A native of Zhenzhou (now Yizheng County, Jiangsu) during the Song Dynasty, he came from a poor family and lost both parents to illness within a hundred days when he was 11 years old. He passed the imperial examination in the third year of Shaoxing (1133). Having served as a scholar at the Jixian Academy, he was also known as Scholar Xu.

Xu had a profound understanding of cold-damage disease and authored works such as cold-damage disease 百證歇, cold-damage disease 發微論, and cold-damage disease 九十論. Xu also had unique insights into Zabing differentiation. His work Puji Benshi Fang contains over 390 prescriptions and provides reliable methods for distinguishing between many similar diseases. Theoretically, Xu proposed a unique perspective on the relationship between the spleen and the kidneys, believing that tonifying the spleen must first involve tonifying the kidneys. If kidney qi is insufficient and vital qi is weak, the body cannot digest food properly. His ideas had a significant influence on the development of the visceral manifestation theory in later generations.

In addition to his surviving works such as cold-damage disease 百證歌, cold-damage disease 發微論, cold-damage disease 九十論, and Puji Benshi Fang, Xu also wrote 仲景三十 six pulse conditions 法田, cold-damage disease 類論, 治法, and 辯類, but these have been lost.