Page "Inoculation" Paragraph 8

The British historian Joseph Needham and the American historian Robert Temple write that the practice of inoculation for smallpox began in China during the 10th century.

A Song Dynasty ( 960 – 1279 ) chancellor of China, Wang Dan ( 957 – 1017 ), lost his eldest son to smallpox and sought a means to spare the rest of his family from the disease, so he summoned physicians, wise men, and magicians from all across the empire to convene at the capital in Kaifeng and share ideas on how to cure patients of it.

From Mount Emei in Sichuan, a Daoist hermit, a nun known as a " numinous old woman " and " holy physician "— who Temple says was associated with the ' school of the ancient immortals ' and thus most likely specialized in ' internal alchemy '— introduced the technique of inoculation to the capital.

However, the sinologist Joseph Needham states that this information comes from the Zhongdou xinfa ( 種痘心法 ) written in 1808 by Zhu Yiliang, centuries after the alleged events.