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Diseases and Medicinal Treatments of the Tang Dynasty in Ancient China

Decent Essays

Diseases and their treatments changed and shaped the modern world. The Tang Dynasty of Ancient China had great value to the medicinal fields and led the way for medical technology and advancements that are used today by standardizing the supreme methods, procedures, and treatments during this time period; therefore, they made it less complicated for people to learn and teach how to practice medicine. Areas of medicine that were greatly improved and exceptionally recorded during the Tang Dynasty were symptomatology, etiology, surgery, orthopedics, and traumatology.

Chao Yuanfang, an imperial court physician of the Sui Dynasty (the dynasty that came before the Tang), compiled Treatise on Causes and Symptoms of Diseases and started the …show more content…

Surgery has come a long way since the Tang Dynasty. Nowaday, surgeons use better sterilization techniques and methods to treat the ill. The records from the Tang Dynasty paved the way so the surgeons could be successful in treating people today.

When surgery is too inept to restore the patient to full health, orthopedics and traumatology combined could. A fusion of the two is surgery and therapy afterwards. The Confucius Institute Network (2009) has discovered the book: Xian Shou Li Shang Xu Duan Mi Fang (Secrets of Treating Wounds and Rejoining Fractures Handed Down by a Fairy), written by a Taoist priest surnamed Lin of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), is the earliest existing monograph on orthopedics and traumatology in China. This piece of literature describes position, exercise, and medication as the optimum methods for the treatment of fractures. Especially, the method of using small splints to immobilize a local area. Another crucial idea from Xian Shou Li Shang Xu Duan Mi Fang was the therapeutic idea of integrating the splint-induced immobilization and exercise. This became the therapeutic principle for treating fractures and is still used today.

In Chao Yuanfang’s Zhu Bing Yuan Hou Lun (Treatise on Causes and Symptoms of Diseases), there had been more than 130 kinds of skin diseases and some rarely seen diseases recorded. Records of these diseases and their treatments

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