By the way, there are also records in the books I have read, and the method of planting pox has just been found. It can be implemented more easily. In this case, there are many diseases, and it may be estimated that there are ways to solve them in the middle or future generations. I'm going to find him out too. Spring is also a season of frequent epidemics. A few days ago, the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the National Patriotic Health Association issued a notice requiring all parts of the country to do a good job in prevention and control. In ancient China, although there was no term "epidemic", its medical concept existed, which was "epidemic", which was interpreted by Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty as "the people are sick", that is, many people are sick. If there is a large-scale outbreak, it is called a "pandemic". The five major infectious diseases, such as typhoid fever, miasma, corpse transmission, boils, and sores, once brought profound disasters to the ancients, and they were most afraid of ......

Typhoid fever, the most common infectious disease in ancient times

The ancients had a very early understanding of the phenomenon of epidemics. The "Disease Doctor" article of "Zhou Li Tianguan" says: "There are boils at all four times, there are scabies in spring, itchy scabies in summer, malaria and cold in autumn, and cough in winter." "What is the "first disease" in spring? Literally, "headaches". Sun Yi, a master of Chinese studies in the late Qing Dynasty, believed in "Zhou Li Justice": "If the spring is not harmonious, and the people feel their anger, they will be the first to suffer from the pain." From Sun's point of view, the temperature is unstable in spring, and it is easy to suffer from headaches and brain fever if it is cold or hot, which is what ancient medicine called "typhoid fever". The concept of typhoid fever in ancient times was very broad, and all diseases infected from the outside could be called "typhoid fever". The first wave of typhoid fever epidemic in Chinese history occurred in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the world's first summary clinical medical work, "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases", was born during this period. The author Zhang Zhongjing was a famous doctor at that time, and his clan originally had more than 200 people, and since the first year of Jian'an (196 AD), two-thirds of them died in less than ten years, and seventy percent of them died of typhoid fever.

According to the records of the Three Kingdoms, Wei Shu, Emperor Wu, Cao Wei's army was also trapped by typhoid fever, and Cao Cao fought a famous "Battle of Red Cliffs" in July of the thirteenth year of Jian'an (208 AD). But in December, Cao Jun broke out with a "great epidemic, and there were many dead officials". In fact, the infectious disease that Cao Jun suffered from was "typhoid fever", which occurred in winter and spring. Typhoid fever caused mass deaths in the first half of the 13th century. According to the record of "Jin Shi Mourning Zong Benji": in the first year of Tianxing (1232 AD), "the Bianjing epidemic, every 50 days, more than 900,000 people died from all gates. "Bianjing, the city of Kaifeng in present-day Henan Province, died nearly a million people in less than two months. Modern scholars, combined with the records of the physician Li Gao at that time's "Treatise on the Identification of Internal and External Typhoid Fever", believe that this epidemic is a typhoid epidemic.

Miasma, the most ferocious infectious disease in ancient times

Among the ancient infectious diseases, miasma was probably the most terrible and ferocious infectious disease in the eyes of the ancients. What kind of infectious disease is miasma? It's malaria, in fact. The word "malaria" is from "疒" to "abuse", and "abuse" is the head of a tiger, and it is written as "" in the oracle bone script, like a tiger pounced on people with its mouth open. The meaning is clear, this is a disease as ferocious as a tiger. In the early days of ancient times, people directly wrote malaria as "abuse", and the "Book of Rites and the Moon Order" called "Minduo Malaria". Liu Xi, a native of the Eastern Han Dynasty, in his interpretation of "malaria" in "Interpretation of Names and Diseases", called this disease "cruel abuse": "All diseases are cold or hot ears, and this disease is cold first and then hot, like a cruel abuser." "In the pre-Qin period, malaria was first endemic in southern China. The so-called "malaria and cold disease in autumn" in "Zhou Li" refers to the frequent occurrence of this epidemic in autumn. The "Book of Rites" believes that if the temperature is high in autumn, that is, the so-called "summer time" in autumn, there will be an outbreak of malaria, because the mosquitoes that transmit malaria multiply intensively.

In ancient times, there were many miasma in the Lingnan, Sichuan-Guizhou area, so these areas were also the hardest hit areas of malaria. Yunnan folk songs in the past said: "In May and June, the smoke miasma rises, and all new customers die; In September and October, the smoke miasma is evil, and the soul of the old guest also falls. The article "Lujiang Water" in the Northern Wei Dynasty Li Daoyuan's "Notes on the Book of Water" also said that on both sides of the Lujiang River, "there is miasma from time to time, and it will die in March and April". Officers and soldiers of all dynasties marched south, and most of them suffered heavy setbacks due to malaria. At that time, Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu, postponed his southern expedition plan because he was afraid of miasma. According to the record of "Zizhi Tongjian, Tang Ji 33", in June of the thirteenth year of Tianbao (754 AD), the Tang court sent Li Mi, who served Yushi and Yu Nanliu, led an army of 70,000 to conquer Nanzhao (now Yunnan). As a result, the soldiers were rumored to be plagued, sick and hungry, and died "nine times out of ten", Li Mi was captured alive, and the whole army was gone, and then the army was sent to fight, and a total of almost 200,000 people died.

The transmission of corpses, the most powerful infectious disease in ancient times

"Passing on the corpse" is also the most powerful infectious disease in ancient times, with many nicknames such as "corpse note", "escape corpse", "wind corpse", "sinking corpse", "flying corpse" and so on. The so-called "corpse" is actually "tuberculosis", that is, tuberculosis. Tuberculosis has a long history of scourge to the ancients, and it has been mentioned in the "Yellow Emperor's Neijing" written in the pre-Qin period.

Why did the ancients call tuberculosis "the transmission of the corpse"? In Hua Tuo's "Hua's Zhongzang Sutra," there is a chapter on "The Theory of the Transmission of the Corpse," which says, "Zhong is sick and dies of the disease, and it becomes a disease, so it is called the transmission of the corpse." The general idea is that the disease is highly contagious, and it can be contracted by visiting the sick and mourning after death. Jin Gehong's "Elbow Reserve Emergency Prescription" has a special "treatment of five corpses in stroke", saying that this infectious disease "is everywhere evil, accumulates over the years, and gradually stagnates, so that it dies, and it is passed on to others after death, and even extinction".

Chao Yuanfang, a famous medical scientist in the Sui Dynasty, gave a new name to tuberculosis, and he put forward the concept of "five steaming" in "Chao's Treatise on the Origin and Syndrome of Diseases", in which "bone steaming" is tuberculosis, which means that the disease is deep to the bone, yin deficiency and hot flashes penetrate from the inside out, and it is difficult to heal for a long time.

The ancients believed that the culprit of tuberculosis was a kind of "worm", and Song Chenyan's "Three Causes and One Disease Syndrome Prescription Treatise on Labor and Exhaustion" said that "worms gnaw their hearts and lungs", and these "worms" are also called "tuberculosis worms" and "miasms", which are actually the tuberculosis bacilli mentioned in modern medicine.

For tuberculosis, although the ancients talked about it, judging from historical records, an expert named Xu Yinzong in the Sui and Tang dynasties treated tuberculosis and used home remedies to cure tuberculosis. "New Tang Dynasty Book: Fang Ji Biography" recorded that at that time, "Guanzhong had many bones and steaming diseases, and those who were dyed were dyed, and Yinzong would be cured for treatment."

Furious wind, a "vicious disease" that ancient patients were not suitable for marriage