People may be surprised to learn that many of the most important Chinese texts (particularly Chinese herbal medicine texts) deal extensively with epidemic and infectious febrile illnesses.

There’s a lot of those going around at the moment and while treating them I’ve found myself drawn towards a particular family of herbal formulas; those from the Shang Han Lun, a herbal medicine text from 200AD. The efficacy of these formulas when prescribed to patients separated by 8,000 km and 1,800 years astonishes me. The personal story behind the text, and the man who wrote it, Zhang Ji, is something I also find quite moving.

Today I took the opportunity to discuss the title of the text, what ‘cold damage’ is with relation to infectious illness and explain a little bit about how we approach treating infectious illnesses beyond an ‘anti-viral’, ‘anti-bacterial’ or ‘boosting the immune system’ approach.

Merry Christmas everyone.