Cáo Yuánhéng 曹元恒 (1849–1931), zì Zhìhán 智涵, hào Cāngzhōu 滄洲 (and almost universally cited under the hào: 曹滄洲), of Sūzhōu 蘇州 (Jiāngsū). A third-generation Wúmén 吳門 physician — his grandfather Cáo Yúnzhōu 曹雲洲 and father Cáo Chéngzhōu 曹承洲 were both established Sūzhōu internists and yángkē (abscess / ulcer-surgery) specialists. Cáo studied the clinical methods of 葉桂 Yè Tiānshì and 王士雄 Wáng Mèngyīng, building his reputation in Sūzhōu as a specialist in warm-disease and complex internal-medicine cases, reportedly seeing over a hundred patients a day.
Around guāngxù 34 (1908), on the recommendation of provincial officials, Cáo was summoned to Beijing and treated Empress Dowager Cíxǐ 慈禧太后 — his radish-seed (láifúzǐ) prescription for her stagnant-food complaint earned him a ninth-rank court title — and the Guāngxù Emperor 光緒帝 in the final autumn of the emperor’s life (the emperor died on 14 November 1908). His consecutive consultation records from this period are preserved as the opening Dìàn (Imperial Case) section of KR3ep101 Cáo Cāngzhōu yīàn and are a key primary source for the late-Qīng imperial-medicine corpus.
His main works are KR3ep101 Cáo Cāngzhōu yīàn, plus the Huòluàn cuōyào 霍亂撮要 (a cholera-relief handbook) and the Jièyān bùshāng liángfāng 戒煙不傷良方 (an opium-withdrawal protocol). His former residence, the Cāngzhōu Ancestral Hall (滄洲祠) in Gūsū district, Sūzhōu, now functions as a cultural exhibition space for the Wúmén Medical School. No CBDB record.