I have recommended "The Road of Famous Old Chinese Medicine" to my students many times, hoping that they will read this set of books (a total of three volumes). However, some students replied to me after looking through it: Teacher, these old Chinese medicine practitioners all say that they should study diligently, pay attention to the classics, follow the teacher more, and be more clinical. So, this set of books doesn't seem to be as good as you say?
Unfortunately, this is a typical buying of beads! Do I recommend this set of books just to let everyone know the truth that these people know? Helplessly, I had to write down my reasons for recommendation.
★ First of all, the ancients attached importance to bibliography in reading, which is the door to reading.
The best way for modern people to learn Chinese medicine is, I think, this set of "The Road of Famous Old Chinese Medicine". It should be said that the vast majority of the famous old Chinese medicine practitioners in this set of books are in line with the name, and they have condensed the lessons and academic views of their lifelong study of practicing medicine and curing medicine in these thousands of words of articles. It can be said that reading this book is equivalent to absorbing the essence of 20th century Chinese medicine.
After reading this book, the names of famous old Chinese medicine practitioners will inevitably be deeply imprinted in our minds, and then naturally we hope to further search for the writings of these famous doctors, or the people or books mentioned in their texts that have helped them a lot. Isn't this step-by-step the role of the doorway?
★ Second, as I mentioned earlier, it is emphasized here that famous chinese medicine practitioners often talk about the most prominent content and the most important academic views of their lifelong experience in treatment in their articles.
This is very valuable, in today's terms, the value for money of this set of books is too high. Any TCM student who is clinically interested should have this sensitivity and should excerpt these experiences.
It may also be said that this book is not only for beginners in Chinese medicine, but also for doctors who have not read this book for many years in the clinic for various reasons. As for those who have already read this book, I suggest that we may wish to look at it again every few years, because we are not the money bell book that we have never forgotten. The same goes for me myself.
★ Third, those who are interested in the history of Chinese medicine in the 20th century must read this book, and those who are interested in the anecdotes of the past and the style of their predecessors must read this book.
Although less than a hundred years have passed, everything at that time is unimaginable to us young people now. Therefore, whether you are interested in historical research or historical stories, you can read "The Road of Famous Old Chinese Medicine"
Here's a little story.
Hong Ziyun's father, an old Chinese medicine doctor, was very strict with Ziyun. When Ziyun was treated alone, he also secretly visited, and once, his father suddenly asked a certain disease in a certain village, what was the effect? Ziyun: Healed.
His father was furious, so he analyzed the correct dialectic of the patient, and said: Fortunately, I detected it, changed the prescription in time, the illness began to heal, Er's experience was not deep, he did not read enough, from now on, stop the consultation, and read medical books exclusively. This move is nothing less than a head-scratcher! If it is within two years, Ziyun's local party power has been three times and three gives.
Moreover, his father usually accumulated a lot of medical texts, but when he died, he asked Ziyun to destroy them all, and his reason was that he had the way of learning, and he had not seen anyone who had refined by his predecessors, but had relied on Erzhi's self-reliance. "Children and grandchildren are useful, what use do you want it to be?" Children and grandchildren are useless, what use do you want it to use?" This father in the countryside during the Republic of China period was really fascinating. Parents should study hard now.
Having said three reasons, I finally want to find an example, to interpret it, I think, just find an old Chinese medicine doctor who has been dead for many years and whose reputation is gradually fading.
Mr. Chan Yiu Tong died in 1980, 31 years ago. Many people may have forgotten, or don't know, this old TCM at all, but I always remember him.
His article mentions an old Chinese medicine doctor who came to Shanghai from Sichuan to use the appendages, and Chen Lao once asked him for advice and gained valuable experience in the use of appendages.
For example, yin deficiency internal heat also uses a small number of appendages as a medicinal introduction, but it must be produced by raw land and Danpi. For the headache of hyperactivity of liver and yang, use epiphytics with raw stone cassia and oysters, a small number of appendages warm to supplement kidney yang to steam kidney yin on ji liver wood, wood to get water culvert, and then add raw stone cassia, oysters and the like to make the floating yang submerged, headache self-healing.
This kind of experience is very interesting, if you are interested in following this door to go deeper, how to go deeper? It was to further search for Elder Chen's writings, and the second was to look for this doctor who came to Shanghai from Sichuan. It is a pity that although Elder Yun Chen wrote "Selected Medical Cases of Chen Yaotang" in the introduction of the article, I never found this book.
However, I later consulted the article "The Clinical Application of Attachments" written by Elder Chen (published in the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 6, 1962), because I also studied the appendages, and later wrote "Dangerous Diseases and Difficult Diseases Rely on the Appendages" and became a decay, so I included this article by Elder Chen. But who are the famous doctors in Sichuan who come to Shanghai? Is it Mr. Zhu Weiju, Mr. Liu Minshu, or someone else? The exact answer was never found.
Coincidentally, my first work unit, there is a famous acupuncture doctor named Chen Zuolin, and Chen Zelin, the collator of Chen Lao's article, is a word difference, I think there may be a relationship between them. Upon questioning, it was sure that Mr. Chen Zuolin was the eldest son of Elder Chen, and Mr. Chen Zelin was the younger son.
As soon as Mr. Zuolin heard my question, he said: "At that time, the person who came to Shanghai in Sichuan to use his appendages should have been Zhu Weiju or Mr. Liu Minshu, but I really don't know who my father went to consult at that time, and Chen Zelin has gone abroad, and it is no longer known." He felt that Mr. Zhu Weiju was very likely, and the clue was temporarily broken, but perhaps one day the coincidence was coincidental, and we could solve this question.
Next, let's talk about a few points of Lao Chen's experience. The first is Chen Lao's experience in treating typhoid fever. At first, it was the same trend, according to his teacher, Mr. Ding Ganren, but the effect was not good. After breaking the routine, with the large gas soup and huanglian detoxification soup plus aromatic wet products such as coix, peran, coix kernel, etc., the effect is very good, the treatment course is shortened, and the patient recovers quickly.
The second is the trick that Elder Chen learned from folk Chinese medicine. Chen Lao said that when his eldest son was two years old, he suffered from measles and pneumonia, the rash was poisonous, the condition was critical, he did not dare to prescribe, please open a prescription with his window friends, use ma xing shi gan soup, ephedra with eight points, no effect and change the second doctor, also use ma xing shi gan soup, also ineffective, on the occasion of this critical illness, friends recommend a herbal doctor to see.
The prescription is only five flavors: three dollars for ephedra, five dollars for phoenix clothes, three dollars for orange stems, three dollars for citrus shells, and one or two fishy grasses. One dose is effective, the follow-up diagnosis is changed to ephedra money and half, and two doses are taken, and the condition is significantly improved.
Elder Chen learned four points from this example: First, there are many good methods in the folk and should not be taken lightly; second, in the past, there was a saying that "hemp is not money", and the doctors in their circle used ephedra to dose lightly, and now the understanding of ephedra dose should be said to be more profound;
Third, "phoenix coat is very effective in treating asthma and cough"; fourth, "houttuynia cordata is used for acute tracheitis and pneumonia is effective". In the article, Chen Laoshun also introduced the experience of several other folk prescription drugs, which are very valuable for clinical doctors of Chinese medicine.
Talking about Elder Chen's views on Western medicine, he believes that learning Western medicine is helpful and meaningful to him. For example, after learning Western medicine, know that jaundice can be caused by inflammation, stones, cancer, etc., in the past treatment of jaundice, only know yin and yang, the cure is the majority, a small number of poor treatment does not know why, now know that the cure is likely to be cancer.
Another example, the treatment of nephritis edema, in the past as long as the edema receded, it was considered to be cured, and now look at the urinal test, such as protein, cast, indicating that the disease has not healed. This requires further exploration of its treatment. I think that Elder Chen's ironing is helpful for beginners in Traditional Chinese medicine.
Finally, let's talk about Mr. Ding Ganren, The teacher of Elder Chen. Mr. Ding Ganren is a well-known figure in the field of modern Chinese medicine, and those who treat the modern history of Chinese medicine will definitely study him. And Elder Chen's article should also be noticed, as for those who are interested in palm history like me, it is also very interesting to read.
In the article, the author also introduced two books specially recommended by Mr. Ding, namely Shu Chiyuan's "Notes on Typhoid Fever" and Li Yongzhi's "Supplement to The Collection of Evidence and Governance". If you buy these two decays because of this, it belongs to what the writer Shi an called "the melon vine that bought books", and the books are such an extra book!
Writing this, everything that should have been said should have been said, and it should have been stopped. However, I am still not exhausted, let me say a few digressions, but this has little to do with the theme of this article, and I want to say that Mr. Ding Ganren is deficient.
There is no doubt that Elder Chen praised his mentor, Mr. Ding Ganren. However, if there is a spirit of doubt and independent thinking, I think it may be possible to glimpse Mr. Ding's flaws from the text.
First of all, Mr. Ding's "set of squares" is very suspicious to me. The author said that Mr. Ding looked at fifty or sixty people in the morning, he had a mature set of prescriptions, and formed a certain specification, the first row of three herbs as the main medicine, the copyer copied the recipe, see the first three medicines, the following medicine can be prescribed, so the speed of medical treatment is extremely fast.
"Although there are sometimes cases of "relative to the whiskers, the soup medicine is prescribed", but because this set of prescriptions has been refined, it is very effective." Because in reality, I do see some famous old Chinese medicine practitioners using their own set of prescriptions, but the efficacy is not commendable, so I can't believe the saying that "it is effective".
The author goes on to say that at that time, almost all kinds of infectious diseases were treated purely with traditional Chinese medicine, and there were indeed many deaths, but there were more people who were saved and fewer died. I would like to believe that.
However, after a few pages, he also said that at that time, chloramphenicol had not yet been invented, and regardless of Chinese and Western medicine, the mortality rate of typhoid fever was higher - this "more", "less", "higher", I don't know how to understand - and said that the teacher taught that the disease "the treatment effect is very slow, do not seek merit, but seek no fault, mainly to defend, not suitable for attack."
Therefore, even if the patient is cured, it is still a skin bag bone, the hair is all off, and the recovery is very slow, as little as half a year, and more than a few years to recover. So there is the method of Breaking the Convention that I introduced in the previous article.
Here can also insert a memory of Mr. Chen Susheng. This other Elder Chen also has an article in the "Famous Old Chinese Medicine Road", which also mentions typhoid fever. At that time, Mr. Su Sheng was already "a head horn zhengrong, thin and false name", his uncle suffered from typhoid fever, and extended the diagnosis and treatment of the famous doctor at that time, the plan was quite beautiful, but unfortunately died.
Soon, the eldest cousin and the second cousin also suffered from typhoid fever one after another, although they both asked famous doctors for diagnosis and treatment, citing scriptures, but they both died one after another. In order to find the truth, Mr. Su Sheng later worshiped Mr. Zhu Weiju as a teacher and accepted Zhu Lao's theory, "putting them into practice one by one, and indeed having the value of cashing in."
Although this story is an individual case, it seems to illustrate the high mortality rate of typhoid fever at that time. Although the famous doctors who participated in the diagnosis and treatment of Mr. Su Sheng's relatives did not specify which ones they were, I think that their medication did not produce sanren soup, manna disinfectant dan and other medical methods.
For another example, as mentioned above, Chen's son suffered from measles introspection, his condition was critical, his friends in the same window were ineffective, and he learned the method of using appendages from famous doctors from Sichuan to Shanghai, I think these examples can more or less show that Mr. Ding has deficiencies in experience in some infectious diseases, and there are also defects in the use of ephedra and appendages.
Originally, the article should have ended, so why should I add this text that criticizes the sages? In fact, what I want to say is that reading books should not only read good things, actively absorb the valuable experience of predecessors, but also soberly see the shortcomings of predecessors. By reading other books or articles, we can make up for these shortcomings and be an independent thinker and eclectic miscellaneous.
In fact, the same is true with the teacher, not only to learn the teacher's good things, but also to see the teacher's shortcomings, to know how to play to the strengths and avoid the weaknesses, so that it is possible to surpass the teacher, medicine can progress!
Xing Bin wrote on June 25, 2011
Copyright Notice
This article is excerpted from "Half a Day Pro Witness, Half a Day Reading", China Traditional Chinese Medicine Publishing House, author Xing Bin,
