Zhang Family Throat Clinic

Historical origins

A report by People's Daily Online, Jiangsu, of 2 January 2025 states that the Zhang Family Throat Clinic has been transmitted for four generations and is the "gold-letter signboard" of Zhetang Health Centre. "Gold-letter signboard" is the wording of the report and is reproduced here in quotation marks. The report does not give the starting date of the clinic or the names of the four generations of transmitters, and no other source in this library does so; these remain to be added.

Transmission and safeguarding

According to the reply of the district Culture and Tourism Bureau dated 25 November 2022, ten items at national, provincial and municipal level were being submitted, among them the Luoshan Great Dragon, the Putang Bridge Cishan Temple Fair, the shehuo fire festival, the "five strikes" and the Zhang Family Throat Clinic. That document gives the position as of 2022 and is a submission list; the formal level of a project follows the lists published by the authorities at each level.

According to the report by People's Daily Online, Jiangsu, the clinic was rated in 2023 as a representative item of provincial intangible cultural heritage in traditional medicine. That is the media's wording; the formal project name and batch number follow the list published by Jiangsu province, and the sources used here give no batch number, so the batch is recorded by year only.

The third annex to the district's third-batch list, "List of representative bearers, nineteen persons in all", includes Shu Zhaoxing as a bearer of the Zhang Family Throat Clinic. The same annex also carries the entry "Chinese medicine", with Zhang Yuanzhong and Jiang Ting as its bearers; whether that entry and the throat clinic belong to the same project has not been verified in the original annex, and the two are not combined here.

Uncertainties

First, the rating as a provincial intangible cultural heritage item in 2023 is the media's wording, the batch number has not been verified, and the formal list follows the documents published by Jiangsu province.

Second, the statement that the clinic has been transmitted for four generations is the report's wording; the names of the transmitters of each generation and the dates of their practice have not been verified.

Third, the relation between the "Chinese medicine" entry in the third annex and the Zhang Family Throat Clinic remains to be established, and this entry does not count the two together.

Fourth, the clinic's methods of diagnosis and treatment, its prescriptions and the way it is transmitted within the hospital have no source in this library and remain to be added.