Li Jin, a garrison captain at Jiankang, was brave and strong, the flag-bearer of his company, only thirty years old, when he caught a seasonal fever and fell gravely ill. His commander ordered the medical officer Zhang Wenbao to treat him.
Zhang had never been skilled at this craft; he only wanted to trade on a military title to shelter his household. Feeling the pulse and examining the signs, he could not tell hot from cold, and pronounced it a vain yin condition, dosing Li with a great measure of aconite.
No sooner had Li swallowed it than he felt his five organs as if scalded with boiling water; tormented and in agonizing pain past bearing, he cursed Zhang: “The aconite is burning me to death! I shall surely die, and I will accuse you in the Nine Springs below!”
Then he went still. His body was all blotched and black. Three days after the burial, the family set out wine and offerings to return to the grave, and Li’s spirit possessed a girl and said: “Zhang Wenbao killed me with his medicine; I have now come back.”
His wife ran to tell the commander, who sent an officer with craftsmen to open the tomb and break the coffin — but the corpse was already rotten and foul, too terrible to approach.
From then on Zhang saw Li at his side day and night, and within two months he too was dead.
