Fuddland

In stark contrast to the imperious Cáo Cāo (曹操), one of his contemporaries and another resident of Bózhōu (亳州) was the legendary physician Huà Tuó (华佗). [And when I say “legendary”, I of course mean, “I’d never heard of him until I went to Bózhōu, but he does seem to have been pretty important.”]

As well as being a renowned practitioner of traditional medicine, perhaps his most significant achievement was the first recorded use of anaesthetic during surgery — 1,800 years ago.

He might have passed his extensive knowledge on to future generations had he not irked Cáo Cāo by refusing to treat the tyrant’s chronic headaches exclusively — a stubbornness that cost him his life. [In fairness, his recommended treatment was to numb the pain with hashish then split Cáo Cāo’s head open with an axe to extract the pus, so one can perhaps understand Cáo Cāo’s desire for continuous pain-relief treatment rather than extreme surgery.]

The fairly simple former monastery of Huázǔ’ān that has been designated a tribute to Huà Tuó doesn’t offer much to see beyond a tastefully-displayed statue of the man himself with a potted biography and a few other historical artifacts, but is worth seeing if only for completeness.