In the fight against plague in China, doctors have always fought in the front line to save lives and provide free services to the poor regardless of personal safety and interests. Historically, doctors have the virtue of "being a good doctor rather than a relative". Many anecdotes about famous doctors are stories about treating the plague. At the same time, fighting and preventing the plague has created a generation of famous doctors and promoted the development of medicine in China.
The epidemic period in history is also an era when famous doctors come forth in large numbers. For example, Zhang Zhongjing in the Eastern Han Dynasty was famous for treating typhoid fever, and his classic book Treatise on Febrile Diseases discussed the treatment methods of various infectious diseases in different periods. Not only the prescriptions in the book are still used today, but also its flexible and dialectical treatment methods have laid the foundation for clinical practice of traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, Zhang Zhongjing is called a "medical sage", and the classic prescription of Japanese traditional Chinese medicine still uses Zhang Zhongjing's original prescription to treat infectious diseases such as viral hepatitis.
Hua Tuo, a wonderful doctor, is not only good at surgery, but also has many records about his treatment of various infectious parasitic diseases. Hua Tuo discovered the use of Herba Artemisiae Scopariae to treat epidemic jaundice. Later, it was circulated among the people that "Artemisia annua can be cured in March and used as firewood in May and June". Modern research has isolated artemisinin from fresh Artemisia annua, which has become a new drug to treat malaria.
Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty, Ye in the Qing Dynasty and Wu Tang (Wu Jutong) in the late Qing Dynasty all made great contributions to the treatment of plague. Angong Niuhuang Pill, Zhibaodan and Zixuedan recommended by Wu Tang are still in clinical use, and they are called the three treasures for treating epidemic diseases.
2. Vaccinate with attenuated vaccine and treat the disease before it is cured.
As early as 980- 1567, China medical scientists invented the method of human pox inoculation, which infected people who had never suffered from smallpox with the pox pulp and scab in the pox blister of smallpox patients or the clothes stained with the pox pulp and pox worn by smallpox patients. Because the "virulence" of this infectious source is weaker than that of fresh virus, the vaccinators usually only produce mild smallpox, and the vaccinators will have an immune defense response to smallpox and gain immunity to re-infection with smallpox, thus preventing the occurrence of severe smallpox. In fact, human pox vaccination is an artificial immune method of human live virus, or it is to prevent severe smallpox with mild smallpox. Before the invention of vaccinia vaccine, this immune prevention method was the most effective method to prevent smallpox. It was widely used in China, and later spread to Europe and the United States, saving millions of lives and promoting the birth of modern immunoprophylaxis. At present, many immune vaccines against infectious diseases still use attenuated live vaccines as vaccines. For example, the polio vaccine and measles vaccine that every child needs to be vaccinated now are all live virus vaccines for human use.
In the medical monograph Huangdi Neijing for more than 2,000 years, ancient Chinese doctors put forward the principle of "treating diseases before they occur", which has been proved by modern medicine to be the most effective method to prevent infectious diseases.