He explains that, in the space of only a few years, most of his family line had been wiped out by epidemic disease. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and relatives died one after another. He speaks openly of his regret - that he had not studied medicine earlier, that he had trusted in the knowledge of others, and that by the time he understood what was happening, it was already too late for many of those closest to him.
He describes how the physicians of his time relied on empty theory, argued endlessly over doctrines, copied theoretical methods without understanding, and applied treatments blindly without verifying whether their actions matched the actual disease presentation of the patient. In his eyes, medicine had drifted so far from clinical reality that error had become the norm - and people were suffering and dying because of it.
This is the point where Zhang Zhongjing makes one of the most important statements in the entire history of Chinese medicine: he stated that medicine had lost its connection to reality. Physicians no longer verified what they were doing against actual clinical outcomes. Treatments were given by habit, by reputation, or by learning from family teachers - not by the precision outlined by their ancient medical ancestors.
So he made a decision that would change medicine forever. He travelled and gathered the ancient formulas that had actually saved people, the treatment methods that had produced actual results, the pattern identification methods that were consistent, and the errors in treatments that had consistently led to collapse. Anything that could not be confirmed in the living body was rejected. For Zhang Zhongjing, medicine was not something to be debated in words - it had to prove itself in the clinic.
From this, he compiled the Treatise on Cold Damage and Complex Disease.
He did not write the book to showcase knowledge. He makes it clear that medicine must be based on what can be confirmed in the living body, not on theory alone. And although this work has been copied, modified, segmented, divided into separate books, and taught incorrectly according to the six confirmations, one rule remains intact throughout: verification of the pattern must come before treatment. This means that before any treatment is given, the physician must determine the active pattern and recognise that this pattern expresses the real-time movement and behaviour of the disease presentation that is separate from natural function. Treatment must follow that pattern exactly, without deviation, and when the pattern changes, the treatment must change immediately with it.
For Zhang Zhongjing, this was not a theoretical concept but the essential safe guard against blind treatment and fatal error. It contains the ancient medical methods that are anchored to reality.
In this way, Zhang Zhongjing transformed medicine into a dynamic, pattern-based clinical system. Disease was no longer something fixed. It was something that shifted, deepened, rebounded, and transformed - and the physician had to track and respond to each change with precision. And although nearly two thousand years have passed, his warning remains as relevant as ever: when medicine drifts away from verification, people will suffer and die unnecessarily.
