Yan Dexin
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
A man of Han ethnicity, he was born in 1920 in Danyang, Jiangsu. Since 2002 he has served as director of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine at Tongji University, director of the Shanghai Center for the Treatment of Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases, and lifetime professor at Shanghai Shuguang Hospital. Yan Dexin was born into a family with a tradition of medicine and pharmacy; his father was a disciple of He Jiheng, a celebrated physician of the Menghe school. Yan Dexin graduated from the Shanghai College of Chinese Medicine in 1939, and in 1956 was transferred to the Central Hospital of the Shanghai Railway Bureau. He devoted himself to the study of therapies for activating the blood and resolving stasis (huoxue huayu); in the treatment of blood diseases in particular, he boldly used realgar (xionghuang) and treated patients according to pattern types, achieving satisfactory results. On the basis of decades of clinical practice, Yan Dexin advanced the theses that 'protracted illness necessarily entails stasis' and 'strange illness necessarily entails stasis', and proposed the 'balancing method' (hengfa) as a therapeutic principle. Taking 'qi is the leader of all diseases, and blood is the origin of all diseases' as his guiding thread, he differentiated and treated all manner of conditions; he also advanced such views as 'invigorating yang qi', 'pattern differentiation of qi and blood', and 'the spleen governs the four viscera', all of which were applied in clinical treatment. In 2001, under the leadership of the Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau, the Shanghai Clinical Medical Center for Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases of Chinese Medicine was established, with Yan Dexin as its academic leader. His writings include the Medical Collection of Canzhixuan (Canzhixuan Yiji), The Therapy of Activating Blood and Resolving Stasis: A Gathering of Esteemed Medical Arts (Huoxue Huayu Liaofa Xin Yi Yi Huicui), and Qi, Blood, and Longevity (Qixue yu Changshou). He has lectured on many occasions in the United States, Canada, Thailand, *, and other countries.
Honors & Recognition
He is a national representative bearer of TCM Cognition of Life and Disease, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project, a chief physician at the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Tongji University in Shanghai, a council member of the China Association of Chinese Medicine, a specially appointed professor and doctoral supervisor at Shanghai Normal University and Changchun University of Chinese Medicine, and a member of the review committee of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
References & Archival Sources
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