Wudang Daoist Medicine

Wudang Daoist medicine arose in the Qin-Han, developed through the Song-Yuan and flowered in the Ming, distributed mainly through the mountain's temples and folk. As early as the late Han, Wudang monks were taking herbs for wellness and healing; through Ge Hong in the Jin and Tao Hongjing in the Qi-Liang, and the rise of Daoist internal alchemy after the late Tang, its medical learning grew. Of the 1892 herbs in Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica, 417 are found on Wudang.

Wudang Daoist medicine holds a systematic theory and set of wellness practices, with its unique "four ones" therapy—one furnace of elixir, one pair of hands, one needle, one handful of herbs—uniting prevention, treatment and recovery, blending internal-alchemy cultivation, massage and manipulation, acupuncture and herbal prescription, and herb gathering and elixir making, in the tradition that "nine of ten Daoists are physicians" and that medicine serves the Way.

Wudang Daoist medicine is a typical meeting of Chinese traditional medicine and Daoist culture, of real value for studying Daoist wellness, local herbal resources and traditional therapies, and remains a core draw of Wudang's wellness tourism today.