Biography

Medical Career

Around 1832 when se was bout sixteen years old, Gù Déhuá became sick with summerheat condition. Summerheat condition was characterized by the dangerous effects of high temperatures. These symptoms could include heavy sweating, fainting, muscle cramps, and nausea. Other risks included heatstroke and heat exhaustion. 

When she went to doctors at the time, they prescribed her various medicines that were unsuccessful. She remained sick for almost a month and almost died. While battling the sickness, she lost consciousness but prayed for her family as they were anxious for her. She also wanted to get better in order to take care of her aging parents. She selflessly prayed to help extend their lifespan. 

In a semiconscious state, she had an impactful dream that would push her toward medicine. 

"I had dreamed I had arrived at a tower with stone stairs rising into the sky. I went up three winding flights of stairs. It was cleaner than anything I had ever seen. A man wearing a green cloak called my name, Dehua, and said, “There is a magic pill (língdān) on the top floor to save you.” I immediately knocked my head on the ground in thanks and asked if he could grant me the pill to increase my parents’ lifespan. He said he could, and I was very happy. When I was halfway up the stairs, my grandfather came to check on me, and I woke up.

...

Then I saw someone dressed in black robes and a silk hat. He used a bowl of cool water to wash the crown of my head and advised me to change doctors. Suddenly, the coolness penetrated into my heart and spleen, and I woke up.” 

- Gù Déhuá

Gù Déhuá recounts her dream in her own book in the excerpt above. After she awoke and told her parents about the dreams she had had, her parents decided to switch doctors. After the switch, she recovered, slowly but surely. 

At the culmination of her recovery, she promptly started reading medical formula books instead of embroidering. Still, she wasn't yet interested in practicing medicine. 

Only a year later, her father became sick with an "incurable" lung abscess. Gù Déhuá's family-oriented perspective meant she nursed her father for an entire year when she was only eighteen years old. He eventually did recover, but she still resisted the call of medicine. 

A poetry teacher commented on her writings:

"Her father once suffered from a lung abscess and recovered when she cut off some flesh from her thigh."

This extreme act of filial piety showed her respect for her family.

Around 1840, Déhuá started coughing up blood and decided to travel to physician, Lǐ Qīngyá. She rented a place near him and was supposed to be resting. During that time, she wrote lots of poetry until Lǐ Qīngyá finally said to her: 

"If your state of mind is not empty, it is hard for medicine to cure."

With his subtle urging, she decided to become his student. After he trained both her and her husband, he commanded them to help the poor and sick. She still felt inadequate in providing medical care as evidenced by the letters she sent to Qīngyá. She worried she was not educated enough, that she was a woman too. 

By 1842, Déhuá's town was hit with a devastating malaria outbreak. Some of her own relatives were sick for over six months, and at their most desperate, they begged her to treat them. Her family's doctors could not find a cure. 

Déhuá would successfully treat many people in her community, one even being the wife of the superintendent of Imperial Silk Manufacturing. The wife, after recovering fully, felt so indebted to Déhuá that she "adopted" her into the family. Historians note that she was modest, and stayed hesitant to treat more people. 

Life as an Author

Gù Déhuá was known to be a poet prior to becoming a medical physician. Even as she was learning medicine, she wrote poetry and practiced writing. Her ability to write influenced the preface that she included in her book. Interestingly, her book was not published or copied prior to her death. After her death, her work was hand copied. To date, there have not been any more of her written work found or preserved. 

Biography

Some 40 years after the birth of Gù Déhuá, Zéng Yì was born into a large family. Zéng Yì had both brothers and sisters that shaped her childhood and career path. Her father died in the Taiping Rebellion when she was only ten years old, causing her mother to move their entire family to her father's hometown. 

Yì noted that her family had an extensive medical book collection. Scholars know very little about her life besides these few snippets. The majority of the knowledge of her is found in her book. From her book, it is evident that her family bound her feet. In fact, she writes: 

“I remember as a child, every day when we came back from school, my older brothers and their friends had no limits. They caught butterflies and looked for flowers with unrestrained pleasure. I was aware of the heavy weight my body carried, with feet like shackles. Even gently touching them made me cry. The suffering from this situation is unimaginable.”

She continues to lament that she hated having her feet bound. Footbinding was supposedly for the aesthetic and economic purpose of making women more admirable to society. Footbinding was extremely painful, the continual rebreaking of bones in the feet until the toes curled around in on the foot itself. Despite its painful symptoms and terrible prognosis, women throughout China perpetuated this practice.