TCM Bone-setting Therapy

Ⅸ-6Traditional MedicineShanghaiBatch 5 (2021)Extension ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

The Wei family's traumatology originated from the Wei family of hereditary doctors in Cao County, Shandong. Wei Zhixin was the twenty-first-generation inheritor and studied the family medicine from childhood. In 1925, Wei Zhixin went alone to make his way in Shanghai. In 1955, Wei Zhixin closed his private clinic, joined the Shanghai Second Medical College, and established traditional Chinese traumatology departments simultaneously at Guangci Hospital (now Ruijin Hospital), Renji Hospital, and Xinhua Hospital.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Wei family's traumatology is a famous school of traditional Chinese orthopedics and traumatology characterized by "combining internal administration with external medication, and supplementing manipulation with therapeutic exercise (daoyin)." He hung out his shingle at Shouxiang Lane, Fangbang Bridge, in the old Nanshi district of Shanghai; after the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, he moved to Luban Road in the French Concession (now Chongqing South Road) and opened a private clinic. Thanks to his outstanding medical skill and noble medical ethics, he quickly became renowned in Shanghai. Under the guidance of the holistic view of traditional Chinese medicine, the Wei family's traumatology takes as its academic thought "qi and blood are essential, with equal weight to sinews and bones; the liver and kidneys are paramount, with the spleen and stomach secured; emphasis on manipulation and the restoration of balance." It identifies injuries through comprehensive reference to multiple signs, treats injuries with combined internal and external therapy, prizes manipulation in treating injuries, and values therapeutic exercise in healing injuries. It has created distinctive internal and external medications as well as manipulation and therapeutic exercise. The internal and external medication forms are complete. Internal prescriptions include decoctions (56 kinds), pills (18 kinds), powders (8 kinds), and medicinal liquors (3 kinds); external medications include poultices (4 kinds), powders (3 kinds), plasters (4 kinds), medicinal liquids (1 kind), ointments (3 kinds), hot-compress medicines (2 kinds), wash formulas (14 kinds), and steam-compress medicines (1 kind). It possesses numerous proven and secret formulas, such as the steam-compress formula and Fuqi Pills. Manipulations are divided into single and compound techniques. The single techniques include 12 reduction manipulations for fractures and dislocations and 8 manipulations for soft-tissue injuries; there are 18 compound techniques. The Wei family's traumatology takes clinical diagnosis and treatment as its main mode of practice, with its inheritors' concrete clinical application of internal and external medications, manipulation, and therapeutic exercise as its means of medical practice.

Internal and external medicine together

Sixty-five internal formulas and thirty-two external ones give the school a medicine for every stage of injury.

Single and compound manipulations

Twelve reduction methods and eight soft-tissue methods, plus eighteen compound routines for chronic conditions.

Exercises by body part

Fifty-four exercises are sorted by body part, so a patient need only practise the region affected.

Hard, soft, internal and external injury

Injuries are sorted into four classes, each with its own sequence of examination, treatment and exercise.

From a Shandong family to Ruijin Hospital

The twenty-first inheritor brought a Shandong family line to Shanghai hospitals in 1925 and 1955; it now spans ten institutions and twenty-four generations.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

At present, it is mainly distributed across 10 medical institutions in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangdong. It emphasizes the holistic concept and the classification of injuries, dividing injuries into four major categories: hard injuries, soft injuries, internal injuries, and external injuries. Therapeutic exercises are divided into jaw exercises (4 forms), neck exercises (5 forms), back exercises (4 forms), waist exercises (10 forms), upper-limb exercises (17 forms), and lower-limb exercises (14 forms).

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

In 1958, the Shanghai Institute of Traumatology (now the Shanghai Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics) was established, with Wei Zhixin serving as deputy director. Through the transmission, summarization, and organization by Li Guoheng and Shi Jiazhong, twenty-second-generation inheritors, and their disciples, the relevant academic thought and experience in treating injuries were enriched and perfected. At present, the Wei family's traumatology has been transmitted to the twenty-fourth generation, having gone through several centuries. With Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to the Medical College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University as its main transmission center, the heritage project also has Wei family traumatology inheritors practicing at five other hospitals in Shanghai and four hospitals in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangdong, providing patients with Wei family traumatology services. In the course of transmission, the cultural connotations of the Wei family's traumatology have been summarized as "the medical ethics of benevolence as the foundation, the practice of medicine through holding to the mean and seeking harmony, and the medical characteristic of using martial arts to aid medicine," reflecting the characteristics of traditional Chinese medical culture. At the same time, the distinctive culture of the Wei family's traumatology has further prompted its generations of inheritors to always uphold the concept of "healing the wounded and rescuing the dying, with benevolence as the foundation," take relieving patients' pain as their mission, and continuously innovate and develop. It possesses significant historical, cultural, social, and medical value. Shi Yinyu (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of the Han ethnicity, born in November 1942, a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu. Professor. For more than fifty years in medicine, he has actively conducted theoretical and clinical research on degenerative bone and joint diseases represented by osteoarthropathy and osteoporosis. He has proposed academic views such as "treating injury and disease through syndrome differentiation and knowing the person," "viewing the whole body and regulating concurrent pathogens," and "root deficiency and branch impediment in sinew-and-bone diseases," and developed several new drugs and hospital preparations with independent intellectual property rights, including Qigu Capsules, Nourishing-Blood-and-Softening-Hardness Capsules, Huaizhen Liver-Nourishing Capsules, and the Anti-Bone-Hyperplasia Decoction. He has compiled works such as "Shi Xiaoshan and Shi Youshan's Experience in Treating Injuries and Selected Proven Formulas," published more than sixty academic papers, and supervised and trained more than twenty students, who have become the backbone of the transmission of the Shi family's traumatology. He is a representative inheritor of Bone-Setting Therapy (Shanghai Shi Family Traumatology), a fifth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item. He has received multiple awards, including the First Prize in Natural Science of the National Science and Technology Award nominated by the Ministry of Education, the Third China Pharmacy Development Award (Kangchen Osteoporosis Medical Research Award) of the Pharmacy Development Fund Committee of the China Science and Technology Development Foundation, and the Academic Achievement Award, and has applied for three invention patents.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回英文名录。