Who was LI SHIZHEN? #2

Scholar Worthy of Emulation #1

Although these itinerant doctors were often popular among the masses, the scholarly doctors considered them mere quacks who would be involved in all sort of schemes to take money from the unsuspecting public. Thus, their position in Confucian society, where the scholars were at the highest levels, was rather low. Nonetheless, itinerant doctors remained a common part of China’s public life for eight centuries and a few such practitioners still exist today, most of them being herb salesmen who set up small stands and sell items collected from the local forests and mountains.

Li Shizhen’s father, Li Yenwen, had decided to make a better life and became a traditional style (Confucian) physician and scholar. He was successful at this and attained the rank of a subordinate medical officer of the Imperial Medical Academy. He was widely respected by his peers. Li Yenwen is still known to this day for writing the first monograph on ginseng; he also wrote books on the four diagnostic techniques, on smallpox, on pulse diagnosis, and on the local artemisia (used for making moxa) of Hubei. Despite his accomplishments, those involved with practicing medicine were deemed to be residing low on the social scale even when among the scholarly class. Li Shizhen, who showed intelligence early on, was encouraged by his father to study the classics, take the imperial examinations, and aim for a government post as a non-medical scholar, the highest attainment possible for someone born outside Imperial circles. Little is known of Li Shizhen’s brother and sister, both of whom may have led ordinary lives.

In his youth, Li Shizhen suffered from frequent illnesses and this generated in him a personal interest in becoming a doctor, despite his father’s intentions. He had available to him the medical books his father used, and he sometimes accompanied his father on medical calls, helping to write out the medical prescriptions as they were dictated to him. Meanwhile, his father continually encouraged Shizhen to study the literary classics, an effort which, no doubt, contributed to Li Shizhen’s far ranging accomplishments later in life. At age 14, Li Shizhen took the Imperial exams at the county level and passed. Unfortunately, when he went on to the national level examinations three years later, he repeatedly failed (three times) and eventually gave up that goal, but not for several more years. Under his father’s guidance, he continued to study the classics and plan for a governmental career.

When Shizhen was 23, he decided that this scholarly path, based on philosophy, law, and bureaucratic procedures, was not suitable for him. Thus, he gave up on the pursuit, being determined, instead, to follow his father’s medical trade. At that time, his father relented and took him in as an apprentice, passed on all his clinical experience, and helped him become established as a doctor. Li Yenwen, having become a leading authority on pulse diagnosis, relayed to his son this valuable technique, for which Shizhen also became an acknowledged authority. Still, unlike some medical experts who thought that one could rely solely on the pulse, an idea which had become the fashion at the time, Li Shizhen appreciated the fact that pulse diagnosis was just one of the four methods to be used.

Li Shizhen found medical studies enthralling and he virtually shut himself away at his parent’s house for several years, carefully reading all the medical classics; he also studied relevant areas of philosophy and history and wrote poetry. In the field of herbal medicine, he became particularly interested in the method of writing prescriptions and was attracted to the idea of there being one dominant herb, the ruler of the prescription, that would contribute the main therapeutic effectiveness of the entire combination of ingredients. Such an approach requires intimate knowledge of the individual herbs that could serve as rulers in the formulas, leading to his extended study of the Materia Medica.

By the time he was 27 years old, Li Shizhen had become recognized for his medical abilities; formal recognition came when he produced an accurate diagnosis and a cure for the son of Zhu Xian, prince of the Chu State. As a result, he was invited to be an official in the Chu Royal Court, in charge of the rituals and medical affairs. A few years later, he was recommended to the Imperial Medical Institute in Beijing as an assistant president. Thus, after some delays, he had succeeded in getting a governmental position.

http://www.itmonline.org/arts/lishizhen.htm

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