Hua Tuo
For example, since the wood phase was believed to promote the fire phase, medicinal ingredients associated with the wood phase could be used to heal an organ associated with the fire phase. Besides dieting, Han physicians also prescribed moxibustion, acupuncture, and calisthenics as methods of maintaining one's health. When surgery was performed by the Chinese physician Hua Tuo (d. AD 208), he used anesthesia to numb his patients' pain and prescribed a rubbing ointment that allegedly sped the process of healing surgical wounds. Whereas the physician Zhang Zhongjing ( – ) is known to have written the "Shanghan lun" ("Dissertation on Typhoid Fever"), it is thought that both he and Hua Tuo collaborated in compiling the "Shennong Ben Cao Jing" medical text.