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Abstract
During his 40 years of paediatric specialist practice an assistant wrote down Qian Yi's diagnoses and treatments, posthumously publishing these in 1119 as the Xiaoer Yaozheng Zhijue (Appropriate Ways of Recognising and Treating Children's Illness).3 Another notable paediatric specialist of this era was Dong Ji who wrote the Xiaoer Banzhen Beiji Fanglun (Treatise on Children's Rashes) in 1093 and provided Chinese medicine's first detailed specialist discussion of smallpox and its treatment.2 In the following centuries many further paediatrics texts appeared describing the herbal medicine treatment of smallpox once it is established rather than focusing on preventative inoculation.4 Some later authors, ostensibly accessing documents now lost, made retrospective claims about the origins of smallpox inoculation. [...]the Niudou Xinshu (New Writings on Smallpox Inoculation), published in 1884, claimed that the first inoculations were carried out between 713 and 741 by a Dr. Zhao who, it was reported, advocated taking a small amount of powdered smallpox pustules in the nose as a preventative measure.4 These claims have not been substantiated and, coming as they do after Jenner's publication, may be an example of medical chauvinism (Vivienne Lo, personal communication).