Volume 6 Issue 2 - Summer 2011

by Merlin Young and Jenny Craig

The Moxibustion Method for Consumptive Disease was the title of a tract from the seventh century. Written by a nebulous Tang physician named Cui Zhidi, the text was subsequently lost, but it was referred to by other authorsrepeatedly while it was still extant, exerting both interest and influence for several centuries. For us today it offers just the earliest reference to the treatment of what is quite clearly tuberculosis with direct moxibustion. Chapters 51and 73 of the Ling Shu both had suggested earlier that mox ibstion a might be indicated for intractable disease if needling failed (Jing Nuan 1993) – these references in the Ling Shu quite clearly came of age in Cui Zhidi’s text.