华佗
Hua Tuo wrote down his medical techniques while awaiting execution, but destroyed his "Qing Nang Shu" (; literally "green bag book", which became a Classical Chinese term for "medical practices text"). This loss to traditional Chinese medicine was irreplaceable. Ilza Veith notes that, "Unfortunately, Hua T'o's works were destroyed; his surgical practices fell into disuse, with the exception of his method of castration, which continued to be practised. Due to the religious stigma attached to the practice of surgery, the social position accorded to the surgeon became increasingly lower and thus made a revival of Chinese surgery impossible." A "Liezi" legend claims that the renowned physician Bian Que ( 500 BCE) used anaesthesia to perform a double heart transplantation, but the fourth-century text was compiled after Hua Tuo used "mafeisan".