There is a legend in Chinese history that "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs...and encountered seventy poisons in one day", which reflects the hardships of the ancient working people in discovering medicines and accumulating experience in the process of fighting against nature and disease. The process is also a true portrayal of the origin of traditional Chinese medicine from production labor.
As early as the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties (about the end of the 22nd BC - 256 BC), medicinal wine and soup had appeared in China. The Book of Songs of the Western Zhou Dynasty (approximately 11th century BC - 771 BC) is the earliest book containing medicines among the existing documents in China. The earliest extant traditional Chinese medicine theoretical classic, "Nei Jing", puts forward the theories of "cold causes heat, hot causes cold", "five flavors enter", "the five internal organs are bitter and want to be nourished and purged", etc., which laid the foundation for the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine.
The earliest existing pharmaceutical monograph "Shen Nong's Materia Medica" was written by many medical scientists during the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 BC - 220 AD) who collected and summarized rich pharmaceutical materials since the pre-Qin Dynasty. This book contains 365 kinds of medicines, which are still commonly used in clinical practice. Its advent marked the initial establishment of traditional Chinese medicine.
In the oracle bones of the Yin Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago, China has records about medical care and more than ten kinds of diseases. In the Zhou Dynasty, diagnosis methods such as inspection, smelling, questioning, and incision and treatment methods such as drugs, acupuncture, and surgery were already used. During the Qin and Han dynasties, a systematic theoretical work such as "Huangdi Neijing" was formed. This book is the earliest existing theoretical classic of traditional Chinese medicine. "Treatise on Febrile and Miscellaneous Diseases" written by Zhang Zhongjing specifically discusses the principles of syndrome differentiation, diagnosis and treatment of various miscellaneous diseases, laying the foundation for the development of clinical medicine in later generations. Surgery in the Han Dynasty had reached a relatively high level. According to "Three Kingdoms" records, the famous doctor Hua Tuo began to use the general anesthetic "Ma Fei San" to perform various surgical operations.