Vomiting Everything, Even Fainting From It — Doctor Zhang Jingyue’s Taiqing Yin (Supreme Clearing Drink) for Stomach-Fire Vomiting: One Bowl Calms It Down

Patient search terms: vomiting everything / vomiting that won’t stop / vomited until I fainted / craving cold water / acid reflux / stomach acid rising up / chest pain / pain in both flanks / belching / chronic sore throat

Medical terms for this condition: vomiting · stomach fire rushing upward · liver fire invading the stomach · blazing stomach fire · reflux esophagitis

Opening: a young wife, vomiting until she lost consciousness

Today’s physician is the great Ming-dynasty doctor Zhang Jingyue — author of the Jingyue Quan Shu (The Complete Works of Jingyue), the founding master of the warming-and-tonifying school. How skilled was he at treating vomiting? You can see it in this case: the patient had vomited until she fainted and lay at death’s door, a circle of physicians stood around helpless — and one dose of his medicine put her on the road to recovery within half a day.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Jingyue is one of the ancient physicians I respect most. He was truly brilliant at treating illness, and his theoretical framework of Chinese medicine is superb. Many of the formulas he left behind are extremely practical. If you get the chance to study him more, your understanding of Chinese medicine will deepen a great deal.

Who was the patient? The young wife of the Jin household — the daughter-in-law of the Jin family. And Doctor Zhang Jingyue deliberately pointed out three characters: huan men nü — a daughter of an official family.

Who was she? A willful official’s daughter who often had chest and flank pain

What does huan men nü mean? It means her family of origin was an official household — she was a government official’s daughter who married into the Jin family. What is such a girl like? Doctor Zhang Jingyue wrote it with great restraint — the next four characters: su ren xing — she had always been willful and headstrong.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Think about this — Doctor Zhang Jingyue did not write those words casually. Writing “daughter of an official family” carries meaning. Ancient doctors wrote quite objectively — this girl had always been headstrong. Who would dare write a medical record like that today? If you wrote “this patient is willful” on a hospital chart, they would sue you. The ancients were not so polite; they wrote straight out, “su ren xing” — su meaning habitually, all along.

What was her usual condition? “Mei duo xiong xie tong ji ou tu deng zheng” — she often had chest and flank pain, and she often vomited. But each time a little regulation put it right — “sui tiao sui yu” — so the family never took it very seriously.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Folks, what does chest and flank pain stand for? You should have some idea by now — pain on both sides of the chest and flanks is usually connected to disharmony of the liver and gallbladder, to constrained liver qi. This detail is crucial; the whole story later hangs on it.

Autumn turned cool, and the old illness exploded

Then came autumn — the end of autumn, winter approaching, the weather turning cold. Her old illness flared up again: chest pain, vomiting — and this time far worse (ou tu geng shen), much more violent.

The acute illness lasted only two days (bing ji er ri), yet her condition deteriorated by the hour. Why? Because she kept vomiting — whatever she ate came right back up; even a sip of water was thrown up, and her upright qi (zheng qi) drained away day after day. How far did it go? Even jue tuo bu xing — she suddenly fainted and lost consciousness; ru chui jue zhe — like one hanging at the very edge of death, about to stop breathing. A young wife, vomiting to this point — it looked as though she might not survive.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice the course of this illness — two days to reach this state. Vomiting damages fluids and exhausts qi; with no water going in and no food going down, the upright qi can no longer hold the body up, and the person collapses into jue tuo. This is not ordinary vomiting — this is a critical emergency.

A circle of physicians all shook their heads: the medicine won’t even go down — how can we treat this?

Only now did they hurriedly summon Doctor Zhang Jingyue. He entered the room and looked around — a ring of physicians stood around the patient. They all talked at once, and their verdict was unanimous: can’t be treated, can’t be treated.

Why? “Ru kou ji tu, wu ce ke shi” — the decoction was prepared, but one sip and it came right back up; the medicine could not even reach the stomach. What was there to do? Everyone was at a loss.

Then one physician stepped forward with a suggestion: use Du Shen Tang — Single Ginseng Decoction! Boil ginseng (ren shen) alone into a soup and pour it in quickly to prop up her upright qi — “shu ji ke wang qi sheng,” perhaps there was still a chance to keep her alive.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Note — this suggestion was not unreasonable. The woman had already collapsed; tonifying qi to stop the collapse is the standard approach. But when Doctor Zhang Jingyue took her pulse, he found things were not that simple. When the direction is right, you save a life; when it is wrong, you are pouring oil on the fire.

Doctor Zhang Jingyue’s masterstroke: asking her “do you want cold water?”

Doctor Zhang Jingyue laid his fingers on her pulse: mai luan shu shen — the pulse jumped chaotically, and extremely fast. Then he looked at the person: fan re zao rao — she was not unconscious the whole time; when she woke, she was desperately restless, feverishly hot all over, a misery she could not describe.

A thought turned in Doctor Zhang Jingyue’s mind: could this be yang ming fire? Why else would she be in such a frenzy? How to verify it? He asked the question that would be remembered for a thousand years — “Do you want to drink cold water?”

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is a master trick of ancient Chinese diagnostics. Sometimes the doctor does not even ask — he simply sets a cup of cold water and a cup of hot water in front of you and watches which one you reach for first, which one you drink. A patient’s instinctive reaction cannot lie. Someone with a heat pattern will instinctively reach for the cold water — it feels good in the hand, and they gulp it down with relief. Someone with a cold pattern will reach for the hot water, seeking warmth. The moment the hand moves, cold and heat are distinguished.

The young wife heard the question and nodded — yes, she wanted it, desperately. Doctor Zhang Jingyue gave her half a cup of cool water. Amazing! Everything else she drank came right back up — but half a cup of cool water went down and stayed down. And she still felt unsatisfied — she wanted more. He gave her ice water; she drank it and felt comfortable, calmed down, less tormented.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Folks, this clinches the diagnosis — stomach fire with true excess heat. To genuinely crave cold water and to feel better after drinking it is ironclad evidence of a heat pattern. Doctor Zhang Jingyue’s single question was worth more than the whole ring of physicians guessing.

Doctor Zhang Jingyue added one honest remark: this method does not work as well nowadays.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why? Because today everyone listens to health lectures and knows “warm water is good for you.” Ask someone “cold or hot water?” and they say, “I drink warm water — I’ve stuck with warm water for years, I never drink cold.” That is not the body’s instinct — that is a belief. So these days I can no longer make the judgment from the answer either. But set the cold water down in front of them and watch which one they instinctively touch first, drink first — cold and heat still separate themselves. The method has not gone out of date; we are just blocked by beliefs.

The prescription: Taiqing Yin, drawn from the Cold Division of the Eight Battle Formations

Diagnosis settled, Doctor Zhang Jingyue wrote the formula: Taiqing Yin (Supreme Clearing Drink).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Taiqing Yin is a formula Doctor Zhang Jingyue created himself. He arranged his formulas into Eight Battle Formations (ba zhen) — like the Eight Trigram formation of ancient warfare: supplementing, harmonizing, attacking, dispersing, cold, heat, consolidating, accommodating — every therapeutic method lined up in neat order. Taiqing Yin sits in the “Cold Division” (han zhen) — that division holds all the cold, cooling formulas. When you meet a heat pattern, you go into that division and pick the one that matches — it is wonderfully convenient.

What does Taiqing Yin treat? Stomach fire with heat (wei huo fa re) — stomach fire blazing upward, producing mania, agitation, skin eruptions, vomiting and the like. Doctor Zhang Jingyue himself said it can go in and out with the Bai Hu Tang (White Tiger Decoction) — its effect is comparable to the White Tiger Decoction.

What is in the formula? Raw gypsum (sheng shi gao), Zhi Mu (Anemarrhena) — this is the backbone of the White Tiger Decoction; then Shi Hu (Dendrobium) is added to nourish yin and preserve fluids, Mu Tong (Akebia stem) to guide the heat downward so it can leave through the urine; sometimes a little Mai Men Dong (Ophiopogon root) is added as well. Note: here the gypsum is used raw (sheng) and in a fairly large dose — this is the period from which Doctor Zhang Jingyue began using raw gypsum heavily.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Look at the structure of this formula: the White Tiger Decoction clears blazing heat in the qi level — that treats the root. Shi Hu and Mai Men Dong protect the fluids — she had been vomiting for two days, her fluids were severely depleted; clearing heat without nourishing yin will not do. Mu Tong conducts the heat downward, giving the pathogenic heat a way out. Clear on one side, nourish on the second, drain outward on the third — three routes advancing together.

The physicians buzzed: raw gypsum in the dead of cold? Can that work?

The prescription was written, and the ring of physicians erupted — a babble of objections: “This isn’t cold damage! Why is he giving her raw gypsum?” She had no external contraction — on what grounds gypsum? And besides, autumn is nearly over, winter is coming, the great cold season — in weather this cold, can the patient withstand the greatly cold gypsum? Surely not?

And Doctor Zhang Jingyue? He did not argue (bu yu bian lun). He let them whisper below, without adding a single word.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Savor this composure — knowing full well his diagnosis was correct, he simply did not explain. The old saying goes: “When you can distinguish clearly, you can act decisively.” Conversely — once the diagnosis is accurate, you need not fear others’ gossip. When the treatment works, the result speaks for itself.

The medicine was poured in — ji yao xia yan, the urgent remedy went down — and then han shui ban ri: the young wife slept soundly for half a day. When she woke? Bu fu ou — no more vomiting! She was then gradually regulated with yin-nourishing, heat-clearing formulas, and fully recovered.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice the contrast — before, everything she drank came back up and the medicine could not enter; now Taiqing Yin went down and she slept peacefully after it. Why? Because the medicine matched the pattern: once the stomach fire was cleared and the stomach qi descended, the vomiting naturally stopped. Clearing heat is stopping the vomiting — this is “jiang qi huo, qi ou zi zhi” — lower the fire, and the vomiting stops by itself.

How do you distinguish vomiting? Doctor Zhang Jingyue copied out the whole Neijing

That ends the case itself. But when Doctor Zhang Jingyue wrote about vomiting in his book, he did far more than this single case. In his chapter on vomiting, he first listed, one by one, every single passage about vomiting from the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine):

• From the Su Wen (Plain Questions), chapter Zhi Zhen Yao Da Lun (Great Treatise on the Essentials of the Ultimate): “Zhu ni chong shang, jie shu yu huo” — all rebellious qi rushing upward belongs to fire; and “Zhu ou tu suan, bao zhu xia po, jie shu yu re” — all vomiting of sour fluid and violent, pressing diarrhea belong to heat.
• From the Su Wen, chapter Ju Tong Lun (Treatise on Painful Disorders): “Han qi ke yu chang wei, jue ni shang chu, gu tong er ou ye” — when cold qi lodges in the stomach and intestines, rebellious qi rushes upward, hence pain and vomiting.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Do you see? The Neijing actually sets out cold, heat, deficiency and excess all at once: fire can cause vomiting, heat can cause vomiting, and cold evil can cause vomiting too. When Doctor Zhang Jingyue wrote about vomiting, he listed every relevant passage of the Neijing — “pah pah” — all laid out for you. That is real command of the literature; we don’t have to look it up ourselves. If you want to study deeply, open the Neijing and read the passages in context; if you have no time, the summaries Doctor Zhang Jingyue assembled are quite enough.

Vomiting divides into deficiency and excess: clear fire if there is fire, warm the stomach if there is cold, disperse food stagnation if there is accumulation

Having organized the Neijing, Doctor Zhang Jingyue turned to pattern-differentiation, and his first sentence was: “Dang bian xu shi, bi xu shou bian xu shi” — one must distinguish deficiency and excess; it must be the very first thing distinguished.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is the master principle of Doctor Zhang Jingyue’s practice — with any illness, first sort out deficiency and excess, cold and heat. Deficiency and excess are different: where there is excess evil you clear it away; where upright qi is deficient you nourish it slowly. If this framework is not clear, every formula that follows will be wrong.

• Deficiency vomiting (xu ou): vomiting from deficient upright qi — you tonify. Doctor Zhang Jingyue explained every method of tonification one by one;
• Excess vomiting (shi ou): vomiting with pathogenic qi present — it further divides: cold evil invading the stomach (the spleen and stomach were already weak; cold evil arrives, the stomach qi cannot descend, so it flips upward and comes out as vomiting), and diet injuring the stomach (food stagnation clogging the stomach, causing retching);
• Fire vomiting (huo ou): and there are those with fire — today’s patient is one.

What happens when fire sits in the middle burner and causes vomiting? The liver wood runs rampant and attacks the spleen earth (gan mu heng ni ke pi tu) — the liver wood is too strong, bullying the spleen and stomach; the stomach qi cannot descend and pushes upward, and the person vomits. Doctor Zhang Jingyue said that in this situation the fire-pattern signs must be present: or heat-thirst (thirsty, wanting cold drinks), or irritability (restless and unbearable), the pulse must be huge and bounding (pulsing strongly and fast), the vomiting must surge violently (each heave erupts forcefully), and the body, breath, voice and manner must all be robust and vigorous (xing qi sheng se bi jie zhuang li — the whole person in that fiery, forceful state).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Conversely, what does deficiency vomiting look like? You want to vomit but cannot quite bring it up, weak and listless, no energy — the complete opposite of that “vigorous” picture. That is why Doctor Zhang Jingyue said: if there is truly fire, simply lower the fire and the vomiting stops by itself — at that point, clearing heat is the main approach.

How did she actually fall ill? Liver fire too strong, qi all jammed up in the stomach

Let us step back and analyze how this young wife really became ill. Doctor Zhang Jingyue wrote it at the very start: huan men nü, su ren xing — an official’s daughter, willful by habit, who always had to have her way. When such a person gets angry and smolders with resentment, where does the fire go?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you have listened to me for a while, you already know — liver fire! The liver qi is constrained; depression transforms into fire; the liver wood runs rampant and attacks the spleen earth, so the spleen and stomach lose their transporting and transforming function, the stomach qi cannot descend and can only flip upward. That is why such people typically have chest and flank pain (the liver channel runs through both flanks), belching, and bringing up sour fluid — every heave surfaces as stomach acid. I remember it vividly: in the old closed-off households, there really were daughters-in-law like this, bullied by their mothers-in-law, living in a bad family atmosphere, so angry their faces turned livid — that state of constrained liver qi, belching and spitting acid all day long.

Even more crucial was her way of life: an official’s daughter married into the Jin household — a young wife of a great family, never leaving the inner chambers (da men bu chu, er men bu mai), doing essentially no labor, pampered and spoiled, not physically strong at all. In ordinary times a little vomiting was regulated and passed; this time she vomited for days, her upright qi was exhausted, and she nearly fainted away.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So the real issue in this case was liver fire too strong. Why could that ring of physicians not treat her? They had not judged the cold and heat, the yin and yang correctly — some thought she was deficient and wanted to tonify, but the fire was raging, and tonifying would have poured oil on the fire! So tonifying was forbidden. What was needed was to clear heat, nourish yin, and slowly restore upright qi — Doctor Zhang Jingyue used Taiqing Yin: raw gypsum with Zhi Mu as the base, Shi Hu to nourish yin, Mu Tong to conduct heat out through the urine. Clearing heat worked immediately, and then nourishing yin slowly rebuilt the upright qi — and the woman recovered.

Modern relevance: reflux esophagitis and chronic sore throat are both about “stomach qi rushing upward”

This case carries special meaning for today. Doctor Zhang Jingyue treated an ancient patient, but the disease mechanism of “stomach qi rushing upward” is everywhere in modern life.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What is a very large share of reflux esophagitis today linked to? Stress, anxiety, constrained liver qi! The moment you get angry or anxious, the liver wood runs rampant, stomach acid flips upward and erodes the esophagus — that is the modern version of “bringing up sour fluid.” A great deal of chronic sore throat is also connected to this: stomach acid keeps rising and repeatedly corrodes the throat, producing chronic inflammation. Why won’t that sore throat ever heal? First bring the stomach qi down! All of this is what Chinese medicine calls “constrained liver qi, stomach qi rushing upward” — the same disease mechanism as this young wife of the Jin household.

Bonus: three little formulas from Doctor Zhang Jingyue — Mung Bean Drink, Snow Pear Nectar, Jade Spring Powder

In the Jingyue Quan Shu, right after Taiqing Yin runs a string of small heat-clearing formulas, and they are delightful — here they are for you:

Lu Dou Yin — Mung Bean Drink — for “heat toxin, consumptive heat, and urgent fire-heat that will not retreat”: take mung beans in any amount, simmer until thoroughly mushy, add a pinch of salt (honey also works), and drink it daily.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Later, Zhang Wuben read this formula, decided mung beans were wonderful, and had everyone eat mung beans every day — but Doctor Zhang Jingyue said it plainly: this is only for heat toxin and consumptive heat — it must match the pattern! People with cold patterns, people with yang deficiency, must not drink it that way. Only heat patterns call for formulas from the Cold Division — that is an iron rule.

Xue Li Jiang — Snow Pear Nectar — for feverish restlessness, heat and irritability over the body, and deficient fluids: peel a large white pear; take a bowl of icy cold spring water; slice the pear thin and steep the slices in the water. After a while the water turns sweet and clear — drink the water, not the pear. This nectar quells yin fire extremely quickly — a pleasant little formula.

Yuquan San — Jade Spring Powder — six liang of raw gypsum (about 180 g), ground raw into powder, mixed with ground licorice; take it stirred into freshly drawn cold water (sometimes hot water or ginseng decoction is used). Its heat-clearing effect is superb.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Folks, do you know where Doctor Zhang Xichun’s famous later method came from — grinding raw gypsum into powder and eating it dipped on pear slices? He learned it from Doctor Zhang Jingyue! Later generations all read these books and drew experience from them. So the Jingyue Quan Shu is a great treasure-house, full of little formulas like these.

Doctor Luo’s closing note: with any illness, first sort out deficiency and excess, cold and heat

Let me sum up with one sentence. This case is lively to read, but what Doctor Zhang Jingyue actually taught us is a single principle: with any illness, you must first distinguish deficiency and excess, cold and heat.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is the great framework. As a master of diagnostics, Doctor Zhang Jingyue made an enormous contribution to the diagnostic art of Chinese medicine — he was exceptionally clear on all of this. If you cannot sort out deficiency and excess, cold and heat, every formula that follows is wrong; as long as the direction is right — for instance, with vomiting, if you judge it to be fire, Taiqing Yin works, and so does the White Tiger Decoction; you can even swap formulas, so long as it clears heat and contains raw gypsum. When the direction is right, even an imperfect medicine will not miss by much; when the direction is wrong, the best medicine is still oil on the fire. We listen to a little story about an ancient master every day — over time it becomes a little schoolhouse, gradually letting us savor how Chinese medicine analyzes an illness and how a physician thinks at the bedside. And then we slowly come to understand our own bodies — when some small imbalance appears in daily life, with awareness we can steep a pear in water or drink a bowl of mung bean soup and regulate it ourselves. How good is that?

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on Doctor Zhang Jingyue’s case records; the case is from the Jingyue Quan Shu (《景岳全书》 — by Doctor Zhang Jingyue, Ming dynasty, published 1624).