Periods Stopped for Months, With Dry Cough and Chest Tightness? Doctor Zhang Xichun’s Case of Amenorrhea Treated with Liquan Yin (Sweet Spring Decoction)
Search terms this page answers: period not coming / missed my period for months / stopped menstruation / dry cough / tight chest, can’t catch my breath / can’t eat
Medical terms: amenorrhea · consumptive cough and wheezing · weak spleen and stomach · rapid pulse (a pulse rate that is too fast)
Opening: so young, and yet her period had already stopped for months
The patient today is a young married woman — not a middle-aged or elderly woman, but a young bride. And yet, at that age, her period had already failed to come for several months.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Everyone, mark this: when a young married woman’s period stops, something is definitely wrong. In a young woman, menstruation should arrive like clockwork. If it suddenly stops for months, the body is telling you it’s in trouble. And this patient wasn’t just missing her period — she carried a whole bundle of other complaints along with it. Let’s keep reading.
Who was the patient? No period, plus chills and fever, dry cough, and a stuffy chest
Her symptoms, listed out, ran like this: she constantly ran hot and cold — chills and fever by turns, often feeling feverish; a persistent dry cough; wheezing and rebellious qi — she panted at the slightest thing; a tight, stifled chest — pressure and congestion in the chest; no appetite whatsoever — she couldn’t get food down. Then the pulse: it raced — seven beats to one breath.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Seven beats to a single breath — what does that tell us? There is heat inside the body. But that heat is very likely heat born of consumption (xu lao). Doctor Zhang Xichun looked at her and reasoned: this patient may have a lung condition — that’s one possibility — but the missed period is also a fact. Either way, a missed period is connected to the spleen and stomach, and lung disease is also connected to the spleen and stomach. Forget everything else — treat the spleen and stomach first!
Doctor Zhang Xichun’s reasoning: before worrying about the lungs or the amenorrhea, fix the spleen and stomach
This is exactly where Doctor Zhang Xichun’s brilliance shows. Lung disease and amenorrhea — on the surface they’re two unrelated problems: one lives in the lung, the other in the uterus; you’d say they have nothing to do with each other. But in Doctor Zhang Xichun’s eyes, they share one single root: a weak spleen and stomach.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Chinese medicine calls the spleen and stomach the root of acquired constitution (hou tian zhi ben). The lung disease is the upright qi of the spleen and stomach running short — earth fails to generate metal. The missed period is the spleen and stomach being weak — the source that produces qi and blood has dried up. Both threads lead back to the spleen and stomach, so Doctor Zhang Xichun’s strategy is perfectly clear: use Chinese yam to strongly tonify the spleen and lung — repair the “granary” of the body first. And that formula is today’s star — Liquan Yin (Sweet Spring Decoction).
The key move: drop the salvia, add raw hematite
Here’s an important detail — Doctor Zhang Xichun revised the Liquan Yin formula. When he first used it, the formula contained no hematite (zhe shi); it used dan shen (salvia root) instead. And the result: it didn’t work.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun thought it over — this formula is off; salvia’s force isn’t enough. This patient needed something heavy that presses downward, sending the qi mechanism down, so the lung qi descends and the wheezing stops. So he removed the salvia and added sheng zhe shi (raw hematite). That is the evolution of his Liquan Yin: when he first created the formula he had no hematite in it; later he added hematite and removed the salvia. You see — even a great physician’s formula isn’t born perfect; it’s refined continuously at the bedside.
Hematite is a heavy, settling herb — its nature drives things downward. The moment that change was made, the effect was immediate.
One dose in: the wheezing was mostly gone, the chest opened, and she could eat
After a single dose, the wheezing improved by half. The chest oppression opened up, and she could eat again. After several more doses, her pulse gradually calmed — no longer so hard and hurried.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: See how important the hematite was! A heavy, settling herb sends the lung qi downward; once the qi mechanism flows smoothly, the wheezing levels out, the chest opens, and the appetite comes back. Doctor Zhang Xichun’s subtle mastery of herbs lives precisely in the choice and trade-off of a single ingredient.
Twenty-odd doses, and all the illnesses were cured — the period returned, and the cough and wheezing were gone
In the end, after a total of more than twenty doses, all her illnesses were cured. What does that mean? Her period came back, and the cough and wheezing were healed.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He healed the lung condition and the amenorrhea together — why? Because Doctor Zhang Xichun seized the mechanism (bing ji) of the illness: the lung disease came from insufficient upright qi of the spleen and stomach, and the amenorrhea also came from a weak spleen and stomach. One formula, treating both ends. What was the most important thing in that formula? The yam — huai yam, used to strongly tonify the spleen and lung, one liang (30 g), matched with other yin-nourishing herbs. Because her pulse raced and there was heat, he needed the yin-nourishing herbs to press the heat down.
Why are the spleen and stomach connected to the period? Because blood is produced by the spleen and stomach
Why does a weak spleen and stomach make the period scanty or absent? This comes down to a core idea of Chinese medicine — where does blood come from?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Blood is made when the spleen and stomach absorb nutrients from food and transform them into blood. So the moment the spleen and stomach are injured, the body’s blood supply immediately runs short. An enormous number of modern complaints can be traced back to exactly this.
Bonus 1: blood deficiency from eating yourself sick
First kind of spleen-and-stomach injury — gorging and overeating.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: A lot of people today eat out every day, buffet after buffet, stuffing themselves until their bellies bulge. Once things are blocked up inside, the spleen and stomach function actually declines — and what happens to such people? They become blood deficient (xue xu). This kind of blood deficiency is the “I ate myself sick” kind.
Bonus 2: the girl who dieted on one cucumber a day — what happened to her in the end
The second kind deserves even more attention — reckless dieting.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So many young women chase the “skeletal” look, convinced that thin equals beautiful. How do they do it? One cucumber a day: in the morning they bite off a third of it, at noon they chew another third, and in the evening they eat the last third. In two days they’ve lost weight — but the spleen and stomach are damaged — and their blood is gone. As a result, many girls end up with anorexia — they can’t eat even when they want to. The thinner they get, the harder they train; arms like twigs, legs like sticks — walk down the street and it’s painful to look at. Sometimes I think, at that point, doing an anatomy lesson would show a skeleton wearing a layer of clothes — is that really beautiful? Worst of all: these girls almost all become amenorrheic. The spleen and stomach are injured, the source of blood is cut off, nutrients can’t be absorbed, the period vanishes, the reproductive system atrophies, and in the end the chance of ever conceiving a child is almost zero. This is what reckless dieting does: it destroys the spleen and stomach, ruins the source of blood, and ends in amenorrhea and a shriveled reproductive system. Such girls are actually pitiful.
If there’s no blood, what stasis are you trying to move?
When the period stops, what’s most people’s first instinct? Invigorate blood and resolve stasis. But Doctor Zhang Xichun’s approach was exactly the opposite.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Let me tell you plainly — it does nothing at all. Why? Don’t even think about invigorating blood and resolving stasis: she has no blood — what are you going to invigorate? Doctor Zhang Xichun’s strategy here is crystal clear: get her eating more, get her body strong again; once the spleen and stomach recover, qi, blood, and essence can be generated, and only then can the period possibly return. That’s why he reaches for yam — his specialty move. In Liquan Yin, the yam is paired with sheng di huang, ren shen, and mai dong for this kind of rebuilding. The core is the yam — what does it do? It starts up the spleen and stomach. Doctor Zhang Xichun always added yam for this kind of illness, and sometimes sheng ji nei jin (dried chicken gizzard lining) to help with digestion and transformation. Once the rebuilding is done, he’d finish the job with formulas like Zi Sheng Tang — and in almost every case, it worked.
Doctor Luo’s summary: yam leads the charge — two illnesses, one cause
Look back at this case: one woman with amenorrhea, one case of consumptive cough and wheezing — two unrelated diseases. Why treat them together?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Because Doctor Zhang Xichun saw that both diseases had the same cause: a weak spleen and stomach. So in both, he sent in yam as the main strike force, with other herbs supporting. The Zi Sheng Tang we talked about earlier works the same way: baizhu, ji nei jin, a little xuan shen and niu bang zi. The core is always yam as the anchor, with other herbs playing support — that is Doctor Zhang Xichun’s method for consumptive lung disorders. Once we understand this approach, we know how vital it is to protect the spleen and stomach — especially for women. Remember this: don’t diet endlessly. Being skeletal isn’t that important. If you truly diet yourself to that point, regret will come too late. Protecting the spleen and stomach is protecting the very source of your qi and blood.
What to take away
- A missed period in a young woman is always a warning sign. When menstruation stops, the body is telling you something has gone wrong — don’t just wait it out.
- Both lung disease and amenorrhea can share one root: a weak spleen and stomach. Earth fails to generate metal (the lung), and the source of blood dries up. Treat the root.
- No blood — no stasis to move. When the period is gone because the body can’t make blood, hammering away with blood-invigorating herbs is useless. Fix the granary: restore the spleen and stomach so qi, blood, and essence can be produced.
- Chinese yam is the anchor herb — one liang (30 g) of huai yam to rebuild the spleen and lung, supported by yin-nourishing herbs like sheng di huang, ren shen, and mai dong.
- Raw hematite (sheng zhe shi) pressing the qi downward was the key adjustment that made the formula work — a reminder that even famous physicians refine their formulas case by case at the bedside.
- Don’t diet yourself into amenorrhea. One cucumber a day destroys the spleen and stomach, cuts off the source of blood, and can permanently damage fertility. Protecting the spleen and stomach is protecting your future.
Adapted from Doctor Luo Dalun’s explanation of Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records. Source: Records of Chinese Medicine with Western Reference (《医学衷中参西录》), published in installments 1918–1934.