Bao Gu鲍姑

Style & Daoist names

Bao Qianguang, Immortal Aunt Bao

Period

Eastern Jin

Dates

c. 309 — c. 363

Role

Daoist PriestessPhysicianMoxibustion specialist

Birthplace

Donghai (one tradition holds Shangdang)

Places of activity

Mount Luofu

Life

Bao Gu, given name Qianguang, was the daughter of Bao Jing, Governor of Nanhai under the Eastern Jin, and the wife of Ge Hong; she is one of the earliest recorded female moxibustion specialists in the history of Chinese medicine. She studied the Dao alongside her father and later married Ge Hong, practising the Dao and medicine together with her husband around Mount Luofu and Guangzhou; she was especially skilled in moxibustion, using red-stemmed mugwort grown on Yuexiu Hill to treat tumours and warts, 'vanishing them with a single application,' and was known among the people of Lingnan as 'Immortal Aunt Bao.' The Sanyuan Palace in Guangzhou contains a shrine to Bao Gu and the Well of Bao Gu (also called the Coiled Dragon Well), traditionally said to be relics associated with her. Accounts of Bao Gu's deeds appear mainly in later local gazetteers and Daoist texts, such as the Taiping Guangji and the Gazetteer of Nanhai County; she has no biography in the official histories, and her dates of birth and death are unknown, those given here being later estimates. Her combination of medicine with Ge Hong is a famous example of the Daoist tradition of medical practice, and the moxibustion methods recorded in the Zhouhou Beiji Fang may be connected to her.

Contributions & Influence

• Practised moxibustion to help the people, the earliest renowned female moxibustion specialist in China
• Jointly practised Daoist medicine together with Ge Hong

Legends

Tradition holds that Bao Gu attained the Dao through alchemical practice at Mount Luofu, and that she once transformed into an old woman to remove a young woman's warts with moxibustion.