Ji Fu’an of Caozhou was a cattle-doctor by trade. A rich man of his acquaintance had asthma; the physicians were called and failed, so Ji treated him by the method he used on cattle, and it worked. Thereafter he styled himself a famous physician and practised the healer’s art across Qi and Lu.
One day, napping at noon, a servant came with a card inviting him out. Without asking whose house it was, Ji told him to lead the way. He arrived in a hall where he saw several dozen figures, yellow-faced and bone-thin, crowding round to have their pulses felt. Ji looked carefully — every one of them was someone he had once failed to cure.
He started. “Is this the underworld?”
“It is,” they said.
“Then what do you want me for?”
“Doctor, you brought us here,” they said. “We are hoping you will take us out.”
With no way out, he forced himself to write a prescription. They peered at it for a long while. “One dose may not do it. We would trouble the doctor to stay two or three months.”
Ji wept and begged to go home. They grew angry: “If this place is unbearable to live in, what did you send us here for!” And they rose in a crowd and beat him.
Ji woke with a jolt, felt a dull ache in his left cheek, and on checking found the marks of fingernails.
