Despite his reputation as an artist and seal @-@ carver , Hu was primarily a publisher . His publishing house , the Ten Bamboo Studio , produced reference works on calligraphy , poetry and art ; medical textbooks ; books on etymology and phonetics ; and copies of as well as commentaries on the Confucian Classics . Unlike other publishers in the area , the Ten Bamboo Studio did not publish no works of narrative fiction such as plays or novels . This bias towards academia was likely a consequence of the studio 's location : the mountain on which Hu took up residence was just to the north of the Nanjing Guozijian ( National Academy ) , which provided a captive market for academic texts . Between 1627 and 1644 , the Ten Bamboo Studio produced over twenty printed books of this kind , aimed at a wealthy , literary audience . The studio 's earliest publications were medical textbooks , the first of which , Tested Prescriptions for Myriad Illnesses ( Wanbing Yanfang , 萬病驗方 ) was published in 1631 and proved popular enough to be reissued ten years later . Hu 's brother Zhengxin was a medical practitioner and appears to have been the author of these books .