Night Emissions, a Clouded Head and No Energy? Imperial Physician Gong Tingxian’s Treatment with Chenshen Bujing Wan — Plus His “Longevity” Health Rhyme

Search terms patients use: Night emissions / Wet dreams / Emissions while asleep / Clouded, heavy head / No energy / Body worn out

Medical terms: Seminal emission (yi jing) · Wet dreams (meng yi) · Yin deficiency with stirring fire · Kidney qi not secure

Opening: a word to the little ones — please step out of the room

Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin today, Doctor Luo Dalun asked us to pass along a message: this episode is not suitable for children — if there are children listening nearby, please send them out to play for a while. Because today’s topic is a matter for adult men: seminal emission (yi jing).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What is seminal emission? It’s when semen comes out on its own — while sleeping, or when a stray desire stirs, without any sexual intercourse. It is a genuine condition, and plenty of men live with it. The physician in today’s case is the great Ming-dynasty master Doctor Gong Tingxian — the “Champion Physician of the Medical World” (yi lin zhuang yuan) whom I hold in such high regard, an imperial physician of the Academy of Imperial Physicians. His skill in treating illness was of the highest order, as his case records make clear.

Who was the patient? First, two kinds of seminal emission — one normal, one sick

Doctor Gong began by sorting seminal emission into two kinds. For most people, he said, if you haven’t had a conjugal life for a long time, a night emission is perfectly normal. He put it in a picture:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Think of a bottle. When the water fills it to the brim, some is bound to spill over — right? That’s normal. But there is another kind: the organs are insufficient — the body is depleted inside, too weak to hold things in, and the moment a small flame of desire stirs, the essence comes out. That’s not a full bottle. That’s a cracked bottle. A full bottle needs nothing; a cracked bottle needs patching.

The patient today was named Chen Guilin, a xiucai — a scholar who had passed the first level of the imperial examinations. His complaint was night seminal emissions: once or twice a month, sometimes three to five times. When emissions become that frequent, the body starts to complain — his mind grew clouded and heavy, dizzy, unable to keep up, so that even a small problem couldn’t be thought through clearly; and his body felt weary, tired all the time. That is no longer normal.

One touch of the pulse: thready, astringent and weak in all six positions — yin deficiency with stirring fire

The scholar came to Doctor Gong for help. Doctor Gong took his pulse: thready, astringent and weak in all six positions — very faint, slightly rough, extremely feeble.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He judged this a case of yin deficiency with stirring fire. When yin is deficient, the pulse should beat fast — otherwise you couldn’t call it yin deficiency; a racing pulse is what matches the diagnosis. As for the tongue, Doctor Gong didn’t record it, but I would infer that it was red, even dark red — definitely not pale. Why? Yin deficiency with stirring fire: the tongue body is red.

Yin deficiency with stirring fire — when yin runs low, deficient fire arises. As everyone knows: when yin is deficient, internal heat is born (yin xu ze sheng nei re).

What exactly is yin deficiency? Like a car engine running without oil

Yin deficiency means the fluids of the body are insufficient — essence, blood, and fluids (jin ye) and the like are all running short. What happens when they run short?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Think of a car engine with no oil and no coolant. Start it up and it runs hot — that’s why we say yin deficiency gives rise to internal heat. Yin deficiency is a constitution; many people drift into it over time. Who becomes yin deficient? First, there are the chronic worriers with constantly blazing liver fire. Some elderly people are like this — a lifetime of liver fire, a lifetime of fretting, the fire always burning away. What does it consume? Yin fluids — the liquid of the body. So they become yin deficient. Then there are the night owls — staying up late night after night; hard work also drains the yin fluids, and I’ve seen plenty of late-night workers in this state. What else? People who love spicy and heating foods — many who move to America, for example, eat beef every day and slowly drift into yin deficiency; many children whose tongues grow redder and redder after a fever are yin deficient; some people can eat spicy food without trouble, but others gradually become yin deficient from it. And then there are all kinds of hot-natured medicines and other drains — little by little, the yin runs out.

What does yin deficiency feel like? Each organ sends its own signal

When yin is deficient, each of the five organs reacts in its own way. Doctor Luo walked us through the whole list — a complete self-check manual for yin deficiency.

Hot hands and feet, night sweats, a short temper — these are the common signs of yin deficiency with blazing fire: the palms and soles feel hot, especially in summer; in winter they may actually feel cold — because yin is also a liquid substance, and in winter it doesn’t circulate well, so the extremities are cold; in summer they are hot. Sweating at night during sleep is yin-deficiency night sweats. The fire is blazing inside, so the temper flares; the mouth is dry and you crave cold drinks; the eyes are dry and feel fiery; the stools tend to be dry and the urine yellow.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Now look organ by organ — the signs differ. Heart yin deficiency: restlessness and anxiety, easy palpitations, the heart racing and skipping, insomnia and vivid dreams, and a face that flushes easily. Lung yin deficiency: dry cough, sometimes with blood-streaked sputum, sticky phlegm, a dry throat that feels like fire — and cold water is wonderfully soothing. Spleen yin deficiency: very dry stools; after eating, the belly bloats but the stools stay dry; the lips are especially red, the tongue red — lots of children today are spleen-yin deficient; they’re irritable and fretful, because they’ve eaten too much hot-natured meat, and their personalities can even change, becoming strangely difficult — teachers tear their hair out over these kids. There are so many of them.

Kidney yin deficiency: ringing in the ears (tinnitus), sore, weak lower back and knees, teeth that rot, loosen and fall out early, and hair loss — because the internal heat of yin deficiency attacks upward, and when yin blood is insufficient the hair falls out. In men it shows as seminal emission; in women, scanty periods, even amenorrhea, or flooding bleeding (beng lou) — because the yin is deficient and there is fire; the fire either dries up the blood or “breaks” it, driving it to run everywhere it shouldn’t.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Then there’s liver yin deficiency: a short temper, a red tongue, blazing liver fire — flaring up at the slightest thing. Liver yin deficiency and kidney yin deficiency usually come together — the symptoms of kidney yin deficiency also appear in liver yin deficiency, because the liver and kidneys tend to be affected as a pair. The liver stores the blood, so liver yin deficiency readily causes blood deficiency, since it drains the blood. You see, when the yin of any of the five organs is insufficient, the others follow — the whole body turns yin deficient. So yin-deficient people are hardly rare; there are plenty of them.

How did Doctor Gong think about it? The key stroke of the whole case

Chen Guilin the scholar was a textbook case of yin deficiency with stirring fire. Why do we say so? Here’s an easy picture:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Suppose yin and yang each start at 100 points. Now your yin drops to 50, while yang stays at 100 — it’s as if yang has an extra 50 points. That surplus, expressing itself as abnormal function, becomes fire. That’s yin deficiency with blazing fire. This fire isn’t always true fire — sometimes there is real fire, but often it’s deficient fire; deficient and excess fire combine. So what do you do?

The prescription: Chenshen Bujing Wan — tonify, astringe, clear, with a coat of cinnabar

The formula Doctor Gong wrote was called Chenshen Bujing Wan (the Cinnabar-Coated Essence-Supplementing Pill). What is this “chenshen”? It’s cinnabar (zhu sha) — the herb used to coat the surface of the pills. What does this formula treat? Exhausted original yang, insecure kidney qi, night seminal emissions, and seminal emission with night sweats — it assists and greatly tonifies the original qi, astringes the essence and firms the yang, with miraculous effect.

Let’s look at the structure of the formula, herb by herb:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: First, huang qi (astragalus) fried in salt water, and ren shen (ginseng) — these tonify the qi. Why tonify qi? First, qi and blood generate each other: if you only nourish yin and blood in isolation, the result may be disappointing; you need to tonify the qi so the blood can gradually be born from it. Second, qi deficiency also fails to hold things in — leaking outward and failure of containment are often tied to qi deficiency. So you must tonify the qi. This man was certainly depleted — you can’t say he was purely yin deficient; his whole body was probably run down — a scholar who looked frail from the start. Shan yao (Chinese yam) tonifies the spleen; dang gui (angelica) and shu di huang (prepared rehmannia) nourish the blood; gou qi zi (goji berries), shu di huang and suo yang (Cynomorium) tonify the kidneys — goji tonifies the kidney, prepared rehmannia tonifies the kidney, suo yang tonifies the kidney too. Gui ban (tortoise shell)? It clears deficient heat. Duan mu li (calcined oyster shell) is astringent — when your qi fails to hold and things leak downward, I astringe and secure them; what’s tonified must also be held in place. You’ll notice Doctor Zhang Xichun often added long gu (dragon bone) and mu li (oyster shell) to his tonics — why? To hold and secure. There’s also niu xi (Achyranthes root) — this would be huai niu xi, which tonifies the liver and kidneys and guides the blood downward; bu gu zhi (psoralea fruit) — a slightly warming addition, to warm the kidney and astringe; and zhi mu (anemarrhena) with huang bai (phellodendron) — to clear deficient heat, because right now there is a bit of fire, so he clears it.

Qi-tonifying and blood-nourishing, kidney-tonifying, astringing, clearing deficient fire — the logic is crystal clear: tonify first and foremost — qi, blood and kidneys all covered — then add astringents on top. Then how were the pills made? Bai zhu (atractylodes) was decocted in water, and the herbal powder was mixed with that water and formed into pills. Refined, isn’t it? What does bai zhu do? Tonifies the spleen. If your body can’t hold things in, remember: the spleen governs containment — so tonify the spleen.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: After the pills were formed, they were rolled in cinnabar so a layer stuck to the outside. What does cinnabar do? It settles the spirit — his mind was scattered and restless, so this calms it. Someone will object: isn’t cinnabar toxic? Yes — and Chinese medicine is very particular about this: cinnabar contains mercury, which is toxic. But if you put it in water and boil it at high temperature, the mercury comes out and it becomes poisonous; inside a pill, though, it can’t decompose — decomposition requires high temperature. So it does its job without poisoning you. You can’t take it for long — it is toxic after all and shouldn’t be taken in large amounts — but as an outer coat for pills, no problem. The formula also included zi he che — the human placenta we’ve discussed before — which greatly tonifies the original qi; and long gu (dragon bone) was added on top of the oyster shell. Dragon bone and oyster shell together astringe and settle the spirit, with a calming effect — because his mind was agitated and restless.

The setback: the medicine worked, but the scholar couldn’t keep the rules

The scholar took this pill slowly for several months, with good results — it worked. But Doctor Gong noted: “Nai qi shu huan yu bu neng jin shou” — roughly, “Alas, time and again he could not strictly observe the prohibitions” — in other words, the scholar occasionally broke the rules and indulged himself a little.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is where Doctor Gong’s greatness shows — he didn’t just prescribe medicine, he educated. Doctor Gong left an enormous body of formulas — countless wonderful secret recipes — but he also constantly taught health preservation. He composed a little rhyme for the scholar to memorize. Some of you listening may say, “this is about men, it has nothing to do with me” — but we’re really talking about the underlying principles, and the rhyme that follows is useful for everyone’s health.

Bonus: a “longevity formula” — every line an honest piece of health advice

Doctor Gong’s rhyme scans neatly. Let’s savor it line by line — this is the real treasure of today’s episode:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: “Pei yang jing yuan gui jie fang” — “To cultivate your essence and original qi, value restraint in the bedroom.” At our age, you really shouldn’t still be so fond of that; it does you no good. “Geng quan chen lei zui wei liang” — “Above all, shed the burdens of the world” — worldly entanglements harm the body most; keep your distance from them. Why are people so tired? Official affairs, busy work, taking everything onto one’s own shoulders: my nephew’s problem I must help with, my brother-in-law’s matter I have to manage, and to feel important I have to be involved in everything — these are the entanglements of the world. Cut some of them loose, rush around less, and the heart is less weary. You see why his fire was so big? The heart stirs every day, consuming yin fluids; when yin is depleted, fire blazes — so you must clear the heart and reduce desires. “Shi wei ban bao yi qing dan” — “Eat only half full, and keep your food light.” “Jiu zhi san fen wu guo shang” — “Drink only three parts of a cup, never to excess.” A little is good — it invigorates the blood, frees the channels, and lifts the spirits; too much harms. Up north, when the mood takes over, not drinking makes you look ungracious — this drinking culture can be quite harmful. In northeastern winters, people often drink themselves senseless, then lie down on the ground on the way home and fall asleep — at minus 20 degrees Celsius, out on the street. People have frozen to death that way!

“Yao er sui shi ying mian jin” — “Keep tonics at hand and take them from time to time.” Yao er means nourishing supplements — keep some around and take a bit now and then.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In this post-pandemic era, wave after wave keeps coming — flu A is circulating in the north again, and the virus keeps mutating. Don’t think everything is over; you must prepare in peacetime. Don’t wait until an epidemic arrives to start boosting your zheng qi (upright qi) — as if it were so easy to boost! What can you take in ordinary times? Chinese yam, or huang qi (astragalus) and gou qi zi (goji) soaked in water to drink. You don’t need a grand formula of twenty or thirty herbs and a pot of decoction every day. Small formulas, slow regulation: nourish the blood where blood needs nourishing, tonify the qi where qi needs tonifying — a gentle fire, cooking slowly. I read the comments often, and some friends say: “Doctor Luo, following your talks, I take Buzhong Yiqi in the morning, something else at noon, and Jinkui Shenqi in the evening, and my body is improving beautifully.” That’s exactly right — take it step by step; a few patent medicines are enough. There’s no need to treat every illness so ferociously.

“Gong ming you fen bu xu mang” — “Fame has its share — no need to rush.” Fame — the reputation, status and benefits you obtain — heaven has already allotted it. You don’t have to scramble; don’t take it so seriously.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: To chase fame and rank with desperate ambition, pushing yourself at full speed — there’s no need. If it comes, fine; if not, it’s no great matter. And sometimes what you grasp for never comes anyway. Do your work honestly, do it well, and fame arrives on its own. So don’t wear yourself out chasing fame, running after a result. That only consumes you. Put the lines together: “Cultivate your essence and original qi — value restraint in the bedroom; above all, shed the burdens of the world; eat only half full and keep your food light; drink only three parts of a cup, never to excess; keep tonics at hand and take them from time to time; fame has its share — there is no need to rush; remember these few plain lines, and you hold the recipe for immortality.” Savor these words slowly, take them to heart — that is the formula for long life!

About the physician: the “Champion Physician” who lived to 97

Anyone else could say this and you might doubt it — but when Doctor Gong Tingxian says it, you should believe him, because he himself lived to 97.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In the Ming dynasty, a man living to 97 was practically an immortal! The documents have been combed through again and again — he really was in his nineties. How? Because his whole medical philosophy was devoted to building up and preserving health — he was truly expert at it. He had a vast stock of health pastes and secret formulas, and he conscientiously prepared them for himself. His style of treatment was called the “Kingly Way of medicine” (yi zhong wang dao): he carried on Doctor Li Dongyuan’s spleen-tonifying thought while placing great weight on supporting the upright. That was his approach. I’ve read his books carefully — they are packed with marvels, layer upon layer of gems. He regulated his own health beautifully and passed away at 97 — truly a master.

What to take away: when the body is depleted, it leaks — everywhere. Support the upright first

Finally, what is the deeper meaning of Doctor Gong’s case? Doctor Luo put it plainly:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What today’s episode really teaches is the method of tonification: once you’re depleted, you leak — and you leak everywhere. In a man it may be seminal emission; in a woman, flooding bleeding or menstrual problems; and it can show up in other ways too — even the spirit is affected, the mind scattered. So supporting the upright is the main line. Look how complete his thinking is: the patient wasn’t purely yin deficient, so he didn’t just nourish yin — he brought in qi-tonifying, spleen-tonifying, blood-nourishing and kidney-tonifying herbs together, added a little heat-clearing, made the pills with bai zhu water, and finished with cinnabar. An excellent design. But the most valuable part came after: if you’re busy every day chasing fame and profit, burdened by worldly entanglements, careless about restraining desire, eating badly and drinking too much — your body will still have problems. So Doctor Gong used that poem as a guide for aftercare for his patient. Let us also remind ourselves in daily life: follow these principles and the body thrives; ignore them, and trouble is sure to follow.

Case source: Shou Shi Bao Yuan (Longevity and Preservation of Vitality) by Doctor Gong Tingxian (Ming dynasty, published 1615); commentary based on the public lectures of Doctor Luo Dalun (PhD in TCM diagnostics, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine).