Up to now, we have already told you about the common liver wood, heart fire and spleen soil treatment recipes. For each treatment, we will analyze the medicinal taste of each group of Chinese medicines, and then help everyone understand the efficacy characteristics of the formula from the perspective of five flavors of diarrhea. In this case, it is actually very important to analyze and determine the medicinal taste of each group of Chinese medicines.
Some people may say that the five tastes are not the most basic content of the theory of medicinal properties of Chinese medicine? In the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" or "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" textbooks, are not there records of the five tastes? Direct citation is not enough, why do you need to analyze and determine?
"Lectures on the Soup Liquid Sutra"
(i)
The reason is that the five tastes of Chinese medicine used in the "Tang Liquid JingFaTu" are not exactly the same as the modern five tastes record, some are the same, some are different. Why? There are two main reasons. First, the "Soup Liquid JingfaTu" has a long history, and for a long time in history, it is not the main theory of group medicine, and many of its contents have gradually been lost. We speculate that even the earliest surviving Shennong Materia Medica is not the source of the Five Tastes Theory, nor is it a record of the Five Tastes after many transmissions, which is incomplete and contains erroneous content. So, what is the source of the five tastes theory? This brings us to the second reason we are talking about.
The second reason, in fact, is very simple, in Tao Hongjing's "Auxiliary Practice", directly quoted the "Tang Liquid Sutra" for the five tastes theory. It is this passage that is very different from the existing five-flavor theory. In previous courses, we have talked about related content, but today, let's take a complete look at the passage quoted in the "Auxiliary Tips":
Jing Yun: Formed in heaven and formed on earth. There are five qi in the heavens, five tastes in metamorphosis, and the changes in the five tastes, which are innumerable. There are about twenty-five kinds of them today, with the traces of the intermingling of the five elements of the Ming and the use of the changes of the five tastes. As left:
The spices are all wood, and the cinnamon is the lord. Pepper is fire, ginger is earth, spices are gold, and appendages are water.
The salty taste is fire, and the swirling flowers are the main ones. Rhubarb is wood, Zephyr is earth, Magnolia is gold, and saltpeter is water.
Sweet and sweet belong to the soil, ginseng is the main one. Licorice is wood, jujube is fire, wheat winter is gold, and poria is water.
The taste is all gold, and the five flavors are the masters. Citrus is wood, soy sauce is fire, peony is soil, and potato is water.
The bitter taste is all water, and the ground yellow is the main one. Skullcap is wood, skullcap is fire, art is earth, and bamboo leaves are water.
These twenty-five kinds are the essence of various medicines, and the treatment of many diseases such as internal damage to the five internal organs and six organs should be deeply understood by scholars.
Well, after reading this content, how do you feel?
First, compared with the Shennong Materia Medica, this theory of five tastes is more closely related to the five elements, namely xinmu, salty fire, sweet soil, sour gold, and bitter water. Moreover, it directly hints at the origin of the five tastes, which is the incarnation of the five qi, and the incarnation of the five qi of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth. From this point of view, the record of the five tastes in the Tang Liquid Sutra should be an earlier theory of the original five tastes than the Shennong Materia Medica. Second, it describes a new attribute of Chinese medicine, that is, the five elements of Chinese medicine. What does that mean? "The spices are all wood, and the cinnamon is the lord." Pepper is fire, ginger is earth, fine spice is gold, and appendage is water", then gui is "wood in wood", pepper is "wood in fire", ginger is "wood in earth", fine spice is "gold in wood", and appendage is "wood in water". This is a kind of traditional Chinese medicine that is different from conventional cognition and describes the medicinal properties of the five elements.
There are many advantages to adopting this description of the five elements attributes, one is to facilitate the understanding of the similarities of different Chinese medicines, the second is to facilitate the understanding of the differences between different Chinese medicines, the third is to facilitate the understanding of the leading five elements and the dominant medicinal taste of Chinese medicine, it is convenient to grasp the main contradictions, the fourth is to facilitate the use of a simple standard to coordinate complex and diverse Chinese medicines, the fifth is to facilitate the understanding of the evolution and evolution of Chinese medicine varieties of the source flow path, and the sixth is to provide a methodological paradigm for the clinical work of Chinese medicine.
All in all, the benefits are many. When I first saw the description of this five-element attribute, I decided that it must be a more original medicinal content of Traditional Chinese medicine, which is worthy of in-depth exploration and study.
The Five Elements of Chinese Medicine (Source Network)
The 25 Chinese medicines recorded in this description are customarily called the twenty-five flavor essences, and the medicinal taste of these 25 chinese medicines is relatively clear, and can be directly filled with "soup liquid jingfa diagram" for the analysis of the efficacy characteristics of the formula. For example, guizhi soup is composed of guizhi, peony, ginger, jujube and licorice, and these 5 herbs are all in the twenty-five flavor essences, that is, guizhi and ginger flavor spicy, peony taste sour, jujube and licorice flavor sweet. Knowing the above information, we can analyze the efficacy characteristics of the entire formula.
At the same time, there are also many Chinese medicines that are not included, such as chaihu, banxia, gardenia, angelica, Sichuan root, beef yolk, cinnabar, musk, ice chips, gypsum, etc., which can only be analyzed and determined. These Chinese medicines are all analyzed by us before, especially in the several classes of Angong Niuhuang Pill and Xiao Chai Hu Tang, our analysis is more detailed, and students who have forgotten can go back to see. The basic method is to combine efficacy pharmacology and legal pharmacology, combine the identification of medicinal taste with real taste, combine clinical application with traditional records, and make comprehensive judgments.
This is the best way to judge at present, but there may still be errors, so you can maintain your own way of thinking, if you have doubts about the taste of a certain medicine in the course, go and think about your own information, we welcome you to do this, and encourage you to do this, and maintain reasonable thinking.
(ii)
Okay, so let's analyze the possible meanings of "wood in the earth" and "fire in gold."
In the descriptions of "Wood in the Earth" and "Fire in Gold", there are 2 five-element attributes, the front is called the front attribute, and the latter is called the posterior attribute. Then, what are the contents of the anterior attribute and the posterior attribute that are more compatible with the existing theory of medicinal properties of traditional Chinese medicine? This requires us to use the 25 medicinal essences as a data source to do a scientific research.
In fact, this research has been completed, and the entire study was published in World Science and Technology - Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2021. The general approach, first of all, write out the five elements of the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" on the above 25 Chinese medicines of the four qi, five tastes and the guijing information, for example, heat corresponds to fire, flatness corresponds to soil, Xin corresponds to wood, Gan corresponds to soil, liver and gallbladder correspond to wood, lung and large intestine correspond to gold, etc. Then, the anterior and posterior attributes of the twenty-five flavor essences are compared with these information, and then see which ones have high consistency and which ones have low consistency.
The results showed that the pre-position attribute of the twenty-five flavor essences had the highest overall conformity with the five flavors of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, at 76%, and the overall conformity with the four qi of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, which was the lowest, at 28%. The posterior attribute of the Twenty-Five Flavor Essences has the highest overall conformity with the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, which is 68%, and the overall conformity with the four qi of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia is the lowest, at 8%.
From this result, the anterior attribute is the medicinal taste, and the posterior attribute is the effect positioning. For example, "Wood Indo" represents a spicy medicine that acts on the spleen soil, and considering the spicy diarrhea of the spleen, this is a typical spicy medicine that can laxative the spleen and can be used to treat dry vomiting and diarrhea. Among the twenty-five flavor essences, "wood in the earth" is ginger, ginger or dried ginger. From the perspective of efficacy, ginger spicy taste warm stop vomiting, used for stomach cold vomiting, is indeed a typical "wood in the earth".
At the same time, ginger can also sweat and dissolve the table in the liver, can expectorant and cough effect on the lungs, which in turn happens to be the role of xin tonic liver and xin scattered lungs. Therefore, in the "wood in the earth", wood is the dominant attribute, and the spicy taste is the dominant medicinal taste. Therefore, in the previous lecture, whether it is guizhi soup, kudzu soup, Lizhong pill, or half-summer laxative soup, dried ginger or ginger are calculated according to spicy medicine.
Ginger (Source Network)
Similar examples include the "water soil" Bai Shu and Cang Shu, which are bitter and wet Chinese medicines that mainly act on the spleen soil. "Water in the water" dihuang, is a bitter taste to supplement the kidneys, mainly acting on kidney water of traditional Chinese medicine. "Gold in the Fire" fine spicy, is a spicy warm lung drink, mainly acting on lung gold Chinese medicine.
Of course, there are also examples that do not fit well, such as skullcap and licorice that we mentioned when we talked about small chai hu soup. Skullcap is "water wood", the former attribute water represents bitter taste, bitterness can clear heat, and the posterior attribute wood represents hepatobiliary, but skullcap is not good at clearing liver and bile fever, but is good at clearing lung heat. Licorice is the "wood in the earth", the former attribute wood represents the sweet taste, the sweet can be replenished, and the posterior attribute wood represents the liver and gallbladder, but the licorice root does not even have the liver and gallbladder in the sutra. So, there are still some doubts that have not yet been fully resolved.
In any case, we hope that everyone can remember the five elements of Chinese medicine, remember the expression of "wood in the earth" and "gold in fire", and remember the dominant attributes and leading medicinal taste of Chinese medicine, which are indispensable knowledge when applying the "Soup Liquid Sutra Map".
(iii)
Finally, you may have noticed that in the study just mentioned, even the highest compliance did not reach 80%, let alone 100%. So, what is the cause of the non-conformity? In other words, the twenty-five flavor essence records and the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, one is the information recorded in the Dunhuang Testament a long time ago, and the other is the current drug standards, why does it not meet? Which one should we decide?
First of all, the reason for the discord between the two is mainly historical reasons. As we have said to you before, the problem faced by the study of traditional Chinese medicine is not that there are too few materials, but that there are too many materials, and various medical books and Materia Medica in the past dynasties are abundant. This kind of inheritance on a thousand-year basis is not at all difficult without problems. In other words, the theory of medicinal properties of Chinese medicines seen now is different from the most original theory of medicinal properties, which will be mixed with the influence of the social environment of successive dynasties and the understanding of individual doctors.
When Zhang Zhongjing wrote the Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases, why did he avoid Taoist titles? It may be the influence that comes from the social environment. Why should the existing theory of medicinal properties of Chinese medicine be included in the theory of attribution that did not exist in the first place? It may be the understanding that comes from a small number of doctors. And these factors will make the later theory of medicinal properties more and more complex and less pure. The current modern scientific interpretation of the theory of medicinal properties is also destined to affect later learning.
Zhang Zhongjing (Source Network)
Let's look at these complex factors by example.
The first example is citrus fruit. The description of the five elements of the "Auxiliary Practice" is "Golden Wood", according to this description, citrus aurantium is a sour medicine, acid collection acid, while mainly acting on the liver and gallbladder. Judging from the medicinal properties and efficacy of citrus aurantium recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, the attribution of citrus aurantium is "spleen and stomach", which has nothing to do with liver and gallbladder. However, the effect of citrus aurantium is to break the gas and eliminate the accumulation, dissolve the phlegm and scatter the phlegm, which can be used for the swelling and pain of the phlegm and the obstruction of phlegm. The "Catalogue of Famous Doctors" also records that it can "remove the phlegm fetishism in the chest", "eliminate swelling and fullness", and "see". So, a Chinese medicine that can treat chest palsy and pain, stagnation and fullness of qi, and can be clearly defined, can it also be attributed to the liver meridian? Therefore, the attribution properties of Chinese medicine are sometimes inaccurate.
This inaccuracy continued into the Qing Dynasty, when the physician Xu Dachun finally issued a message that "medicine without knowing the meridians, its loss is also general; The admonition of using medicine while holding meridians reminds clinicians to be flexible with the theory of returning to the scriptures.
The second example is rhubarb. The Five Elements attribute of rhubarb in the Side Tips describes it as "wood in the fire", according to which rhubarb is a salty medicine. But in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia or Chinese medicine textbooks, rhubarb is not a salty medicine, but a standard bitter cold medicine. Why is rhubarb bitter? Quite simply, Chinese medicines with the effect of clearing heat and detoxifying fire are often bitter. Therefore, there are many chinese medicine tastes, which are determined according to the efficacy, which is the correlation between the efficacy and the medicinal taste.
In fact, if we think about it carefully, we will find that if there is really such a strong relationship between medicinal taste and efficacy, then either the medicinal taste attribute or the efficacy attribute has no independent existence value at all, because from one can derive another, which is completely the same thing and can completely replace each other. Then, since they cannot be substituted for each other now, it means that there is no strong correlation between the two, but a complex clutch relationship.
Therefore, it is incomplete to rely solely on efficacy to define the medicinal taste. As far as rhubarb is concerned, the real taste of this Chinese medicine is not bitter at all, but astringent and slightly salty. From the perspective of efficacy, laxative diarrhea is its most important effect, and this is obviously the operation of diarrhea lung diarrhea large intestine, and in the "soup liquid sutra map", salty diarrhea lung. From the point of view of the production area, the Dao real estate areas of palm leaf rhubarb and Tangut rhubarb are distributed in the western regions of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and other western regions, while the west corresponds to lung gold.
Therefore, the salty taste of rhubarb is justified.
Rhubarb (source network)
Okay, to sum up.
This lesson is mainly about the five elements of Chinese medicine, and the correlation between the record of this five element attribute and the theory of medicinal properties of Chinese medicine. Among them, the anterior attribute is the highest in line with the five flavors of the corresponding Chinese medicine, and the posterior attribute is the highest in line with the attribution of the corresponding Chinese medicine, which can help us determine the five element attributes of other Chinese medicines other than 25 kinds of medicinal essences. At the same time, we should also pay attention to the difference between this five-element attribute and modern medicinal cognition, which is the deviation caused by historical inheritance.
When we think about the problem under the "Soup Liquid Jingfa Diagram" system, we must switch the medicinal properties of Chinese medicine to the five element attribute mode, please remember this.