Ashes in the Green Bag: the Biography of Hua Tuo

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the fragrance of medicine in Qiao County, Peiguo, contained countless mysteries about living people. Hua Tuo was traveling around during the Yellow Turban Rebellion and saw that the people during the Yellow Turban Rebellion had carbuncles in their stomachs but had no numbness or pain. So he went into the mountains and tasted herbs, and discovered the method of "treating pain with poison" near the tiger and leopard dens. He watched bears climbing trees, apes picking fruits, and birds spreading their wings, and created the Five Animals Opera. He also mixed datura flowers with wine to make an anesthetic powder that could make people "feel asleep without knowing the pain." From then on, it was possible to open the abdomen and chest, scrape bones to treat poison. Cao Cao had a splitting headache and summoned Hua Tuo into the palace. He pricked the Baihui point with a silver needle, only to find that the saliva in his brain had condensed like ice. This condition required a craniotomy to cure the disease, but it offended the suspicious King Wei. In prison, his disciple Wu Pu knelt down and begged his master to teach him the "Qing Nang Book". Hua Tuo smiled and stroked his back: "Medical books are easy to destroy, but the hearts of living people are hard to destroy." So he carved what he had learned throughout his life on bamboo slips, but was burned by the jailer's wife on the eve of delivery - she was afraid of harming her family, so she left only the Five Animals Play Picture and Ma Fei Powder. Before he died, Hua Tuo looked out the window at the children learning the bear opera, and put the last half of a datura flower into his mouth: "Every tree and plant has its spirit, and there is no difference between doctors." He did not know that the ruins that Wu Pu risked his life to cut would eventually see the light of day a thousand years later, and the roar of tigers and dragons in Wuqin Opera had long been integrated into the breath of the people to strengthen their health. Although the "Qing Nang Shu" was destroyed, the doctor's benevolence that lasts longer than words continues to be written in the back of each person who hangs a pot to help the world.