A Hard Lump in the Stomach for Years, Can’t Eat? Doctor Zhang Xichun Dissolved the Mass with Chicken Gizzard Lining (Jineijin) and Fermented Rice Wine Starter
Patient’s search terms: hard lump in the stomach / feeling blocked in the stomach / can’t eat / eating less / food stuck and won’t go down Medical terms: stomach mass (zheng ji accumulation) · digestive dysfunction · stasis blockage of the middle burner · stomach mass
Opening: inside a chicken’s stomach hides a treasure that can grind down “copper and iron”
Have you ever wondered — chickens peck at pebbles and swallow sand all day long, so why doesn’t their stomach wear out? Because a chicken’s stomach is lined with a miraculous membrane — it can grind even stones. Doctor Zhang Xichun had a legendary touch with herbs in his lifetime, and this “treasure that falls off a chicken” — jineijin (鸡内金, chicken gizzard lining) — was one of the herbs he wielded most skillfully.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What exactly is jineijin? It is the yellow membrane on the inner wall of a chicken’s stomach (the gizzard). Next time you see a chicken being butchered at the market, open the gizzard — carefully peel off that yellow membrane inside, lay it in the sun to dry until it turns brittle, and that is sheng jineijin (raw chicken gizzard lining). Doctor Zhang Xichun was especially good at using it — he wrote about it at length, and today we are just opening the door on the topic.
First, let’s clear up a misunderstanding: Doctor Zhang Xichun’s “raw” does not mean the fresh thing at the market
Many people hear “sheng jineijin” and picture a membrane peeled straight off a fresh gizzard and used on the spot. That’s not it.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When Doctor Zhang Xichun says “sheng” (raw), he means the dried raw herb — not the fresh product. Just like when he often says “sheng shan yao” — he doesn’t mean the fresh yam from the market, but dried Chinese yam slices. Same with sheng jineijin — the dried, brittle pieces you buy at the pharmacy. Get this idea straight, and you won’t misread Doctor Zhang Xichun’s formulas.
Raw, stir-fried, scorched: three preparations, each with its own specialty
So how do you use jineijin once you buy it? At the pharmacy it usually comes as dry slices — pounded into small bits, that is sheng jineijin (raw); stir-fried dark, even scorched, it becomes jiao jineijin (scorched chicken gizzard lining).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: There’s also a middle option — stir-fried jineijin (chao jineijin). Simple way to remember: raw jineijin is stronger at resolving blood stasis; stir-fried jineijin is stronger at digesting food and guiding stagnation — though both do a bit of each. Whether to use it raw or stir-fried depends on whether the patient’s problem is mainly stasis or mainly food stagnation.
Doctor Zhang Xichun’s bold idea: hidden inside this membrane is a dilute hydrochloric acid that can dissolve porcelain and iron
Why is jineijin so powerful? Doctor Zhang Xichun made a daring guess — he believed jineijin contains dilute hydrochloric acid, which is why it tastes sour and is slightly warm in nature, and can dissolve the hardest things — ceramic, stone, copper, iron. Look at how a chicken eats pebbles without a problem — that’s the principle.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: From a modern scientific view, jineijin’s composition is very complex, containing a variety of digestive enzymes. Doctor Luo Dalun once did an experiment himself: he put jineijin into a heated iron wok — it slowly melted into a liquid, and after cooling he lifted it off; the smooth side was as polished as a mirror — proof that this is no ordinary scorched meat, its composition is marvelously complex. Doctor Zhang Xichun had no instruments back then; he reached the idea of “dilute hydrochloric acid” through observation and reasoning — and he was pointing in the right direction.
The theoretical highlight: why does the whole body fall ill when the spleen and stomach have stasis?
The quality Doctor Zhang Xichun prized most in jineijin can be summed up in four characters — it is superb at resolving stasis accumulations (善化瘀积); its power to break up stasis is exceptionally strong. He also held a distinctive theory:
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun believed the spleen contains many blood vessels (回血管), carrying fine tissues, villi and various digestive tubes — he had read many Western medical books in his day, and these ideas were well ahead of their time. He said the spleen should be an open, translucent organ (通彻玲珑) — all those tubes should stay clear, so that in the middle of it all food can be digested and qi can rise and descend. If stasis accumulates in there and qi transformation can no longer rise and fall, you get distension and fullness of the middle burner — the digestive tract is blocked, so of course the body falls ill. Jineijin can dissolve whatever is stuck — this is what he called organ therapy (脏器疗法): using a chicken’s digestive organ to unblock a person’s digestive tract.
The clever pairing with baizhu: not just the stomach — stasis anywhere in the body can be dissolved
Doctor Zhang Xichun had another refinement when using jineijin — pairing it in equal amounts with baizhu (白术, white atractylodes).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Combining jineijin and baizhu in equal parts is an especially important combination for resolving stasis accumulations: it both fortifies the stomach and tonifies the spleen, and can not only clear disease from the spleen and stomach, but wherever stasis accumulates in the organs — even stasis inside the body’s tissues — it helps dissolve it. When treating gynecological conditions, Doctor Zhang Xichun also often relied on jineijin to open the menses and dissolve blood stasis. So never underestimate this herb — in Doctor Zhang Xichun’s hands it was the “general of dissolving accumulations.”
Who was the patient? A Mr. Gong west of Shenyang, with a hard lump blocking his stomach for years
Theory done — now for Doctor Zhang Xichun’s real skill. The patient was a Mr. Gong who lived on the western side of Shenyang (then called Fengtian), in his thirties, whom Doctor Zhang Xichun met while seeing patients at Lida Hospital of Chinese Medicine.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Lida Hospital of Chinese Medicine was founded by Doctor Zhang Xichun — one of the earliest Chinese medicine hospitals in China, located in Shenyang. In that era, simply managing to run a proper hospital of Chinese medicine was an extraordinary achievement — and many of Doctor Zhang Xichun’s most important cases happened right there at Lida Hospital.
How sick was he? Press and you feel a hard lump; food gets stuck and won’t go down
What was wrong with Mr. Gong? In his stomach region (the gastric cavity, wei wan) something hard had been blocking things for several years already — press with your hand and you could feel the hard lump. The most miserable part was his eating had diminished and food could not pass downward: his appetite shrank and shrank, and whenever he ate a little, it just lodged there, refusing to go down — and he had no idea why.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Hearing this, many friends will ask: could it be stomach cancer? Not necessarily. This could perfectly well be digestive dysfunction — stomach qi too weak, with stasis on top, limited digestive capacity; eat a bit and it blocks up, so naturally you eat less. Over time the stomach feels like a hard lump is stuck in it. Don’t jump straight to the worst-case scenario — Chinese medicine diagnosis always looks at the whole picture of pulse and symptoms.
The diagnostic highlight: a deep, slightly wiry pulse — and the right side especially pronounced
Doctor Zhang Xichun felt his pulse: it was deep and slightly wiry (沉而微弦) — deep, in that you must press down to feel it; wiry, in that it feels hard like a taut string. And the right-hand pulse was especially pronounced.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The left-hand pulses correspond to the heart, liver and kidney; the three positions of the right hand correspond to the lung, spleen and mingmen (the life gate). A wiry pulse points to the liver and to stasis, and the right hand is the seat of the spleen and stomach — with the right pulse so wiry, the problem clearly sits in the middle burner’s spleen and stomach: stomach qi weak, with stasis blocking the way. Location and nature of the illness both settled, Doctor Zhang Xichun wrote the prescription — clean and decisive.
The prescription, taken apart: sheng jineijin 1 liang, with sheng jiuqu 5 qian — just two herbs
The formula was extremely simple — just two herbs: sheng jineijin (raw chicken gizzard lining) 1 liang (about 30 g) and sheng jiuqu (raw fermented rice wine starter) 5 qian (about 15 g), one dose decocted in water and drunk.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Where does this jiuqu come from? It’s the fermented starter used for brewing rice wine. In southern China many households brew their own wine, and the starter is sold in ordinary supermarkets; some pharmacies carry it too, and if you truly can’t find it, you can buy it online. Just be sure to use sheng jiuqu (raw starter) — jiuqu is a fermented, qu-type agent that has the effect of strengthening the spleen and stomach and digesting food to guide stagnation; sheng jineijin dissolves stasis, fortifies the spleen and stomach, and digests food; and the starter itself carries a nature of free passage. The two herbs together — dissolving the accumulation on one side, unblocking and sending it downward on the other — are exactly the right pair for that hard lump stuck in the stomach.
The result: after a few days of drinking it, the hard mass vanished and the appetite came back
How did it turn out? After drinking it for a few days, the hard mass completely dissolved — the patient was well. The lump that had blocked his stomach melted away, his appetite returned to normal, and food went down normally again.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: See how cleverly Doctor Zhang Xichun worked here — a patient with a weakened stomach function, even with a mass blocking the inside, was cured by that simple pair, sheng jineijin with sheng jiuqu. There isn’t a single aggressive herb in it — it all rests on a deep understanding of the herbs’ natures: jineijin dissolves stasis accumulations, jiuqu helps digestion and moves qi to send things down, and together they move a thousand pounds with four ounces of force.
Closing: this is only the beginning
Today’s story is just the opening of the jineijin series. Doctor Luo Dalun gives you fair warning: starting today, he will spend the next several days explaining, in detail, exactly how Doctor Zhang Xichun used jineijin — and there are far more wonderful applications to come.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Luo Dalun has a principle when teaching about herbs: he teaches about things that are both food and medicine, because ordinary people can actually put them to use themselves after listening. Jineijin is exactly such a treasure — when you butcher a chicken at home, don’t throw away that yellow membrane inside the gizzard; dried in the sun it becomes a fine medicine. Doctor Zhang Xichun used it to dissolve stomach accumulations, open the menses and resolve blood stasis — its wonderful uses are endless. Let’s continue tomorrow.
Arranged from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records; the case comes from Records of Chinese Medicine with Reference to the West (《医学衷中参西录》).