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Top 10 classics on traditional Chinese medicine

By Xu Lin: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, September 15, 2011

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Prescriptions from the Golden Cabinet (《金匮要略》)

Jin Kui Yao Lue (Prescriptions from the Golden Cabinet)

Prescriptions from the Golden Cabinet or Synopsis of Prescriptions of the Golden Chamber (Pinyin: Jin Kui Yao Lue) is the earliest monograph on the diagnosis and treatment of miscellaneous diseases in Chinese history, as well as one of the classics of TCM. The text was written by Zhang Zhongjing in the early 3th century at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The book was actually compiled by later generations from his original works Treatise on Cold Diseases and Miscellaneous Diseases (Pinyin: Shang Han Za Bing Lun). The other book compiled from the same works is called Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders (Pinyin: Shang Han Lun).

The book is divided into three volumes and 25 chapters: The first volume tells of the way to differentiate variants of the cold; the second volume discusses the details of miscellaneous illnesses; and the third volume describes the prescriptions and ways of treatment.

Later in the Northern Song Dynasty, the book was recompiled, with 262 pieces of prescriptions and more than 60 diseases listed in 25 chapters, mainly covering the internal miscellaneous illnesses as well as some external diseases and gynecological and obstetric diseases.