ABSTRACT
Huangfu Mi was by no means the only eminent practitioner and theorist of acupuncture in his time. For example, in +239, when Huangfu was already about 40, Lii POl was appointed Director of Medical Services or Archiater-Royal in Wu State.a Lii was the writer of a Yii Kuei Chen Ching2 (Needle Manual of the Box of Jade), long lost now, but influential in its time, and doubtless known to Huangfu Mi, though not actually mentioned by him.b Acupuncture writings, also lost, have even been attributed to Hua Tho, such as the Chen Chung Chiu Tzhu Ching3 (Confidential Pillow Book of Moxa and Needling), but this may well have been a later compilation not available to Huangfu Mi.c
There can be no doubt that Huangfu Mi knew the Su Wen and the Ling Shu (or Chen Ching) by heart, as it were, but he also had the Nan Ching at his disposal, together with that shadowy specialist treatise, probably of the +2nd century, which we have had occasion to refer to already in connection with the growth in the number of acupoints (p. 100 and Table 15), namely the Ming Thang Khung Hsiieh Chen Chiu Chih Yao.d As we saw, the prefix Huang Ti was applied to at least one of these Ming Thang books, as it was to the Nei Ching itself; and it is quite probable that there were other Later Han books which Huangfu Mi took into account in his work though not mentioning them in his preface.e For example in the Liang, and perhaps much earlier, there was a Ming Thang Hsia-Ma Thu4 (Toad Manual for the Human Body),! the strange title of which is explained by the longer one of another, also from those times, the Huang Ti Chen Chiu Hsia-Ma Chi (or Thu, or Ching)5-in other words, 'The Yellow Emperor's (Illustrated Manual of the) Preferential and Forbidden Days for Acupuncture and Moxibustion according to the Lunar Cycle', or, for short, 'The Yellow Emperor's Toad Manual'.g This bizarre appellation referred to the toad in the inconstant moon. We shall presently see (p. 138) that there was a great lore of favourable and unfavourable times and days for applying acupuncture and moxa in different ways at various loci, depending on the hour, the day in the lunation and the season of the year. We shall also suggest that modern knowledge of circadian rhythms, endocrine cycles and seasonal incidences of disease goes some way to justify these
whose fioruit was much later, in the +6th century, towards the end of the Liang and the beginning of the Sui. Lti Kuang it was who wrote the first commentary on the Nan Ching. Cf. Fan Hsing-Chun (12).
