Prof. Fan Zhenglun on the *Huangdi Neijing*
(1) About the Huangdi Neijing
The Huangdi Neijing is among the earliest extant important medical works in our country. Roughly fixed in the Warring States period. It collects the long experience of our ancients' struggle with disease, together with the medical-theoretical knowledge of many famous and anonymous physicians, and laid the theoretical foundation of Chinese medicine. It is a major classic of TCM.
The Neijing is in two parts — Suwen and Lingshu — each in 9 fascicles, 18 in all, each with 81 chapters, very rich in content. The Suwen gathers medical-school discourses with a focus on basic theory, expounding yin-yang, zàng-xiàng, jingluo, etiology, mechanism, diagnostics, and treatment principles. Volume 7 of the original was lost early; the Tang physician Wang Bing, when annotating the Suwen, filled it from his "anciently-kept fascicle." The Lingshu, also called the Acupuncture Canon, is the earliest extant TCM foundational-theory text with extensive discussion of acupuncture.
The Sui physician Quan Yuanqi, expert in medicine and held in great esteem in his day — "the sick look to him; with Quan they live, without him they die" — was also one of the earliest and most influential annotators of the Suwen.
The Tang physician Wang Bing spent twenty years annotating the Huangdi Neijing Suwen in 9 fascicles. After Quan Yuanqi, Wang Bing was the next to reorganize and annotate the Neijing — making a great contribution to preserving and transmitting ancient medical literature.
The Northern-Song physician Lin Yi and colleagues "collated and annotated the Huangdi Neijing Suwen, correcting more than 6,000 errors and adding more than 2,000 annotation entries." Their work, the Reissued and Supplemented Huangdi Neijing Suwen, is the most complete annotated edition extant today.
The Lingshu is our ancients' summary, drawn from practice, of the connections between body's jingluo and zàng-fǔ and of acupuncture theory — a major TCM classic. The original was not widely circulated in Jin and Tang times; only after the Song physician Shi Song's "collation and printing from a family-kept old text" did it circulate broadly.
The Ming physician Ma Shi re-divided and re-annotated the Suwen and the Lingshu into the Huangdi Neijing Suwen Annotated and Elucidated and the Huangdi Neijing Lingshu Annotated and Elucidated, in 9 fascicles each.
Like the Neijing itself, these annotated editions are now classics of TCM and required reading for TCM scholars. As the modern famous physician Prof. Qin Bowei put it: "In studying the medicine of our forebears, first study the Neijing; then we can flow downstream to other medical books. Without that, we have lost the key — we cannot open the door to the TCM treasure-house."
To support younger learners, Prof. Qin Bowei wrote A Plain Explanation of the Knowing-the-Essentials of the Neijing to help beginners enter through Li Zhongzi's Knowing the Essentials of the Neijing — first form a general view, then study the Neijing in depth.
Prof. Qin Bowei said: "Knowing the Essentials of the Neijing is a simplified version of one of TCM's classics, the Huangdi Neijing." "Li Zhongzi selected the more important parts and arranged them under 8 sections — way-of-life, yin-yang, color-diagnosis, pulse-diagnosis, zàng-xiàng, jingluo, treatment principles, and disease-ability. He titled it Knowing the Essentials as an entry-text for medical study. The title comes from the Suwen · Great Treatise on the Truth of the Most Important: 'Who knows the essentials may finish in one word; who does not, drifts off in endless turns.' The meaning is that the Neijing has a single system of thought; grasp it and one word suffices; miss the center and it becomes scattered and complicated, hard to understand."
To study and research the Neijing, one may first read some primer books — for instance, Li Zhongzi's Knowing the Essentials. To master the Knowing the Essentials quickly, I recommend first reading Prof. Qin Bowei's Plain Explanation.