What is the Chinese Medicine Tangtou Gezhi?

Tangtou Gezhi is a book of ancient medical prescriptions written by Wang Ang in the Qing Dynasty.

The book was published in 1694 and contains more than 300 prescriptions commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine, which are divided into 20 categories such as tonic, release, attack and vomit. It is summarized and summarized in the form of a seven-character song. And each party is accompanied by a brief note, easy to learn for the first time to recite, is a more widely circulated works of prescription science.

In the traditional Chinese medicine prescription, a soup often consists of many herbs, which is cumbersome to make, and the names of the herbs are abstract and boring, which is inconvenient to memorize and master; therefore, the ancients tried to change some traditional aphrodisiacal prescriptions into poems.

Related Background

Anciently, the practice of medicine, in addition to the painstaking search and practice, mainly rely on the search of books and briefs. But if the commonly used formula into a special book hanging in the back of the elbow in order to check, very inconvenient. So the formula song bracket came into being. The earliest Chinese medicine prescription compiled into a song is no longer known.

Initially compiled into a mnemonic in the medical practitioners to spread each other, and later constantly summarized and improved for the song. At the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Wang Ang compiled a book called "Tangtou Gezhi", which was "first called a good book".

Before that, there was the Ming Dynasty physician Li Theatre, "Introduction to Medicine", a book containing biographies of physicians, maintenance, luck, meridians, internal organs, diagnosis, acupuncture, etc., but also to take the text, poetry mixed way, in the content of the prescription will be listed in the single drug name into a song to help memorize the bracket.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Tangtou Gezhi