Guo Weihuai

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Guo Weihuai was born into a family of traditional Chinese medicine and, from childhood, studied Luoyang bone-setting under his father Guo Canruo, a fifth-generation inheritor of Luoyang bone-setting, and his mother Gao Yunfeng. His efforts made Luoyang bone-setting an academic school with a complete theoretical system, rich scholarly content, and distinctive clinical efficacy. Within the regional tradition and school record of TCM Bone-setting Therapy in China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences: It is an important component of traditional Chinese medicine, with a history of more than three thousand years to the present day.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

A man of the Han ethnicity, he was born in 1929 in Luoyang, Henan. In 1956, together with Gao Yunfeng, he founded the Henan Luoyang Bone-setting Hospital, characterized by the Pingle Guo family bone-setting tradition of Luoyang; in 1958 he established the Henan Pingle Bone-setting Medical College, the first university of bone-setting in China; and in 1959 he established the Henan Luoyang Bone-setting Research Institute, later renamed the Henan Bone-setting Research Institute. Beginning in 1994, he jointly ran adult college classes in traditional Chinese medicine orthopedics and traumatology with the Henan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, personally teaching and guiding students in clinical practice. In the medicinal treatment of fractures, he proposed the pattern-based treatment principle of 'breaking up, activating, and supplementing' (po, huo, bu), that is, 'dispelling stasis and rejoining the bones in the early stage, quickening the blood and rejoining the bones in the middle stage, and supplementing the kidney and strengthening the bones in the late stage.' In the treatment of soft-tissue injuries, he summarized such methods as point-pressure massage (dianxue anmo), medicine-rubbing massage (rouyao anmo), and the method of quickening the blood and ordering the sinews (huoxue lijin fa), enriching the content of traditional Chinese medicine in this field. In bone-setting manipulation, he summarized eight methods, including palpation with mental comprehension (shoumo xinhui), traction reduction (qianla fuzhi), and pushing, squeezing, lifting, and pressing (tuiji tian), for clinical use, raising the rate of successful fracture reduction. His monographs include Pingle Bone-setting (Pingle Zhenggu) and Concise Bone-setting (Jianming Zhenggu). Within the documented technical tradition of TCM Bone-setting Therapy in China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences: Traditional Chinese medicine bone-setting therapy is a treatment method that, through manipulations such as traction, repositioning, and alignment, employs external fixation with small splints to treat fractures, joint dislocations, and other diseases of the locomotor system. Through long-term medical practice, Chinese bone-setting has formed a distinctive theoretical system and complete principles and methods of treatment, and has accumulated very rich experience. The "small splint fixation" used in bone-setting was first developed in China and was later emulated by many countries. Chinese bone-setting can be called one of the great contributions of traditional Chinese medicine to world medicine. Among these traditions, some are documented in the literature, while others have survived only through oral transmission among the people. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Traction, reduction and apposition": Traction opens the overriding ends, reduction realigns them and apposition corrects the rest, all held by small splints, a fixation first devised in China. "The eight methods for sinew injury": His eight sinew methods come from the Liu Shoushan line, and he always paired manual treatment with differentiated herbal formulas. "Breaking, moving and tonifying in stages": Drug treatment moves in three stages — expel stasis, activate blood, then strengthen the kidney — alongside eight manual methods for reduction. "Adjusting the small splints": Splints are shaped to site and displacement and loosened as swelling subsides, keeping fixation and movement together.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

A national representative bearer of TCM Bone-setting Therapy, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project; chief physician of the Henan Luoyang Bone-setting Hospital; lifelong council member of the China Association of Chinese Medicine; and honorary president of the Henan Luoyang Bone-setting Hospital. From 1958 to the present, he has trained nearly three thousand professionals in traditional Chinese medicine orthopedics and traumatology for the country. He was awarded the Bethune Medal by the Ministry of Health.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Guo Weihuai · National Representative Bearer Archive