Hemorrhoids for 30 Years and a Child’s Eye That Swells Five or Six Times a Year? Doctor Zhang Xichun’s Cases of Clearing Latent Heat with Raw Gypsum (Sheng Shigao)
Search terms this page answers: hemorrhoids / lumps at the anus / eye trouble that keeps coming back / lumps on the eyelid / stye / hordeolum / high fever
Medical terms: hemorrhoids (heat type) · stye (hordeolum) · epidemic febrile disease (an exterior-contracted heat illness) · heat entering the yang ming organs
Opening: one ordinary-looking “stone,” and two surprises nobody expected
Today’s star ingredient is an unremarkable-looking medicine — raw gypsum (sheng shigao). It’s simply a piece of mineral ore. Yet Doctor Zhang Xichun used it to pull off two “unexpected” feats: it cured hemorrhoids that had lasted more than thirty years, and it stopped a child’s recurring eye trouble from ever coming back.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: About this medicine, raw gypsum, everyone must remember one thing: Doctor Zhang Xichun stressed over and over that you can only use the raw, unprocessed gypsum — never calcined gypsum (duan shigao). Calcined gypsum is generally for external use. Doctor Zhang Xichun believed that if calcined gypsum is taken internally, it causes serious problems in the body, so never use calcined gypsum — always use raw gypsum. Only raw gypsum has this power to clear and penetrate heat pathogens.
Who was the first patient? Hemorrhoids for thirty years that nothing could cure
The first patient was an elderly gentleman surnamed Ma from Daxiguan (the Great West Gate district) in Fengtian (today’s Shenyang), nearly sixty years old. What was his illness? Hemorrhoids. And these hemorrhoids had not been cured in thirty-plus years.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Folks, hemorrhoids lasting thirty years is a genuinely miserable illness. Sitting hurts, walking chafes, and when an attack comes on you can’t sit still or stand at ease. Any folk remedy, ointment, or surgery — he had probably tried them all, and still the root cause could not be cut out. But nobody could have guessed how his hemorrhoids finally got better — it had nothing to do with treating the hemorrhoids at all. They were cured “on the side” while treating something else.
The turning point: a febrile illness with heat entering the yang ming organs
One time, this elderly Mr. Ma caught a febrile illness (shang han) — and it was no light matter: heat had entered the yang ming organs (re ru yang ming zhi fu).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Febrile illness with heat entering yang ming — this is what Chinese medicine calls “yang ming organ heat” (yang ming fu re): high fever, thirst, sweating, blazing heat. What did Doctor Zhang Xichun use at this moment? A large-dose White Tiger Decoction (Bai Hu Tang) — the classic formula from Zhang Zhongjing’s Treatise on Cold Damage (Shang Han Lun), whose leading ingredient is raw gypsum.
The prescription: large-dose White Tiger Decoction, with one leading ingredient — raw gypsum
The White Tiger Decoction went down, and after a few doses, the febrile illness was cured.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The most important ingredient in White Tiger Decoction is raw gypsum — it clears great heat in the qi level. After a few doses, the heat retreated and the febrile illness was cured. At this point, the story should have been over — but it wasn’t. The surprise was still to come.
The unexpected bonus: the febrile illness was cured, and with it the hemorrhoids of thirty years
After the febrile illness was cured, the elderly Mr. Ma discovered: his hemorrhoids were gone — eradicated, just like that!
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why? Because many people’s hemorrhoids are actually a heat condition — damp-heat pouring downward, heat-toxin settling and accumulating in the anus and intestines. When Doctor Zhang Xichun cleared the heat from his body with raw gypsum, the hemorrhoids lost their “fuel,” and they naturally healed. So this is a method that sounds “odd and unexpected” — but it works.
Doctor Luo’s honesty: “I haven’t tried this one myself”
At this point, Doctor Luo Dalun said something very candid — he himself has never tried this method.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: To be frank, in my own family’s practice, when we treat hemorrhoids we mainly use di long (earthworm). Treating hemorrhoids with raw gypsum — I truly haven’t tried it myself. But folks, if you get the chance, it really is worth trying — as long as you can see that the person genuinely has a heat condition, using raw gypsum can only do good and no harm, right?
The second patient: a child of five or six whose eye swelled up five or six times a year
The second case is a child surnamed Lü who lived next to the Fengtian Bureau of Commerce — only five or six years old. What was this child’s illness? Eye trouble five or six times a year — something would grow on the eye and swell up; on average it flared up once every two months.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This illness is extremely common for us today — a child’s eyelid swells up with a lump, red and sore. Ordinary people call it “zhen yan” (a stye), and in medical terms it’s a hordeolum / stye and the like. Flaring up five or six times a year — the parents were worried sick. They took the child to the “Dongren Hospital” run by a Japanese doctor. What did the Japanese doctor say? That this was a congenital, constitutional problem that could not be eradicated — untreatable. And notice — at that time they were quite resistant to Chinese medicine, so naturally they never thought to say “go find Doctor Zhang.”
The epidemic came: toxic heat at its worst, with heavy use of raw gypsum at one liang and a half
Later, the child caught an epidemic febrile illness (wen yi) — an exterior-contracted heat illness that came on extremely fiercely, with very severe toxic heat. At that point there was no choice — they called in Doctor Zhang Xichun.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun prescribed medicines to clear fire and support the expulsion of toxins, and in every single formula he used raw gypsum heavily at one liang and a half per dose. Pay attention: for a child of five or six, raw gypsum at one liang and a half — that’s several dozen grams (about 45 g), a very heavy dose! Why did he dare use it? Because the illness was genuinely hot, and the heat was genuinely severe — only a heavy dose can clear such heat.
The eye never flared up again: when the heat is thoroughly cleared, the old problem heals along with it
What was the result? The epidemic illness was cured. Even better — the child’s eye trouble never recurred afterward.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why? Because at the root, this eye trouble too was heat in the body — heat was its root cause. When Doctor Zhang Xichun thoroughly cleared the heat with raw gypsum, the eye healed along with it. Raw gypsum is not as cold-natured as people imagine, but its heat-clearing effect is extraordinarily penetrating — it can “push” the heat outward and out of the body. That’s its most powerful quality.
Why must it be raw gypsum? Calcined gypsum taken internally can cause real disaster
With both cases told, we have to talk about Doctor Zhang Xichun’s “iron rule” for using this medicine: raw gypsum cures disease; calcined gypsum causes trouble.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun said that in his whole life treating illness with raw gypsum, he must have used it several thousand doses — some doses of a few qian, some of several jin, and on one occasion more than ten jin at once. After the patients recovered, their appetite actually improved, their digestion was better, with none of the “chilling the stomach” side effects — no harm of cooling the stomach. By contrast, some people used a few qian of calcined gypsum, and it wrecked their channels and collaterals: limbs partially paralyzed, pulse beat disordered or even stopping, speech slurred and unclear, and even bigger problems. So Doctor Zhang Xichun repeated his warning over and over: always use raw gypsum!
Doctor Zhang Xichun’s principle: heat conditions — especially latent heat stirred up by an exterior contraction — can all be treated with raw gypsum
These two cases are only a glimpse of Doctor Zhang Xichun’s gypsum cases — he wrote many, many more of this kind.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The principle Doctor Zhang Xichun teaches us is simply this: whenever you meet a heat condition — especially heat that is latent in the body and stirred up by an exterior contraction — raw gypsum can be used to treat it. If you are a student of Chinese medicine, read through Doctor Zhang Xichun’s gypsum cases one by one, and you will reap great rewards — because many of them use classic formulas, and they mostly treat exterior-contracted illnesses, with excellent results.
A bonus “ranking” story: Zhang Zhongjing first, Zhang Xichun second
Finally, a small piece of knowledge: starting tomorrow, Doctor Luo Dalun will begin introducing Doctor Zhang Xichun’s formulas — now that the individual herbs have been covered one by one, it’s time to talk about how the formulas are put together.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun’s formulas are the second most numerous of any physician included in the standard Chinese medicine textbooks (the formulary, or fang ji xue, textbooks) — apart from Zhang Zhongjing’s formulas, his are the most. Zhang Zhongjing ranks first, Zhang Xichun ranks second — both of these gentlemen surnamed Zhang were formidable. The more treatment thinking you absorb, the more familiar Chinese medicine becomes to you. That’s all for today — see you next time!
Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records. The cases come from Records of Chinese Medicine with Western Reference (《医学衷中参西录》), published in installments from 1918 to 1934.