Wang Renzhi's Medical Cases

Wang Renzhi (1916–1988), originally named Wang Guangren, courtesy name Renzhi, was a native of Shexian, Anhui, and the fifth-generation heir of the Xin'an Wang family medical tradition. He studied the family craft from an early age and later learned medicine under his uncle Wang Zhongqi. Over more than fifty years in practice, he excelled in treating warm diseases and abdominal distension, and was especially adept at internal and gynecological difficult and miscellaneous diseases. For a long time he served as deputy director of the Anhui Provincial Department of Health, yet never abandoned clinical practice, persistently seeing patients at the Anhui Provincial Hospital, participating in provincial consultations on critical and severe cases of Chinese medicine, and treating illnesses for many leading officials. This book, compiled by his academic successors, collects case records and medical essays from Wang Renzhi's more than fifty years of practice, covering diagnostic and treatment experience in internal medicine, gynecology, orthopedics, and other fields, involving conditions such as hepatitis, nephritis, stroke, prostatitis, and bone hyperplasia. It also recounts his career as a physician, his academic journey, and his clinical thinking—such as his emphasis on qi and blood in pattern differentiation, his advocacy of light and agile prescriptions for efficacy, and his skillful use of paired herbs and single proven remedies. The book is rich in material, with comments appended after most cases, revealing both the meticulous process of his pattern differentiation, treatment principles, and prescription writing, and the continuation and development of Xin'an medicine in the contemporary era. It is an important primary source for the study of the Xin'an Wang family medical tradition.