A Hard Lump in the Belly That Kept Growing for Seven Years? Doctor Zhang Xichun Dissolved the Zheng Jia Mass with Li Chong Tang
Patient’s search terms: hard lump in the belly / abdominal mass / lump that keeps growing / lump hard as stone / uterine fibroids / ovarian cysts Medical terms: zheng jia (abdominal mass) · lump in the abdomen · qi and blood stasis binding · insufficiency of upright qi
Opening: yesterday’s formula — today it meets a real patient
Yesterday we talked about a formula Doctor Zhang Xichun created himself — Li Chong Tang (Regulate the Thoroughfare Vessel Decoction) — and how it treats masses in a woman’s belly. Today Doctor Luo Dalun continues: now a real case is on the table. Just how severe an illness can this formula handle? The answer may surprise you — a seven-year-old disease the patient herself had sentenced to death was pulled out by the roots.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: “Chong” is the Thoroughfare Vessel (chong mai) — gynecological disorders always have to do with the Chong and Ren (Conception) vessels; “li” means to regulate. What Li Chong Tang treats is zheng jia masses in women that arise from insufficiency of upright qi, or masses that, left too long, drag the upright qi down with them. Zheng jia simply means benign lumps and tumors growing in the belly. Because of their special physiology, women really are more prone to growing these masses than men.
What this formula treats: a missed period, or lochia left behind after childbirth, can bind into a mass in the belly
What is Li Chong Tang for? Doctor Zhang Xichun said it plainly himself: it treats amenorrhea in women, or postpartum lochia not fully discharged, binding into zheng jia.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In plain words — the period stops, stagnant blood stays in the belly and binds into a lump; or after childbirth the lochia is not cleared out and the stasis binds into a mass. When this happens people tend toward yin deficiency creating heat — some have waves of fever; or yang deficiency creating cold — others feel especially chilly. Then the appetite shrinks and coughing becomes frequent — every kind of deficiency symptom comes knocking. On the surface it looks like a pile of deficiency syndromes, but the root of it all is that one block of stasis.
Where the Lida Hospital of Chinese Medicine came from: a bureau chief cured a colleague’s wife with this very formula
Before we get to the case, meet one man — Qi Ziyun. He was the director of the Fengtian (Shenyang) Tax Bureau and a devoted admirer of Doctor Zhang Xichun. He had once used this very formula to cure a colleague’s wife. On the strength of that experience, he specially invited Doctor Zhang Xichun to Shenyang and founded a hospital there — the Lida Hospital of Chinese Medicine.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: How important was Lida Hospital? The first hospital of Chinese medicine in China — the earliest, most fully formed private institution of its kind. In that era, turning Chinese medicine into a hospital was unheard of. Shenyang is also Doctor Luo Dalun’s hometown, and every time he reaches this part of the story he feels it deeply. And the patient we are about to meet came to the Lida Hospital precisely because of its reputation.
Who was the patient? A woman in her thirties, with a lump that had grown for seven years
The patient was a woman in her thirties. Her zheng jia mass started in the lower abdomen — it began in the small of the belly — and then grew upward, pushing higher year after year. In the first year it still felt soft to the touch; by the second year it was hard as stone — press down and you felt lump after lump, extremely hard.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Picture it: this illness had gone on for seven years! For seven years the thing kept growing upward — up to the level of the heart, with both flanks packed full, and pressing in, everything was hard lumps. This was no minor complaint — the woman had a “stone” growing inside her belly.
How sick was she? She couldn’t eat, her mind went cloudy, and she slept through whole days
With that thing blocking her middle, how could she be well? Her appetite shrank day by day, and she often felt clouded and confused — her mind fuzzy, never quite clear. At the worst times she would sleep a full day and night: lying there for twenty-four hours, unable to eat, unable even to drink water, her body drained to the last. Over the years she had taken medicine again and again, with no effect at all.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why the clouded mind and the sleeping? In Chinese medicine, the zheng jia mass blocks the middle burner, so qi and blood have no source from which to be produced, and clear yang cannot rise — the brain gets no nourishment of qi and blood, and the person becomes mentally foggy and drowsy. All those layers of deficiency were caused by that one block of stasis. But the doctors before had treated the “deficiency” — they tonified and tonified, the mass stayed right where it was, and the illness never got better.
One feel of the pulse: deficient but not rapid — Doctor Zhang Xichun promised on the spot, “I can cure you”
Out of options, the family brought her to the Lida Hospital. Doctor Zhang Xichun felt her pulse: it was deficient, yet it did not beat fast — not the bounding, racing pulse of someone beyond saving. He knew what he was dealing with, and promised on the spot: “I can cure you.”
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: That “deficient but not rapid” is the single most important stroke in this entire case. A deficient pulse tells you the upright qi is badly damaged; but not rapid tells you the pathogen has not yet raged out of control — there is still room to fight back. Doctor Zhang Xichun spent his life judging life and death by the pulse, and with this reading he knew the disease could be saved. The formula he wrote was — Li Chong Tang.
The most wrenching moment: the medicine was prescribed, but the patient refused to take it
Then came the last thing anyone expected — the medicine was written, and the patient would not take it. She had been sick for so long that she had long since decided she was beyond saving: a disease this far gone — what was the point of treating it? She might as well wait to die. The medicine sat there, not a single dose taken.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is the most human moment in the case record. It wasn’t that the patient didn’t trust Doctor Zhang Xichun — it was that she didn’t believe she could live. Seven years of stubborn illness, sleeping and unresponsive — anyone would despair. And so the medicine sat there for a whole year.
The second year was worse: four days of unconscious sleep, and the family called him back in the night
By the second year, her condition had worsened: the mass blocked her more and more, and she lay in bed unconscious for four days straight — already half-comatose. The family panicked and called Doctor Zhang Xichun in again. He first brought her around with medicine, then told her earnestly: “If you had taken my Li Chong Tang last year, this year’s illness would already be cured. Why put yourself through this suffering? I can cure this disease — I am not speaking idly.”
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun was a man of true feeling — the original text says it in four characters: “earnestly told her” (恳切告之). He wasn’t trying to frighten the patient; he was genuinely anxious for her: an illness that could have been cured a year ago had been dragged to the edge of coma. When the patient heard this, her eyes lit up: really? — and there it was, the turning point. She began to believe, and she began to take the medicine.
The turnaround: more than thirty doses of Li Chong Tang, and the lumps dissolved one by one
She took the medicine steadily — more than thirty doses. What happened? The hard lumps in her belly gradually dissolved — most of them melted away, leaving only the original root of the mass, about the size of a walnut, hard and stubborn. Doctor Zhang Xichun examined it and added a single herb to Li Chong Tang: raw leech (sheng shuizhi), just 1 qian — one qian is three grams, a tiny amount. After a few more doses, the lump that remained in the patient’s belly was eliminated completely — clean and gone.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: More than thirty doses melted a zheng jia that had grown for seven years and packed the heart and both flanks down to the size of a walnut — that alone is a miracle. So why the raw leech at the end? The leech is an herb that breaks blood and drives out stasis, specialized in stubborn stasis. Doctor Zhang Xichun used it with great caution — 1 qian, three grams, the lightest touch — and it gnawed through that “hardest bone” of all. This is what they call dotting the eye of the dragon: keep the main formula unchanged, add one attacking herb to finish the job, and the cure closes cleanly.
The prescription, taken apart: four tonics as the base, paired with three stasis-breaking herbs
How exactly is Li Chong Tang put together? Put simply, it comes down to four words — support the upright, transform the stasis (fu zheng hua yu).
- Support the upright: sheng huangqi (raw astragalus) 3 qian, dangshen (party root) 2 qian, baizhu (white atractylodes) 2 qian, and sheng shanyao (dry Chinese yam) 5 qian — four qi-tonifying, spleen-strengthening herbs as the base. The yam at 5 qian (about 15 g) is already a generous amount by Doctor Zhang Xichun’s standards.
- Restrain the heat: tianhuafen (trichosanthes root) 4 qian and zhimu (anemarrhena) 4 qian — these two check the warming nature of huangqi and dangshen. Doctor Zhang Xichun sometimes swapped them for yin-nourishing herbs like maidong (ophiopogon) or shashen (glehnia), so the tianhuafen was never a fixed rule.
- Transform the stasis: sanleng (scirpus rhizome) 3 qian, ezhu (zedoary) 3 qian, and sheng jineijin (raw chicken gizzard lining) 3 qian (about 9 g — be sure to choose the yellow kind).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Many people see sanleng and ezhu and flinch: “Aren’t these fierce blood-breaking herbs?” Doctor Zhang Xichun held exactly the opposite view — he believed sanleng and ezhu are mild in nature: they remove stasis without harming the upright qi. With huangqi, dangshen, baizhu and shanyao supporting the upright qi up front, and raw jineijin dissolving every kind of accumulation in the body, you have tonification and attack together, defense and breakthrough together — that is the soul of Li Chong Tang. To this day, TCM doctors still prescribe this formula regularly.
The lesson of the case: sheng jineijin — the food-grade treasure that transforms stasis
The real thing to learn from today’s case is a single herb: sheng jineijin (raw chicken gizzard lining).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Jineijin is the yellow membrane lining a chicken’s gizzard. It is both medicine and food (yao shi tong yuan) — kill a chicken at the market and there it is. Remember two rules: used raw, it transforms stasis — when qi and blood have bound into lumps in the body, it dissolves them; used stir-fried, it promotes digestion — it helps food move through. When the body carries stasis and the herb is used properly, this food-grade treasure is wonderfully helpful for breaking up accumulations. Today it was one of the great heroes that dissolved a seven-year zheng jia.
Closing: if you have fibroids or cysts, it is worth asking the question
Finally, Doctor Luo Dalun has a reminder for women: if you have uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts, or lumps of any kind in the body, you can first ask a local TCM practitioner — is your zheng jia there because your upright qi is insufficient? Could Li Chong Tang be used to regulate it?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Li Chong Tang is one of Doctor Zhang Xichun’s experiential formulas. He created it and treated many cases with it, and we will talk through those one by one as we go on. That is all for today — see you 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》).