Did Cao Cao kill Hua Tuo?

Yes.

There is no doubt that Cao Cao killed Hua Tuo, the miracle doctor, but not, as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms suggests, because Hua Tuo wanted to split Cao Cao's head open to cure his headache, and Cao Cao suspected of harming him and killed him.

In fact, the historical book "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has a record of Cao Cao killing Hua Tuo.

Hua Tuo was a famous doctor at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, known as the Divine Physician, who had excellent medical skills, specializing in surgery, acupuncture and the diagnosis and treatment of difficult and complicated diseases. He developed the world's earliest anesthesia agent, the first one of Ma Bo San. He also created a set of health exercises to strengthen the body, the Five Animal Circus, which is equivalent to the square dance in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

Hua Tuo was an institutionalized person at the time, a person with an iron rice bowl, equivalent to a national public official, and should have obeyed the state's conscription and dispatch. Cao Cao, the prime minister of the Han Dynasty, is a symbol of the state, and to obey Cao Cao is to serve the state. However, Hua Tuo, confident in his medical skills, was unwilling to be driven by the government and took Prime Minister Cao as an unofficial. He lied and deceived Cao Cao with the excuse that his wife was sick, and Cao Cao failed to recruit him many times. Later, Cao Cao sent people to find out the truth, in a rage, severely tortured and imprisoned, and later died in prison.

Under the system, institution and social environment of the time, Cao Cao killed Hua Tuo, and rightly so.