diet and the cultivation of a calm mind, and he concerned himself with the preparation of elixirs, though he warned that many alchemical drugs were dangerous and that moderation and self-discipline were more reliable paths to long life. His medical and alchemical writings influenced later Taoist and medical traditions alike.

Influence and Legacy

Sun Simiao became one of the most venerated figures in the history of Chinese medicine. He was given the title King of Medicine, and images of him were placed in temples and pharmacies, where he was honoured by physicians and apothecaries as their patron. His works were studied by every serious practitioner, and his prescriptions were copied into later compendia down to the modern age.

His ethical teaching exercised an influence that extended well beyond medicine. The image of the compassionate physician who treats all patients equally became a moral ideal in Chinese letters, and his writings on the physician's duty were cited in the training of doctors for centuries. Modern scholars have compared his code to the traditions of medical ethics that developed in Greece and later in Europe.

He is remembered as a bridge between the medicine of the ancient classics and the systematic compilations of the imperial age, and as a writer who united technical knowledge with moral seriousness. His name is attached to hospitals, colleges and medical prizes, and his birthday is still celebrated by some practitioners. The King of Medicine remains a symbol of the union of learning, skill and compassion that he taught and lived.

See also

• Traditional Chinese medicine
• Acupuncture
• Materia medica
• Li Shizhen