Ch. 13: Chapter 13: Hand-Copied Books

“Turn right outside, cross two streets and you’ll find a cold-water well by the river,” Huixiang replied. “That’s where—”

“Not tonight,” Madam Liang interrupted. “You can’t see in the dark. You might fall. Go tomorrow morning. Heaven help us, he’s even forgotten where we fetch water. What are we to do?”

“He’s remembered a lot already, Mother. The rest will come back. Don’t worry.”

Zuo Shaoyang agreed to wait. He carried the basin into the hall, found a low stool and sat down to take off his shoes and stockings. The water was too hot to plunge his feet straight in. Watching the two women wash the bowls, he said, “I went past Huimin Hall just now. They had so many patients! If we had that many, we wouldn’t have to worry about the rent.”

“How could we compare with Huimin Hall?” his mother replied. “Their head physician is said to have held a medical post in the capital under the last dynasty. He’s treated princes and chief ministers!”

“Being famous doesn’t necessarily mean being good.”

“Perhaps not,” Huixiang said, “but patients go where the reputation is. Father has none. Even if he cures them, people don’t think much of it.”

“I wouldn’t say that. If Father really cures Auntie Zhao, I think she’ll appreciate it. Her stomach pain goes on and on. It’s miserable. She’s bound to be pleased if it stops.”

“Yes. Let’s hope she’s pleased enough to give us more time with the rent. After New Year, perhaps we’ll get more patients and save enough to pay some of it. I’m only afraid that if the medicine doesn’t help, she’ll lose her temper and turn us out before New Year’s Eve…”

A cold voice came from the bedroom on the left.

“Do you realise what time it is? Why aren’t you in bed? Have you three eaten so much you’ve nothing better to do than talk?”

Huixiang glanced at Zuo Shaoyang and stuck out her tongue.

“Enough,” Madam Liang whispered. “Once we’ve finished, go home. Hou Pu and the children are waiting. You’ve been working all day. Get some rest.”

“All right.”

By the time the bowls were washed and the room tidied, Zuo Shaoyang had finished soaking his feet. He stood with the basin, unsure where to empty it. Huixiang took it from him, went into the kitchen and poured it away with a splash. Returning, she straightened her clothes.

“I’m off, Mother. You sleep in the outer room on the right, little brother. Get some rest. If anyone comes in the night with an emergency, go and see to them first. Don’t let Father get up. It’s so cold, he might catch a chill.”

“All right.”

Her house was close by, near the county yamen. He urged her to take care, opened the door and watched her leave before bolting it again.

Madam Liang reminded him to go to bed, then retired to her own room. Oil lamp in hand, he entered the outer room on the right.

It was fairly large, divided into two sections. Most of the outer part was used for processing medicinal ingredients. Stoves and pots lined one side; chopping blades, water basins, bronze mortars, hammers and other tools occupied the other. The smaller inner section held raw ingredients, all cheap and unprocessed.

His sister had told him to sleep here. But where? There was no bed.

He raised the lamp and looked about. Its dim glow eventually revealed a small platform above the inner storeroom. Perhaps that was his sleeping place. How was he supposed to reach it?

At last he found a wooden ladder beside the storeroom. He propped it up and climbed carefully, carrying the lamp.

It was a bed, after all—so small that turning over might require care. A coarse kudzu-and-hemp mattress lay beneath a thin quilt. He felt the mattress, then lifted a corner. Straw. It rustled beneath him as he climbed on.

A narrow shelf at the head of the bed held several books. He set the lamp beside them and took them down.

All were handwritten, in tiny, neat, vigorous characters. The hand matched the shop sign, the couplets on either side of the entrance and Zuo Gui’s prescriptions. Presumably his father had copied them somewhere for his son’s medical studies.

Before the Tang, limitations in printing and other conditions meant that medical knowledge travelled largely through handwritten copies or even oral instruction. Books in the modern sense were scarce.

These were chiefly collections of formulas and their indications. Some prescriptions came from pre-Tang works such as the *Supplementary Records of Famous Physicians* and the *Treatise on Cold Damage*. Interspersed were passages on disease from the *Basic Questions*, *Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica*, the *Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon* and the *Treatise on Cold Damage*.

He knew the chief passages of these classics by heart. On closer inspection, he found the extracts not only incomplete but often wrong.

Other formulas were unfamiliar. Perhaps they were remedies used in the early Tang and later lost. The thought pleased him. He might learn some forgotten ancient prescriptions from these little books.

He went through each one carefully.

The results disappointed him. Judging by the ingredients, combinations and indications, most addressed common cold-damage illnesses and miscellaneous ailments. They used ordinary medicines in unremarkable combinations. Some were questionable; a few were plainly flawed.

It was understandable. Errors could pass from one handwritten copy to another. More importantly, no official body of authorities had reviewed and approved them. Mistakes were inevitable. Many were empirical remedies, and chance played too great a part in such experience for him to trust it without question.

He shook his head as he finished. If these were the books Father used to treat people, no wonder business was so poor that he could not pay the rent.

Some pages were worn and damaged from long use. If Zuo Gui had studied them himself before passing them to Zuo Zhong—the dead young man whose body he now occupied—that was readily explained. But if he had copied them afresh for his son, and Zuo Zhong had worn them out through study, then the young man must have worked hard indeed.

With teaching like this, however, even hard work would lead nowhere.

The room was bitterly cold. His lined jacket offered little warmth and his fingers were stiff, but he persisted until he had read all the little manuscripts. With a sigh, he replaced them on the shelf and knelt to spread his quilt.

It was very thin, stitched into a grid rather like a modern down jacket. The filling felt hard and uneven, as though someone had stuffed tangled strips of cloth between the layers.

He could hardly believe it would keep him warm.

A distant watchman sounded the hour. He had quietly asked Huixiang how to interpret the calls and clappers. It was only the first watch, around eight or nine in the evening by modern reckoning.

He was a night owl, unused to going to bed so early. Everything about his arrival in the past was still so novel that he felt no inclination to sleep. Why not take a short walk?

Huixiang had told him curfew began at the second watch. If he stayed near home and came back when it sounded, surely there could be no harm.

He carried the lamp down the ladder and inspected the room, particularly the crude tools used to prepare medicines. With a sigh at their simplicity, he slipped into the hall and on to the kitchen.

That was cruder still: a large earthen stove with two iron pots, one large and one small, beneath wooden lids. Both were empty. So were the two bamboo steamers on the hearth. A bamboo sieve beside them did hold something—the mulberry root bark stripped from the roots he and his sister had dug that afternoon, now washed and cut into shreds.

The covered water jar stood beside the stove, with the pair of buckets next to it. Against one wall was a low wooden cupboard. Inside he found a small cloth bag. It felt soft. He opened it and saw a little dark flour. Firewood lay in a corner.

Looking farther into the kitchen, he noticed a small bolted door.

He took the lamp over, gently slid the bolt aside and opened it a crack.

A gust of freezing wind swept in. The lamp went out with a soft puff.

The room vanished into darkness. —-

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