Stomach Pain for Three Years That No Treatment Could Fix?
Patient search terms: stomach pain / abdominal pain / belly pain that won’t heal for years / headache and dizziness / dry stool / yellow scanty urine / red tongue without coating Medical terms: abdominal pain · latent heat transforming into heat · heat blocking the extraordinary channels
Opening: a man’s stomach hurt for three years, and nobody could find out why
Today we continue our series on Doctor Zhang Xichun (张锡纯) and his use of raw gypsum (sheng shi gao, 生石膏). Earlier we saw him use gypsum to clear heat from the surface of the body and from the head and face. Today’s use is even more surprising — he used raw gypsum to treat stomach pain. In his own words: “In treating abdominal pain, I have seen effective results with this approach.”
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice this, everyone. When most of us hear “stomach pain,” our first thought is “did you catch cold?” — but Doctor Zhang Xichun did the exact opposite: he treated stomach pain with a heavy dose of raw gypsum. There’s a big principle hiding inside this, and we’ll see it unfold step by step.
Who was the patient? Liu Xiwu, secretary at the Land Survey Bureau in Fengtian
The patient was a man named Liu Xiwu (刘西武), who worked as a secretary at the Land Survey Bureau in Fengtian (奉天, today’s Shenyang) — the bureau that handled land measurement and surveying, a civil post in the local government. What was his illness? Stomach pain — and it had been going on for three years.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In those days there was nothing to “check” — no lab tests, no CT scans, no ultrasound. It was simply stomach pain, and nobody knew what was really going on inside. Three years, and it never got better.
How bad was it: three years of pain, plus headache, dizziness, and dry stool
When Doctor Zhang Xichun felt his pulse: it was flooding and forceful — “flooding” like a rising river, telling him there was heat inside, and the right-hand pulse was especially strong. Then he looked at the tongue: it was red, with no coating at all — the surface thin and bare, as if exposed. The patient also suffered constant headaches and dizziness, dry stools, and urine that was yellow, scanty, and slightly burning.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Flooding forceful pulse, red tongue without coating, dry stool, scanty yellow urine — put those four signs together and the picture of heat is already unmistakable. The patient himself may only have thought, “I just have stomach pain.” But in Doctor Zhang Xichun’s eyes, the evidence was already laid out across the whole table.
Doctor Zhang Xichun’s diagnosis: this is not cold — it’s latent heat transforming into heat, and the heat has entered the extraordinary channels
How did Doctor Zhang Xichun read the case? He said: This is a heat pattern — latent qi transforming into heat (fu qi hua re, 伏气化热).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does “latent heat” mean? When an external pathogen — say, wind-cold — enters the body and isn’t cleared completely at the time, it lies hidden inside — that’s what the classics call “a lurking pathogen causing trouble.” If it hides long enough, the pathogen transforms into heat. Once the heat emerges, it blocks the extraordinary channels — the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (qi jing ba mai, 奇经八脉), such as the Belt Channel (dai mai, 带脉), the network of channels outside the twelve regular meridians. When the extraordinary channels are congested with heat, the channels don’t flow — and that is why it hurts.
So this stomach pain was not caused by cold. It was heat stuck in the channels.
Anatomy of the prescription: 1.5 liang of raw gypsum as the lead, clearing heat and nourishing yin while unblocking the channels and stopping pain
Doctor Zhang Xichun wrote a formula: raw gypsum 1.5 liang (about 45 g), zhi mu (anemarrhena), tian hua fen (trichosanthes root), xuan shen (scrophularia), bai shao (white peony), and chuan lian zi (toosendan fruit) at 5 qian (about 15 g) each, ru xiang (frankincense) and mo yao (myrrh) at 4 qian (about 12 g) each, and gan cao (licorice) 2 qian (about 6 g).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The structure of this formula is fascinating. Raw gypsum clears heat, zhi mu clears heat, xuan shen clears heat — these are the heat-clearing group. Tian hua fen and bai shao nourish yin, and bai shao also softens the liver. Chuan lian zi drains liver fire. And ru xiang and mo yao — which I’ve discussed before — unblock the channels, regulate qi, and stop pain. Clearing heat, nourishing yin, draining the liver, unblocking the channels — all in one pot.
One dose, and most of the pain was gone
How did the formula work? A single dose, and the pain eased by more than half! Then, with slight adjustments to the original formula, a few more doses — and he was completely cured.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Remember this rhythm: three years without improvement, one dose produced a major effect, and a few more doses cured it. This is Doctor Zhang Xichun’s signature: when the pattern is diagnosed correctly, even a long-standing illness doesn’t stand a chance.
An even more frightening case: a young man screaming day and night, bedridden for over a month
Doctor Zhang Xichun said there were more cases like this. In his youth — around the age of twenty — he traveled to Tianjin to sit the imperial examinations. After the exams, he returned to his home village in winter, where a young man of the Liu family was bedridden with stomach pain for over a month, crying out day and night — in agony around the clock, in a very dangerous state. The family had called in several doctors, and none of them could do a thing.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: You see, medicine back then really was limited. No lab tests, no CT, no ultrasound — nobody could tell what was wrong inside his belly; they only knew it hurt. Several doctors shook their heads, and the patient could do nothing but lie there in pain.
The earlier doctors made it worse: heat piled on heat, and the lurking pathogen was driven into a frenzy
When they heard Doctor Zhang Xichun was back in the village, they urgently summoned him. He felt the pulse: flooding and forceful — bouncing, powerful. That told him: there is heat inside.
Then a question revealed everything: the pain hadn’t originally been this severe, but the doctors before him had given him many warming, hot-natured herbs — afraid his belly had caught cold, they treated it with warming medicine. After the warming herbs, the pain grew even worse, until it reached the state it was in now.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun said the root of the illness was still heat: the heat pathogen had entered the extraordinary channels, the lurking pathogen caused trouble, and over time it generated heat — heat that had nowhere to disperse. Then the warming herbs pressed in on top of it, heat on top of heat, and the pain exploded. So when treating stomach pain, the single most important step is to distinguish cold from heat. If it’s clearly heat and you treat it as cold, the more you treat, the worse it gets.
Two liang of raw gypsum: one dose greatly reduced the pain; adding fresh bai mao gen, two more doses cured him
What to do? The same approach as before — but this time raw gypsum was used heavily, at 2 liang (about 60 g), matched with zhi mu, tian hua fen, and xuan shen to clear heat and nourish yin, bai shao and chuan lian zi to soften the liver and drain liver fire, ru xiang and mo yao to unblock the channels and stop pain, plus gan cao 2 qian (about 6 g).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice the dosage — the first patient received 1.5 liang; this patient received 2 liang. The heavier the illness, the heavier the dose. Doctor Zhang Xichun always set the gypsum dosage by the severity of the disease: when it needed to be heavy, he used it heavily, without hesitation.
After the formula was given, one dose brought a great reduction in symptoms. Then fresh bai mao gen (white cogongrass rhizome) was added, and after two more doses, he was completely cured.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Think about it: the man who had hurt for three years was cured in a few doses; the young man bedridden for over a month was cured in two doses. In the Republican era, when TCM physicians ranked the masters of their generation, Doctor Zhang Xichun was practically number one — his skill was extraordinary and his thinking was crystal clear.
The principle: stomach pain isn’t always “caught cold” — a fast, forceful pulse means heat
In this formula, Doctor Zhang Xichun noted: raw gypsum is extremely good at clearing heat — the effect is outstanding. For abdominal pain caused by heat — the kind where heat has rushed into the extraordinary channels — you clear the heat: use raw gypsum, add something to soothe the liver, add some ru xiang and mo yao to open the channels, and the results are excellent.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun gave a special warning: as soon as people hear “stomach pain,” they assume it’s cold and reach for warming herbs — and that can easily cause problems. So how do you tell cold from heat? Feel the pulse. If you take it carefully, you can feel the heat inside: a pulse that is forceful and fast means heat. When there’s heat, raw gypsum can clear it away.
What do we learn today? Just this: abdominal pain — whatever is going on inside the belly — can be cold or heat. If the pulse is forceful and fast, there is heat. And remember one special possibility: heat from an earlier illness that was never fully cleared can slip into the extraordinary channels (not the twelve regular meridians — for instance, into the Belt Channel), and that too can cause abdominal pain. In that situation, raw gypsum will clear the heat. Knowing that this pattern exists, we’re already ahead of the game.
Bonus: a single herb of raw gypsum — simple to look at, and it tastes of absolutely nothing
Finally, Doctor Luo shared a small detail: raw gypsum looks completely unremarkable, and when you decoct it, it has no taste at all — yet this one herb, used well, was the tool Doctor Zhang Xichun used to cure any number of serious illnesses.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Don’t underestimate it. A tasteless herb, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, becomes a lifesaver. In Chinese medicine, it’s not about how many herbs you pile in or how expensive they are — it’s about whether the pattern is diagnosed accurately and the medicine is used correctly. Let’s keep learning, one case at a time — shall we?
Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lectures on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records, from Medical Records Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine (《医学衷中参西录》).