Hua Tuo was a Chinese medical doctor regarded as an immortal—for both his youthful appearance despite his old age, and for the magic-like diagnoses and treatments he performed.
He is said to have diagnosed a tumor in the brain of the warlord Cao Cao in the 2nd century, long before CT scanners. Hua Tuo said he could operate on Cao Cao to remove the tumor but Cao Cao had him killed thinking Hua Tuo meant to murder him.
“Cao Cao summoned him to serve as his personal physician, and either became enraged with Hua Tuo’s hesitancy to return again later to provide more treatments or suspected an assassination attempt when Hua Tuo suggested brain surgery as a treatment for his severe headaches,” writes Subhuti Dharmananda, director of the Institute for Traditional Medicine in Portland, Oregon, on the institute’s website….