✦ Simplified Chinese rights sold.
✦ Decoding Life Stories: Through the perspective of modern medicine, delve into the birth, aging, illness, and death of ancient people, presenting a vivid aspect unseen by historians of the past.
✦ Cross-disciplinary Knowledge Integration: Combine multiple fields such as art appreciation, historical reading, and medical diagnosis, leading readers into the thought process of literati-physicians who were knowledgeable and inquisitive.
✦ Profound Reading Impact: Each article is paired with KUSO comics, translating ancient paintings with humor and liveliness, allowing readers to understand the content of the book more vividly.

Do not say that times have changed, for all diseases are the same from ancient times until now.

Through the eyes of a physician, we are taken on a journey through time to explore how ancient people faced and solved various health challenges, and to issue a twenty-first century diagnosis for them.

The famous Western Han Dynasty doctor Chunyu Yi once felt the pulse of Xiang Chu, a "soccer star" of his time, and warned him, "Do not overexert yourself, or you risk your life." Xiang Chu did not heed the advice and indeed vomited blood on the field and died suddenly the next day. Chunyu Yi had a premonition of Xiang Chu's death, but the question is where did the blood come from in the case of fatal hemoptysis!

In the modern era, we understand that blood vomiting is divided into "hematemesis" and "hemoptysis," the former from the digestive tract and the latter from the respiratory tract. If it is bleeding from the digestive tract, it is often seen in esophageal varices (a complication of liver cirrhosis) and gastric-duodenal ulcers, but these conditions are mostly related to eating and have little to do with exercise. Moreover, such patients are often in poor physical condition and would not be able to perform on a soccer field. Therefore, it is more likely that Xiang Chu had a respiratory problem.

Based on this, the book concludes that Xiang Chu suffered from bronchiectasis - and this is the modern diagnosis issued for an ancient patient!

If there had been medical aesthetic technology back then, Emperor Kangxi, the great emperor of all ages, would have had dermabrasion to treat his pox scars, and the great painter Shen Zhou would have certainly used laser treatment to remove his age spots. If the talented Ji Xiaolan and Emperor Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji could have traveled to the modern era, they would have inevitably consulted a weight loss clinic regularly.

From beauty to weight loss, from chronic diseases to infectious diseases, the pains suffered by modern people are also endured by ancient people.

The famous minister Liu Yong had a hunched back, the thirteenth brother Yinxiang suffered from knee pain, Emperor Xianfeng had lung disease, and Emperor Qianlong had presbyopia. No matter how noble their status, aging and chronic diseases will find them, and how can they not follow medical advice? Today, there is a Central Epidemic Command Center to deal with terrible infectious diseases, so how did the ancients face the ravages of cholera, the spread of the plague, and the spread of influenza?

What prescription should doctors offer when consulting ancient medical records in modern clinics?

In addition to text, the importance of images in reading should not be overlooked.

The inspiration for each article in the book mostly comes from the author's careful observation and curiosity about ancient paintings, which are then transformed into text and further converted into comic images by the illustrator. The contrast between ancient and modern styles and the exaggeration of character images not only highlight the key content of the article but also strengthen the reader's impression - and this is the beautiful experience that the author, illustrator, and editor all want to bring to the reader!

Tan Jianqiao (Author)

Macau physician.
Undergraduate in Medical Science from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Master's in Cardiology from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Bachelor's in Chinese Language and Literature from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, and Diploma in Family Medicine from the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians. Currently, he is an attending physician in the Cardiology Department of Kang Wu Hospital in Macau, specializing in cardiac catheterization and the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

He has a passion for history and literature and devotes himself to writing in his spare time from medical work. He is also a member of the China Writers Association, a member of the Macau Pen Club, a member of the Macau Writers Association, an executive director of the Macau Chinese Culture Development Promotion Association, and a columnist for the "Macau Daily News". He has won multiple literary creation awards.

He is the author of "Hidden Stories Not Written in History Textbooks," "The Dragon on the Sickbed," "Fatal Inside Stories Missed by Historical Materials," "The Medicinal Smell Undetectable in World History," and others (many have been published in Simplified Chinese editions).