Ge Hong's Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One's Sleeve included remedies for urgent use. Its instructions for obtaining juice from sweet wormwood later attracted the attention of modern researchers.
Connecting an ancient prescription to a modern medicine requires experiments, extraction, and validation. An ancient preparation method cannot simply be equated with modern clinical treatment.
Career
By Ge Hong's time, although the family was declining, he was employed in numerous high ranking positions within the bureaucracy of the time.
In his public service role as an official, he was often asked to appraise his friends and acquaintances as possible candidates for government office positions and was also chosen to perform military service. However, he was unhappy with his life as an official and general. Although he never rejected Confucianism, he grew interested in Taoist cultivation and elixirs to achieve the spiritual freedoms of Taoist Immortality.
In the second year of Tai'an in the Western Jin Dynasty (AD 303), Ge Hong was promoted due to his contributions in calming the peasant uprising led by Shi Bing in Yangzhou.
In the first year of Guangxi (AD 306), Ji Han, the newly promoted governor of Guangzhou, recommended Ge Hong to join the ranks as an army official. Ge Hong first went to Guangzhou, but after Ji Han was killed, he went to Mount Luofu to live in seclusion. There, he gathered herbal medicine, refined elixirs, and documented numerous cases of illness.
Later, Ge Hong became a disciple of Bao Liang, then prefect of Nanhai, from whom he learned alchemy and received the Sanhuangjing. He also married Bao Liang's daughter Bao Gu, who excelled in the techniques of moxibustion.
In the second year of Jianxing of Emperor Min (AD 313), Ge Hong returned to his hometown, but still lived in seclusion and did not work as an official. In the first year of Jianwu of Emperor Yuan of Jin (AD 317), the Inner and Outer Chapters of Baopuzi were written.
In the first year of Xianhe (AD 326), he was called by Wang Dao to serve as under the position of "Zhubo", later promoted to "consulting general".
In the 7th year of Xianhe, he heard that Jiaozhi County (present-day Vietnam) produced cinnabar, and asked Emperor Cheng to serve as the magistrate of Gouti (near present-era Hà Sơn Bình province). After receiving the Emperor's consent, his family traveled south. When he arrived in Guangzhou, he was asked to remain, so Ge Hong once again lived in seclusion in Mount Luofu to refine elixirs.
Impact
Hong's main contributions were in Chinese alchemy and medicine, and also as a religious scholar integrating Confucianism and Taoism. Ge Hong questioned ancient writings and was against the traditionalism of the time, whereby older writings were valued while newer ideas were less respected, and instead emphasized innovation and methods which involved experimentation and results. This was especially the case in his work in medicine and alchemy. In medical practice, Ge Hong read a large number of medical books in his analysis and research. He summarized treatment experience and collected knowledge from folk treatments, compiling works such as the hundred-scrolled book Yuhanfang.
Ge Hong's Emergency Formulae at an Elbow's Length described preparations from Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood, in connection with recurring fevers. Centuries later, the Chinese researcher Tu Youyou studied this textual tradition while investigating antimalarial compounds. The ancient description helped direct attention to extraction conditions, and her research contributed to the discovery of artemisinin from the same plant. That later work was recognized as part of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Hong was knowledgeable about chemistry. He documented the redox reaction of mercury. He also discovered that chalcanthite (copper sulfate pentahydrate) can be transformed to a golden bronze-like alloy, using the redox reaction involving copper sulfate and iron.
There is a hall in Xiaolingfeng Temple in Ningbo, in which enshrines a statue of Ge Hong. In the second year of Xianhe (AD 327), Hong came here to distill elixirs. When he lived in seclusion in the Lingfeng peaks (in the Yandang Mountains) nearby, a plague occurred, and he practiced medicine to help locals.