Cancer-related afflictions have increased at an alarming rate in this century. Records from the United States Department of Health indicate that cancer claims one life every four minutes. Let me summarize what Chinese medical history says about cancer.
In the Ling Chu Classic, the chapter on “Lesions” contains much information on epidermal lesions, but does not clearly describe the symptoms we recognize as cancer. The chapter “Carbuncles and Boils” relates the appearance of skin ulcers which show characteristics of cancer lesions, though the two are quite different.
The Tang Dynasty (613~906 AD) physician Yan Shih-ying authored a medical guide in which he recounts an unknown illness. He said the first symptoms appeared as skin ulcers similar to boils, i.e., plain hard bumps which neither itched nor hurt. Cutting these “ulcers” caused great pain’ and, upon inspection, each contained small holes—symptoms different from normal skin ulcers. So Dr. Yang, a physician of courageous intelligence, created a new character that symbolize’d these inner holes. He called it p’ing chuang, the “many-holed ulcer.” Gradually, by Sung times (960 to 1279 AD), this character is found scattered amongst an ever increasing number of medical files, though doctors had yet to agree upon a definite name or conclusive treatment.
Doctors noticed that when the ulcers were broken, the holes looked as deep as “a cave in a ravine,” prompting some to name this the “cave-like” illness. Doctors returned to the original character Dr. Yang had created with its pictographs of mouths, or holes. Below the “mouth” radical they placed the “mountain” radical coming from the “cave” character and signifying depth. The final character composed the radicals for mouths above a mountain and were enclosed in the “illness” radical. Doctors pronounced this character ai. From Dr. Ts’ung Chin-chien on, what the world recognizes today as the English word “cancer” was called in Chinese ai cheng.
Summary: The T’ang doctor Yang Shih-ying name the illness “p’ing chuang,” as the broken lesions contained holes that caused great pain.
Question: Did cancer exist in pre-T’ang times?
Answer: I suspect so, but lacking pre-Tang medical files, I can only surmise.
source: Master of Five Excellences