Southern Network News He once used crying therapy to cure "brain saliva", used a silver needle to make the dumb speak, and used a taste of herbs to solve children's severe diarrhea... He has practiced medicine for decades in his life and saved countless people, he is Chen Wanju, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. Recently, the non-fiction literary masterpiece "Chinese Medicine" was published by CITIC Publishing Group. The writer Chun Peach spent eight years mastering first-hand material through personal experience. Taking the life trajectory of the old Chinese medicine practitioner Chen Wanju as a clue, it tells the legendary life of him from treating "already sick" to treating "not sick", explores the miracle of traditional Chinese medicine, and profoundly reproduces the ups and downs of traditional Chinese medicine in the past hundred years.
Chen Wanju, a disciple of the famous doctor Chao Weifang in the late Qing Dynasty and a protégé of acupuncture master Cheng Tan'an, has been practicing medicine for 76 years since 1938. Since his debut, he has overcome a large number of incurable diseases, treated hundreds of thousands of patients, and witnessed the important development process of traditional Chinese medicine. He himself was old and blind, his teeth were not lost, his hair was half white, and he died without illness at the age of ninety-six.
This is a non-fiction work that attracts attention, and it is also a work that reflects on the 100-year history of Chinese medicine and advocates for the revitalization and development of Chinese medicine.
Chun Tao's "Chinese Medicine" is vivid, fresh and profound, facing reality and provoking, and is a rare masterpiece in today's non-fiction literature. Wherever a TCM practitioner goes, it is a hospital. There are countless TCM practitioners like Chen Wanju in Chinese history, and as long as they exist, TCM will surely take root in the thick and deep.
About the author:
Chuntao, female, born in Liling, Hunan Province, grew up in Pingxiang, Jiangxi, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Nanjing University, and has been engaged in medical and secretarial work for many years. He began writing in 1987 and has published more than 6 million words of various literary works. His main works include "Folk Bao Gong", "Amnesia Longhekou", "Survey of Chinese Peasants", "Records of Going South to the North to Study", "Looking for Dabie Mountain" and so on. He has won various literary awards at home and abroad. Some of the works have been translated into multiple languages. He is now a writer at the national level.
Chapter Trial Reading:
Prologue Providence (partial)
On the first day after the Spring Festival in 1993, I rushed from Pingxiang in Ganxi to Yingtan to join Chen Guidi, and he took me to Bengbu, Anhui Province to meet his parents.
On the afternoon of the second day of junior high school, the train arrived in Bengbu. A few years ago, there was a heavy snowfall in Bengbu, and the temperature was below zero for a few days, and the thick snow did not melt at all, and it was stepped on by passers-by into a hard and slippery ice. I am a southerner, and I am not mentally prepared for this, and I fell several times in high heels and broke my foot. It was Chen Guidi who carried me into the courtyard of the half-cut lane at No. 38 Shengping Street. When he entered the door, his father-in-law Chen Wanju was reading a newspaper in the consultation room, and his mother-in-law Cui Xinru was sitting on the side sewing something. When the two old men saw us arrive, they smiled with joy and asked us to eat quickly. Chen Guidi hurriedly called out to his father and said, "You first show Chun Tao's feet." Chen Wanju then asked me to take off my shoes, pressed a few times on my neck, and then said it was a sprained ligament. Then, I held my ankle with my left hand, grabbed the sole of my foot with my right hand, shook it lightly, suddenly pulled hard, shook it a few times, and pulled it harder. It's really godly, my feet suddenly don't hurt anymore, and I can walk normally.
The hand that my father-in-law unintentionally showed me made me truly feel that I had indeed entered a Chinese medicine home.
That year, he was seventy-five years old, dressed in a navy blue Zhongshan cotton coat, with black hair, a ruddy face, a straight waist, and a personable person. The mother-in-law is kind and kind-eyed, and looks much older than her father-in-law. My mother-in-law is a small foot, went to the nearby vegetable market one day to buy fish, there was a lot of water on the cement floor, and she fell inattentively, resulting in a fracture of her hip, and since then she has been unable to do without crutches and has never been far away.
Before that, Chen Guidi told me that his father was an old Chinese medicine doctor in the local area, and now that he came to the door, he found that the second elder's economic situation was much worse than I thought. They lived with their youngest son's family, there were only two main rooms, an area of more than 30 square meters, although everyone's housing conditions were not good in those years, I still felt that my father-in-law's house was too crowded, which was completely inconsistent with the status of a "famous doctor".
At that time, Chen Guidi and I lived in the back of the Pixia. The first time I got close to my father-in-law Chen Wanju and my mother-in-law Cui Xinru, I found that my father-in-law was too hospitable, and the family was often full of people, and sometimes after work, especially on holidays, my son and daughter would bring their respective families to gather here. If distant sick people or relatives from the countryside came, he would always leave someone to eat. Chen Wanju is not only the head of the Chen family, but also like a patriarch of the Chen family of the Chen family, as long as he can get involved with the family members above, who is in difficulty, he will help each other, and never try to reciprocate.
Seeing that my mother-in-law's legs were often sore and swollen, and I couldn't even sleep, I couldn't bear it, so I began to help her stir-fry and cook, and at night I helped her wash her feet and massage. Chen Wanju observed my every move coldly, and did not say anything, but became friendly to my attitude. On this day, I suddenly asked, "I heard that you worked in the hospital?" I nodded. After confirming it, his eyes lit up, and then he asked me if I was interested in Chinese medicine?
I really didn't know how to answer at the time. My dream since childhood was to be a writer, because my family was poor, my father died young, I had to go to a health school with no interest in the college entrance examination, and spent six years in the hospital, and then finally escaped the health system.
I thought about it and said, "In the hospital, I spent three years in the Chinese pharmacy. ”
The next day, he handed me a book. When I saw it, it was a copy of "Acupuncture" published in the fifties of the twentieth century. He said, you are idle here, it is better to learn acupuncture with me, you have a foundation, you can learn it in two months.
It turned out that he took a fancy to me and wanted to take me as an apprentice.
I was hesitant. At this time, my mother-in-law advised me: "You should learn from your father, you will not suffer." He is an old feudal who has never insisted on passing on his son and not his wife, and he wants to pass on you now, which is a good thing that cannot be sought. ”
In order not to brush off the kindness of the two old men, I reluctantly accepted it.
From that day on, he began to teach me some common acupoints, such as Zusanli, Hegu, and Ma Danyang's twelve acupoints, and told me how to move needles. If a patient came and needed a needle, he would also call me forward. Unfortunately, most of the patients saw that I was a novice and were not willing to let me get the injection, so although I studied for more than a month, I didn't have much clinical experience, but he was still very satisfied with my seriousness.
In the spring of 1994, I was admitted to the writers' class of Nanjing University and began to systematically study various subjects of the university's Chinese department, and wrote some essays and novels in my spare time. After graduating back to Hefei, I interviewed with Chen Guidi, co-authored, and devoted myself to the creation of reportage on major topics. Since then, studying medicine with Chen Wanju has been put on the shelf by me.
Finally, my dream came true, so I wanted to have a child, but fate joked with me again, and I was found to be infertile. Running to several large hospitals in the provincial capital to no avail, just when I was frustrated and almost desperate, Chen Wanju only relied on a dozen flavors of Chinese medicine, and he rejuvenated me and made me pregnant with a child!
In the back of my heart, this almost set off a huge storm. I was shocked by the breadth and depth of Chinese medicine. Since then, while creating literature, I have become very interested in medicine, especially the traditional medicine of the motherland.
Once, my college classmate Cheng Yuan drove from Nanjing to Bengbu to find Chen Wanju for medical treatment. Before enrolling, she was a newspaper reporter, and after graduation, she changed careers and started a company, and over the years, she devoted herself to her work and did a great job, but she suffered from goiter and soon developed hypothyroidism. She had seen Western medicine and Chinese medicine in Nanjing, but neither had obvious effect, so she rushed to Bengbu to ask Chen Wanju for help. Chen Wanju inquired about her diet, living and work in detail, carefully looked at her tongue, complexion, cut her pulse, and studied many medical records she brought, warned her to adjust her abnormal eating and sleeping habits, prescribed her prescription, and personally took her to the pharmacy to grab medicine. When I knew that she was my college classmate, I specially made a table of dishes to treat her, and before leaving, she gave Chen Wanju a large consultation fee, but Chen Wanju did not accept it, and was very angry, chased to the staircase and returned the money to her. Later, her condition improved, and she sighed on the phone: "The Chen family should be regarded as a virtuous family, and it is really a blessing that you cultivated in your previous life if you can marry into such a family." ”
Cheng Yuan heard me say that Chen Wanju was so old and planned to complete a monograph on "Life Science", so he sent an invitation to take the old man to Nanjing, hire him a nanny, and then hire an assistant, provide him with a house with an elegant environment, and let him write without distractions.
Chen Wanju politely declined this. Say: "There are patients coming to the door during this time, where can I walk!" Cheng Yuan was disappointed when he heard this, and turned to me and said, "Why don't you follow and learn some Chinese medicine and write a story about old Chinese medicine?" ”
Even so, it still didn't occur to me to write Chen Wanju. I think that famous old Chinese medicine doctors like him will definitely go more in China. However, when the friends of writers and editors gather, everyone inevitably talks about interesting things that happen around them, and on several occasions, Chen Guidi tells some almost legendary stories of his father's treatment and saving people, saying that everyone forgot to eat and drink, and even forgot to go to work. Whenever this happens, there are always friends who regret: "Why don't you write such a good story?" ”
Everyone also knows that the works I have collaborated with Chen Guidi are grand and majestic and rational thinking, which is his strength; And the characterization, delicate and moving, is from my handwriting. From this, some people suggested: "Such a story, Lao Chen is not suitable to write, he is the eldest son, but he has no son to inherit his father's business, interview writing will have obstacles." You are both a writer and a medical foundation, and the old man trusts you, and it is not unique to write about this kind of subject. ”
Chen Guidi also encouraged me, saying that I would write more objectively than he did. It is said that although the old man is only an old Chinese medicine doctor in a medium-sized city in central China, he is just an ordinary Chinese medicine practitioner, but just like observing a leaf, you can know the growth of a big tree; With a drop of seawater, information about the sea can be obtained. His real life is actually a microcosm of the history of Chinese traditional medicine in the past hundred years.
In May 2013, I went to Bengbu and was well prepared: I bought a laptop and a voice recorder. To my great surprise, Chen Wanju learned that I wanted to "interview" him, and he refused: "What do I have to write?" ”
Whenever he saw a patient, I took the initiative to sit on the side and act as his assistant, and when he prescribed prescriptions for the patient, he dictated that I would write and carefully look through the medical books on his bookcase. He finally stopped being wary of me, and when he was happy, he began to talk about the more proud cases of his life. Fortunately, he didn't know voice recorders, and just like that, I gradually accumulated more than 100 hours of audio recordings.
Unfortunately, I was trying to go deeper into this interview and learn more about his book "Life Science" when he suddenly left, separated by yin and yang. When sorting out the relics, I was surprised to find that he not only left a large number of medical books, materials, and professional and technical summaries, but also many of his past things were quite well collected: in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion Research Society had a membership certificate signed by its president, Cheng Tan'an; The business license signed by the first mayor of Bengbu Municipal People's Government, Wan Yanyu; At the end of the 50s of the 20th century, the Ministry of Health entrusted Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Shanghai Health Cadres Training College to sponsor the completion certificate and "Classmates"; In the early days of reform and opening up, the state wanted to raise a group of old Chinese medicine doctors, and the "employment notice" issued to him by the Health Bureau and the Personnel Bureau, as well as the acceptance certificate of the work "Yangtze River Medical Talk" compiled by the Ministry of Health and the All-China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and so on.
Surprisingly, the picture that his master Song Liren wrote for him after drinking during the Dragon Boat Festival in 1950 turned out to be as fresh as ever.
Looking at these speechless certificates and words, I realized that in order to write this work well, it is necessary to have a lot of living materials, and it requires rich knowledge and historical knowledge. So I started going out, going south and north, trying to get as close as I could to the people and patients in the stories. I also need to calm down, read medical books hard, and check all relevant information and historical records. From the interview to the final pen, it took eight years.
It is worth mentioning that the patient Xia Liguo in Wuhe County was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer by the hospital and could only live for three months, and after being treated by Chen Wanju, he did not die until seven years after Chen Wanju's death.