Zhang Xichun

Zhang Xichun (; 18601933), courtesy name Shoufu , was a Chinese physician and medical scholar who pioneered the integration of Western and Eastern medicines. The founder of a medical college in Tianjin, Zhang penned many articles on various medical topics. After his death in 1933, a thirty-volume compilation of his papers was released.

Biography

Early life and career Zhang Xichun was born in 1860, in Yanshan County, Hebei, China. Zhang was not linguistically inclined, unlike his father, and failed his imperial examinations in Chinese literature twice. Thereafter he switched his sights to medicine; a topic his father had introduced him to, together with Chinese philosophy, His cure for "obstinate vomiting", predominantly made of rhizoma pinelliae, was said to have "achieved very good results".

Death Zhang Xichun died of illness in 1933 at age 74. A collection of Zhang's medical papers, comprising some thirty volumes and titled, Medical Essays Esteeming the East and Respecting the West, was edited by Zhang's son and released in 1934. After 1949, rights to the compilation, alongside a few other of Zhang's essays, were transferred to the Hebei Hygiene Association. Zhang's publications are now regarded as "an important modern classic of Chinese medicine".

Views Zhang saw philosophy as complementary and beneficial to medicine, contrary to the belief held by many of his time that the former inhibits the latter's development. As he articulates in his essay Concerning The Relation of Philosophy and Medicine: Many recent medical journal reports take the view that [traditional Chinese] philosophy holds back the progress of medicine, but their authors do not understand the use of philosophy, nor do they understand that philosophy is actually the basis of medicine [...] philosophy is the true source of medicine, or rather that medicine is the natural outcome of philosophy. and "one of the leading reformers of Chinese medicine in the early twentieth century", Zhang is notable for being one of the first physicians to intermix Chinese and Western medicine, and his work is credited with allowing doctors to realise that "the two medicines could work side by side". In his 2014 work Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Charles Buck praises his "genuine altruistic impetus to improve Chinese medicine", describing Zhang as a "passionate integrationist" of medicine.