Wú Shījī 吳師機 (zì Shàngxiān 尚先, 1806–1886), late-Qīng physician of Qiántáng 錢塘 (Hángzhōu, Zhèjiāng), the founder of the modern Chinese discipline of external therapy (wàizhì xué 外治學) and specifically of systematic plaster-and-poultice therapy (báotiē 薄貼). Wú originally practised conventional internal medicine in cosmopolitan Hángzhōu; after the Tàipíng wars displaced him from his home base, he settled in the rural north-eastern district of Hǎilíng 海陵 (Tàizhōu, Jiāngsū), where in straitened circumstances he developed and tested his innovative báotiē therapeutic system.
His revolutionary doctrinal claim — set out in elaborate piánwén parallel prose in the Lǐyuè piánwén 理瀹駢文 (KR3eo048, 2 juan, first published 1870) — is that the entire range of internal-medicine syndromes conventionally treated by oral decoctions can be systematically treated by externally-applied plasters and poultices, since the qì of the medicinal compound enters the body through the 84,000 fine pores of the skin as readily as through the digestive tract. The doctrine is the foundation of the modern wàizhì sub-discipline of Chinese medicine.
No CBDB record (limited late-Qīng coverage). Wú is now widely acknowledged as one of the major nineteenth-century innovators in Chinese clinical practice.