論曰余每覽越人入虢之診望齊侯之色未嘗不慨然歎其才秀也 怪當今居世之士曽不留神醫藥精究方術上以療君親之疾下以救貧賤之厄中以保身長全以養其生 但競逐榮勢企踵權豪孜孜汲汲惟名利是務崇飾其末忽棄其本華其外而悴其内 皮之不存毛將安附焉 卒然遭邪風之氣嬰非常之疾患及禍至而方震慄降志屈節欽望巫祝告窮歸天束手受敗 賫百年之壽命持至貴之重器委付凡醫恣其所措 咄嗟嗚呼厥身巳斃神明消滅變為異物幽潜重泉徒為啼泣 痛夫舉世昏迷莫能覺悟不惜其命若是輕生彼何榮勢之云哉 而進不能愛人知人退不能愛身知巳遇災值禍身居厄地蒙蒙昧昧憃若遊魂 哀乎趨世之士馳競浮華不固根本忘軀徇物危若冰谷至於是也 余宗族素多向餘二百建安紀年以来猶未十稔其死亡者三分有二傷寒十居其七 感往昔之淪䘮傷横天之莫救乃勤求古訓博采衆方撰用素問九卷八十一難隂陽大論胎臚藥錄并平脉辨證為傷寒雜病論合十六卷 雖未能盡愈諸病庻可以見病知源 若能尋余所集思過半矣 夫天布五行以運萬類人禀五常以有五藏經絡府俞隂陽㑹通玄冥幽㣲變化難極 自非才髙識妙豈能探其理致哉 上古有神農黄帝岐伯伯髙雷公少俞少師仲文中世有長桑扁鵲漢有公乘陽慶及倉公下此以往未之聞也 觀今之醫不念思求經㫖以演其所知各承家技終始順舊 省疾問病務在口給相對斯須便處湯藥 按寸不及尺握手不及足人迎趺陽三部不參動數發息不滿五十短期未知決診九候曽無髣髴明堂闕庭盡不見察所謂窺管而巳 夫欲視死别生實爲難矣 孔子云生而知之者上學則亞之多聞博識知之次也 余宿尚方術請事斯語

Here is what I have to say. Whenever I read how Yueren made his diagnosis on arriving in Guo, or how he read the face of the Lord of Qi, I never fail to sigh with deep feeling at his brilliant talent. It amazes me that the learned men of our time pay no attention to medicine and never study its methods with care. With medicine they could treat the illnesses of their rulers and parents above them and rescue the poor and humble from hardship below them. In between, they could keep themselves safe and whole for many years, and so care for their own lives. Instead, they race after glory and power and stand on tiptoe to look up to the mighty and the rich. Tireless and anxious, they care for nothing but fame and profit. They decorate the branches but throw away the root; they make the outside shine and let the inside wither. If the skin is gone, what will the hair cling to? Then, without warning, they meet the qi of harmful winds and fall ill with some grave and unusual disease. Only when trouble comes and disaster strikes do they start to tremble. Swallowing their pride, they bow low and look up hopefully to shamans and priests. When they have nothing left to try, they leave it all to Heaven, fold their hands, and accept defeat. They carry a life that could last a hundred years and hold the most precious vessel there is, and they hand it all over to some ordinary doctor to do with as he pleases. Alas, alas! Their bodies die, and their spirit fades away to nothing. They turn into something else, sunk deep beneath the springs [of the underworld]. All anyone can do is weep, and the weeping does no good. How painful! The whole world is lost in a daze, and no one wakes up. People do not value their own lives, and if they treat life so cheaply, what is all their glory and power worth? In public life they can neither care for others nor understand them; in private life they can neither care for themselves nor understand themselves. When disaster strikes, they find themselves in danger, confused and in the dark, as dull as wandering ghosts. How sad! These men who chase what the world admires race after empty show instead of making the root strong. They forget their own bodies and give themselves up to things, until they are in as much danger as someone walking on thin ice or at the edge of a deep gorge. That is how far they have fallen! My clan was once large, more than two hundred people. Yet in the less than ten years since the Jian'an era began, two out of every three of us have died, and seven out of ten of those deaths came from Cold Damage. I was moved by all those we had lost, and I grieved that no one could save them from dying before their time. So I worked hard to search out the teachings of the ancients and gathered remedies far and wide. I drew on the Basic Questions, the Nine Scrolls, the Eighty-One Difficult Issues, the Great Treatise on Yin and Yang, and the Tailu Record of Drugs. I also added methods for judging the pulse and telling one illness from another. From all this I made the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, sixteen scrolls in all. It cannot cure every disease, but I hope that with it a reader can look at an illness and know where it comes from. Anyone who studies what I have gathered here will understand more than half. Heaven spreads out the Five Phases to keep all things moving. People receive the five constants, and so they have the five organs. The channels and the acupoints, and the ways yin and yang meet and flow together, are dark, deep, and subtle, and their changes are almost impossible to fathom. Without great talent and fine understanding, who could get to the bottom of them? In ancient times there were Shennong, the Yellow Emperor, Qibo, Bogao, Leigong, Shaoyu, Shaoshi, and Zhongwen. In the ages after them came Changsang and Bian Que, and in the Han dynasty, Gongsheng Yang Qing and Master Cang. Since then, I have heard of no one like them. Look at the doctors of today. It never occurs to them to search out the meaning of the classics to widen what they know. Instead, each one simply carries on his family's methods and follows the old ways from start to finish. When they examine a sick person and ask about the illness, all they care about is smooth talk. They sit with the patient only a moment before writing out a prescription. They feel the pulse at the wrist but never farther up the arm, and they hold the hand but never check the feet. They never compare the pulses at the neck, the wrist, and the foot. They count the beats but stop before they reach fifty, and they cannot tell how soon a patient will die. They do not have the faintest idea of the nine places to take the pulse, and they never look closely at the nose, the brow, or the forehead. This is what people call peering through a tube, and nothing more. With methods like these, it is truly hard to tell the dying from the living! Confucius said, "Those who are born knowing are the highest. Those who learn come next. Those who hear much and remember widely come after them." I have long been devoted to the healing arts. Let me humbly try to live by these words.