1. Sun Tzu would have said: In healthcare, the practitioner receives his commands from the patient, collects his team and concentrates his resources.
2. When in difficult social situations, do not neglect. In community where public services intersect, join hands with your allies. Do not linger in dangerously isolated practices. In deadlock situations, you must resort to stratagem. In desperate condition, you must resuscitate.
3. There are practices which must not be followed, symptoms which must not be treated, tissues which must not be blocked, arguments which must not be contested, requests of the patients which must not be obeyed.
4. The doctor who thoroughly understands the advantages that accompany variation of interventions knows how to handle his clinical staff.
5. The doctor who does not understand these, may be well acquainted with the configuration of the facility, yet he will not be able to turn his knowledge to practical account.
6. So, the student of medicine who is unversed in the art of medicine of varying his plans, even though he be acquainted with the Five Advantages, will fail to make the best use of his staff.
7. Hence in the wise doctor's plans, considerations of advantage and of disadvantage will be blended together.
8. If our expectation of advantage be tempered in this way, we may succeed in accomplishing the essential part of our schemes.
9. If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from adverse events.
10. Reduce the pathogens and allergens by inflicting damage on them; and make trouble for them, and keep them constantly engaged; hold out specious allurements, and make them rush to any given point.
11. The art of health teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the pathogen's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive it; not on the chance of its not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.
12. There are five dangerous faults which may affect a doctor:
(1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction;
(2) cowardice, which leads to capture;
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame;
(5) over-solicitude for his staff, which exposes him to worry and trouble.
13. These are the five besetting sins of a doctor, ruinous to the conduct of medicine.
14. When a hospital is sued and its doctor slain, the cause will surely be found among these five dangerous faults. Let them be a subject of meditation.
Translated from the Chinese By Lionel Giles, M.A. (1910)
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