"The Shang Han Lun" (On Cold Damage), is among the oldest surviving, the most copiously annotated and the most revered of China's traditional medical texts. Of all of China's early medical classics, the "Shang Han Lun" is undoubtedly the one with the greatest relevance to the modern practice of Chinese medicine, and the one most deserving of Western attention. It was the first book to attempt to incorporate medicinal therapy into the medicine of systematic correspondences and channels and network vessels. Far ahead of its time in both theory and practice, it is not surprising that the prescriptions it contains, comprise an important part of today's medicinal formulary.