Who Was HUA TUO?

Subhuti Dharmananda, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Traditional Medicine, Portland, Oregon

Biographical information about Hua Tuo has been summarized and presented in English in three works: an article in the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine (1), a monograph in Chen's History of Chinese Medical Science (2), and an extensive report in the Advanced Textbook on Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacology (3). The following has been derived primarily from those sources, except as noted.

Hua Tuo is a famous physician of the Han Dynasty who is so widely respected that his name and image adorn numerous products (e.g., as a brand name for acupuncture needles and for medicated plasters) and a set of frequently used acupuncture points (called Hua Tuo Jiaji, see Appendix). He is known for the early qi gong exercise set known as the frolics of the five animals, in which one imitates the actions of tigers, deer, bears, apes, and birds; these practices were later incorporated into various health promoting martial arts practices, such as taijiquan. His name is always mentioned in relation to surgery, as he was considered the first surgeon of China, and one of the last famous surgeons of ancient China. He has been compared, in this regard, to Jivaka of India, who lived at the time of Buddha (about 500 B.C.) and was renowned for surgery, but had no significant successors until the modern era when surgery was reintroduced by Western doctors (4).

Legends of Hua Tuo's work are mentioned in historical novels, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Taiping's Comprehensive Anthology of Stories. It was a tradition in the past that when a patient had recovered due to the efforts of a competent physician, the family would present a congratulatory board to the doctor inscribed with the words: A Second Hua Tuo.

Hua Tuo was born around 110 A.D., in Qiao of Peiguo (today called Haoxian or Bo) county, in what is now Anhui Province, one of the four major herb distribution centers of modern China. He lived for about 100 years, having died around 207 A.D. He was an older contemporary of China's famous herbalist Zhang Zhongjing, who died around 220 A.D. In the Chronicles of the Later Han Dynasty, it is said that: "Knowing well the way to keep one in good health, Hua Tuo still appeared in the prime of his life when he was almost 100, and so was regarded as immortal." It is said that Cao Cao, ruler of the state of Wei, had Hua Tuo put to death for reasons that are unclear. Cao Cao summoned him to serve as his personal physician, and either became enraged with Hua Tuo's hesitancy to return again later to provide more treatments or suspected an assassination attempt when Hua Tuo suggested brain surgery as a treatment for his severe headaches. According to the Records of the Wei Dynasty (Wei Zhi), Cao Cao had Hua Tuo killed in 207 A.D. at age 97. Cao Cao's second son, Cao Pi (187-226 A.D.), became Emperor of the Wei Dynasty, taking over China upon the forced abdication of Emperor Xian; China then collapsed into chaos, and Cao Pi was left only a few years rule of Wei, the northern kingdom of the "three kingdoms" that resulted from the breakdown.

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

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