Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
The King of Medicine: Sun Simiao (581–682) was a Tang-dynasty Taoist priest and physician-pharmacologist from Huayuan in Jingzhao (present-day Yao County, Shaanxi). He was widely versed in the learning of the hundred schools, loved Laozi and Zhuangzi above all, and was also well read in Buddhist scriptures. For many years he lived as a recluse in the Zhongnan Mountains, cultivating himself and practicing medicine, and he was a friend of the famous monk Daoxuan. He once traveled west to Mount Emei to refine the “Taiyi Divine Essence Elixir.”
Emperors Taizong and Gaozong of Tang summoned him several times to serve as an official in the capital, but he always declined, his heart set on the mountains and forests to the end of his life.
In the second year of the Chongning era of the Northern Song (1103), he was posthumously enfeoffed as “Perfected Miaoying.”
Tradition holds that he was skilled in the numerological arts of yin and yang, with divine responses beyond measure. He combined Taoist theories of nurturing life with medicine, holding that if a person is to live long, he must be careful about diet and daily habits, restrain the emotions and nourish his nature, and add daoyin (guiding and pulling exercises), circulating the qi, and nourishment through food and medicine; only then can he live out his natural span. He collected folk remedies and secret prescriptions far and wide, summarized the medical theory and practice before the Tang, and recorded them by category, making great contributions to medicine and pharmacology; later generations revered him as the “King of Medicine.” He regarded taking the golden elixir as something “whose divine path is remote and whose cloudy traces are faint,” and instead used the refining of elixirs as a means of making medicines to treat illness. He held that as long as “a good physician guides with medicines and stones and rescues with needles and remedies,” there is no illness under heaven that cannot be cured. His works are many; the main ones are Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold (Qianjin Yaofang), Supplementary Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold (Qianjin Yifang), Inscription on Preserving Life, Inscription on Preserving the Spirit and Refining the Qi, and Pillow Prescriptions for Nurturing Life.