Chao Yuanfang

Chao Yuanfang was a Chinese physician and medical author at the imperial court of the Sui dynasty. Very little is preserved about his life. Old texts call him a medical erudite, and during the Daye reign, between 605 and 616, he was appointed Academician of the Imperial Medical Academy and later promoted to Court Physician. He is traditionally credited with the authorship or co-authorship of the Zhubing yuanhou lun, a general treatise on the causes and manifestations of all diseases, which scholars do not agree he wrote alone, since earlier bibliographies name other authors and a Northern Song preface says it was compiled by imperial order with colleagues. The work survives complete in fifty chapters, discusses more than 1,700 syndromes grouped into 67 categories, and is the first Chinese text devoted to causes and symptoms of disease. It recommends diet and daoyin exercises rather than drugs or acupuncture, and it shaped Chinese medicine and inspired the Japanese Ishinpo of 984.