Wu Huan on Chinese Medicine
Strange title — no one ever heard of Wu Huan turning physician. Friends, you forget: I am a ghost of talents, and ghost can go up to Heaven and down to Earth, slip through any hole. If I cannot summon wind and rain, at least I can chase wind and shadow; if I cannot ride cloud and mist, at least I can stir mist and summon clouds. Since I can read the Three Tombs and Five Canons, and can also blow nonsense about donkey lips and horse mouths; since I can play the sheng-dan-mo-chou of the stage, and can also splash ink in dabs — why should I not try looking, listening, asking, palpating? As the ancient said: "A scholar learning medicine — like reaching into a cage for chicks." Were it as the eagle takes the rabbit, I have no powerful wings or sharp talons, and would not dare; were it catching turtles in a vat, I would reach in unawares and the shrinking bastards might gape and bite my finger — that pain would cut to the heart. Better trust the old saying — chicks in a cage; even a scholar without strength to bind a chicken can show a little hand. The poor scholar that I am itched to try.
And try it I did. Chinese medicine and Chinese literature, calligraphy, painting, opera — all the way to martial arts and gongfu — are interwoven and connected. There is the philosophy of being from non-being and Dao patterns nature; the insight of understanding worldly affairs and human feelings; the breadth of standing on the highest peak, all the lesser mountains small; the mood of bright moon through pines, clear spring on stones; the ease of watching flowers open and fall, clouds roll and unroll; the decisiveness of cleaver in hand, seven captures eight releases. And of course it does not lack the melancholy of fear of slander, dread of self and the elegance of cup in hand, facing the wind. No wonder it is said: "If not a fine prime minister, then a fine physician." I am neither, but I dare to talk medicine and dare to practice medicine. Any friend who would test my hand, I refuse none. But if you take the wrong medicine, do not blame me.
Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine
What is Chinese medicine? Need we ask? Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine; Chinese medicine is medicine of China, medicine of the Chinese nation. "The sea is the dragon's world; the clouds are the crane's home." Although Chinese medicine once crossed the seas to Fusang as Han medicine, and east to Korea as Han-medicine, the root is in China — known to all. Japan's Han medicine, after the Meiji Restoration, was replaced by German medicine; Han medicine is left only a shell, hard to rise again. Korean medicine, on the contrary, centuries ago challenged China and stirred the king to commission a great medical compilation, that they might not fall behind. Today Korean medicine stands on its own, daring to be first; a holder of a Chinese-medicine diploma earned in China cannot get a practitioner license back in Korea. I had meant to argue the point, but a friend back from Korea told me the Korean tradition is rightly inherited, Korean medicine self-strengthening, with successors in plenty. So I would rather urge our own colleagues to see the worthy and aspire to be alike.
I think the sorrow of Chinese medicine is in not knowing what Chinese medicine is. To know that Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine is not easy. Life begins in literacy and is muddled from the start; many fail to tell Chinese from Western. A play's sheng-dan-jing-mo-chou — even cross-cast, it can charm and stir. A song, high or low, can echo three days. But if Peking opera goes pop, if bangzi opera puts on ballet, if a black-gauze cap meets a bula-ji dress, if the erhu and sanxian play O Sole Mio — it may not be funny but it will turn teeth cold.
Chinese medicine in China has a long history. The earliest written record is 4,000-plus years old (some say over 7,000). It began with the wu — not the spirit-leaping shaman, but the upper-class intellectual of the time, in charge of statecraft above and of healing and warding-off-disaster below. Medicine gradually split off. A child is the mother's flesh and blood; Chinese medicine from its birth has been inseparable from humanistic philosophy. Yin-yang, the five phases, mutual engendering and restraint, synthetic reasoning, endless transformation — these are the foundational law of Chinese medicine. I dare say: to this day, no natural science fuses with humanistic science as Chinese medicine does.
Forgive my bluntness — Western understanding of Chinese medicine still stops at the partial; what is accepted is mostly acupuncture and massage. Acupuncture anesthesia once made the world stare; little do people know that acupuncture is only one technique of Chinese medicine. Foreigners come to China; tuina and massage relax them and they are entranced — and little do they know that massage too is only one TCM technique. The whole of true Chinese medicine is like a great tree: deep-rooted, lush-leaved, flowering and clustering, shading the sky.
So I say: Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine — not idle words, but truth — Wu Huan's record.
Chinese medicine does not look at disease
Chinese medicine does not look at disease — not my line, but the ancestors'.
The ancestors said: "In calm, empty stillness, the true qi follows; the spirit guards within — whence then can illness come?" They counsel us to settle the spirit, leave off wild thought, and no disease can enter. Where is the looking-at-disease here? It is sermon, plainly.
The ancestors said: "Yin and yang are the Dao of Heaven and Earth, the framework of the ten-thousand things, the parent of change, the root-and-origin of life and death, the storehouse of spirit-brightness." "To treat disease, one must seek the root; the root is in yin and yang." One yardstick measures Heaven, Earth, and human. "Yin and yang can be counted to ten, deduced to a hundred, counted to a thousand, deduced to ten thousand. Beyond ten thousand they cannot be counted, but the essence is one." Starting from distinguishing yin-yang, exterior-interior, cold-heat, deficiency-excess, one seeks yin balanced and yang secret; spirit-and-energy in order. Where is the looking-at-disease here? It is reasoning, plainly.
The ancestors said: "The superior physician treats what has not yet become illness" — the master physician treats the not-yet-sick. To seek illness in the not-yet-sick — is this not strange? Those who do not understand snort. But "A mole-cricket's hole can burst a thousand-zhang dike; a one-inch malady can ruin a many-foot frame" — to see the small and know the great, to forestall — this is heard in business and warfare. Applied to the body, where is the looking-at-disease here? It is teaching, plainly.
Speak of today's treatment: kill toxin and germ, dissolve fat and prevent clot, dissipate inflammation and reduce swelling, lower pressure and sugar. The herbs of Chinese medicine, however, are not aimed at the toxin, the germ, or the disease. True Chinese medicine only regulates. The great natural cycle of wind, cold, heat-of-summer, damp, dryness, fire is one moving great circle; the great human-social cycle of joy, anger, sorrow, thought, grief, fear, fright, an ever-changing great circle; the body's heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney in mutual engendering-and-restraint, yet another. Three great circles turning together — surely they spin me dizzy; the master TCM physician finds the discord, applies a small skill, sets it right and makes it harmonious. Health follows. Strictly speaking, this is no looking-at-disease — it is looking at the human, from Heaven and Earth.
The ancestors said: "Govern a great state as you cook a small fish." — cooking small fish is in balancing flavors, not in nutrient analysis. Chinese medicine uses herbs like cooking small fish: the four qi ascend-descend-float-sink and the five flavors sour-bitter-sweet-pungent-salty harmonize the Heaven-Earth-human. By the partial qi of the ten-thousand things, the exuberance or deficiency of the spirit of the ten-thousand things — the human who has the whole qi of Heaven and Earth — is supplemented and balanced. Marvelous, beyond words.
Before such a Chinese medicine, no matter great or small, slow or urgent disease — even cancer, hemiplegia, AIDS, addiction — short of yin and yang having parted, all may hope for cure. Not boasting; fact. Made-up cases cannot stand.
Chinese medicine does not look at disease, and the disease is cured — this is my conclusion. I do not know if the master practitioners would agree.
Chinese medicine is too pitiable
"A scholar learning medicine — like reaching into a cage for chicks" — I was fooled. Not only have the chicks dwindled; the scholars who would catch them are also nearly gone. The source is this: Chinese medicine is too pitiable.
You say the cold-window labor — bent over the classics a lifetime, many never become famed physicians. You say ice-and-snow intelligence — if it turns to cleverness and shortcuts, no hope either. Not to speak of dabblers, fad-chasers, the impatient, the fraudulent. Even those who do learn — even with the skill of bringing the dead back to life — are likely to be branded feudal superstition, unscientific, not modern. A miss's body, a maid's lot: not even a red-robed name. As for earning a living, the consultation fee is less than the price of a zoo ticket to see the monkey (I do not mean TCM doctors are monkeys; only that disrespect for the physician is disregard for one's own life).
You say use medicine as one uses an army: read the manuals, plan in the tent, decide a thousand-li battle. But the general is exhausted, the troops weary; the herbs used — not from the right place of origin, not gathered in the right season, no skilled processing, poor transport and storage — the most careful prescription is already discounted. Then come the Western saints, who without understanding even one fact play expert: instead of admitting their own incapacity they blame Chinese herbs for being toxic. The TCM doctor takes the rap.
You say Chinese medicine is splendid? In fact it is gleaming gold on water, jade in stillness in the depths — half-suspected of stealing light through a hole in a wall. To open a TCM clinic you depend on Western medicine; to qualify as a TCM physician you must pass the Western-medicine exam; even when a TCM hospital is opened, a Western doctor must be invited to run it. Mao Zedong said daytime in the temple, sleep at night. Pity the temple has few monks — the priests have the last word.
The Chinese medicine's pitiable plight goes further: the ancestors add frost to the snow. Sun Simiao set a stern rule: "Whenever the great physician treats disease, he must settle the spirit and stop the will, with no desire and no demand. First he sets forth the great compassionate heart and vows to save the suffering. If a patient in trouble comes to seek help, ask not after rank or wealth, age or beauty, friend or foe, Chinese or foreign, fool or wise — treat all as kin. Look not before or after, fear not for one's fortune, mind not one's own life. See the suffering of others as one's own. Despite distance, day or night, cold or heat, hunger or thirst, fatigue — go with single mind to save, never seeking time or reward. To act so, one may be the great physician of all life; the opposite is the great thief among living beings." And so the physician earns nothing, eats nothing, sleeps nothing, and risks his life — or else is in violation. Once in violation, not only not a physician — not even a person — only a thief, and a great thief at that! Chinese medicine is too pitiable; pity all under Heaven the TCM-doctor heart!