Zhang Zhongjing

Zhang Zhongjing, whose given name was Ji and whose courtesy name was Zhongjing, was a native of Niyang in Nanyang Commandery (present-day Nanyang, Henan) during the Eastern Han dynasty. His birth and death years are unknown, and later generations honored him as the "Medical Sage." He wrote the sixteen-volume Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, which established the principle of pattern differentiation and treatment and laid the foundation of clinical therapeutics in traditional Chinese medicine; the work is counted among the four great classics of Chinese medicine. In later transmission it was divided into the Treatise on Cold Damage and the Essential Prescriptions of the Golden Cabinet. This library holds 32 related works, including the Song edition of the Treatise on Cold Damage and various edited versions of the Essential Prescriptions, commonly classified under medicine. Owing to limited historical sources, public information on the details of his life is scarce, yet his scholarly influence runs through clinical practice and education in Chinese medicine, and his works remain required reading for its study.