Legacy of Medical Excellence: The Qin Dynasty’s Renowned Physicians and the Han Dynasty’s Continuation of Its Medical System

It is obviously unreasonable that medicine prospered in the pre-Qin period (before 221BC) but failed to progress during the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), an important historical period of more than four hundred years when Chinese culture developed prosperously. The discovery of medical texts within the Mawangdui Han Tomb prompted researchers to propose the notion that “classics are not the sole creation of an individual within a specific timeframe”, “they were compiled from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (770–221 BC) until the Han Dynasty”, or “they represent a synthesis of medical knowledge since the pre-Qin era”. Although these broad assertions aimed to reconcile the contrasting medical advancements between these two historical periods, their practical significance remains limited.