Xu Dachun

[2] Outside of medicine, Xu also wrote lengthy treatises on irrigation,[1] Taoist philosophy,[1] and zaju (a form of Chinese opera).

"[7] Xu was a traditionalist who believed that the decline of medicine in China—and Chinese civilisation in general—was due to a "straying from the path of the sages of antiquity".

[9] Xu was highly critical of physicians who attempted to explain medicine in terms of yin and yang or the wuxing (Five Phases).

[1] Xu accurately noted that Jiang's illness was terminal and was subsequently offered a position in the Imperial Medical Department, which he declined.

[1] Writing in the Suiyang quanji shortly after his death,[4] biographer Yuan Mei (袁枚) remarked: "(Xu) was especially adept in traditional Chinese medicine; every time he visited with a patient he was so familiar with the system whereby the vital organs of the body are meant to work that he seemingly could communicate with them so that they would be restored to their right condition.