The Modern Shāng Hán Lùn 傷寒論
Zhāng Zhòng-Jǐng wrote the Shāng Hán Lùn around 200 CE as a working manual — pattern, decision, formula. This edition keeps the clause structure intact and adds the commentary a practitioner actually needs in 2026: what the pattern looks like in clinic, how the formula is built, and where Australian scheduling law changes what you can dispense.
What's inside each clause
The clause itself
Original 中文, pinyin with tone marks, and a faithful English rendering — not a paraphrase.
Modern commentary
What the pattern looks like in a contemporary clinic, and the decision the clause is actually teaching.
The formula
Ingredients in pinyin and 中文, classical doses with modern gram equivalents, preparation notes and common modifications.
Scheduling guidance
Where a formula contains a restricted herb, you get its Australian schedule, the reason, and a practical substitution note.
How Volume I is organised
The Tài Yáng outline
太陽病提綱The defining signs of a Tài Yáng presentation, the split between wind-strike and cold damage, and how to read heat, chills and thirst before you commit to a formula.
The Guì Zhī Tāng family
桂枝湯類Exterior deficiency with sweating. The single most-modified formula in the book, and the template for how Zhòng-Jǐng adjusts a base prescription.
The Má Huáng Tāng family
麻黃湯類Exterior excess without sweating, the two dragons, and the point where scheduling law in Australia changes how these clauses are used in practice.
Mistreatment and transmuted patterns
太陽病變證What happens when you purge, sweat or vomit a patient who shouldn't have been — and how the classical corrections map to modern iatrogenic pictures.
The Shào Yáng overlap
少陽兼證Half-exterior, half-interior. Xiǎo Chái Hú Tāng and its relatives — the clauses most used in contemporary integrative practice.
Chest bind and epigastric focus
結胸與痞證Jié xiōng, pǐ patterns and the xiè xīn tāng group. Where the treatise turns toward the digestive complaints that fill a modern clinic.
Read a sample clause
「太陽之為病，脈浮，頭項強痛而惡寒。」
Tài yáng zhī wéi bìng, mài fú, tóu xiàng qiáng tòng ér wù hán.
In Tài Yáng disease the pulse is floating, the head and nape are stiff and painful, and there is aversion to cold.
Read the full commentaryOn restricted herbs
Several Tài Yáng formulas are built on herbs that are Schedule 4 in Australia — Má Huáng and Fù Zǐ among them. The classical prescriptions are reproduced in full, because you cannot understand the treatise without them, and every one carries its scheduling status and a substitution note. None of it is a recommendation to dispense a restricted substance. This is educational material for registered practitioners, not prescribing advice.