Eye Pain Like It’s About to Fall Out, Body Aching Like Being Beaten, Coughing Day and Night? Doctor Miao Xiyong Treated Liver Fire, Lung Heat and Blood Stasis Set Off by Grief and Anger
Patient’s search words: eye pain / eyeball pain / eyes hurting like they are about to fall out / body aching as if beaten with a stick / coughing day and night / stifling and hot Medical terms: liver fire rushing upward · lung heat · blood stasis · illness set off by emotion (liver qi constraint)
Opening: when this illness came, the man felt he was dying
In the late Ming dynasty, a patient came to see the celebrated physician Doctor Miao Xiyong — not for treatment, but to say goodbye. He announced: I am done for, I am going to die, I only came to see you one last time. Doctor Miao could hardly bear to hear it: Why on earth! You are a perfectly sound-looking man — what do you mean you are done for?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is Doctor Miao Xiyong, courtesy name Zhongchun, a great physician of the late Ming from Changshu, Jiangsu. He wrote the Xian Xing Zhai Yi Xue Guang Bi Ji (Extensive Medical Notes from the Studio of First Awakening) and the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing Shu (Commentary on the Divine Husbandman’s Classic of the Materia Medica), and he was one of the originators of the warm-pathogen (wen bing) school. The man who came to say goodbye was Yu Zhongfu, a country gentleman and scholar of the neighborhood, and both he and his brother Yu Runfu were devoted followers of Doctor Miao. That is how scholars behave — when they fall ill they do not come out and say “please treat me,” they come to take their leave, meaning: I am about to die. Can a physician put up with that? Of course you have to treat them.
Who was the patient, and how sick was he?
What illness had brought a country gentleman to such despair that he came to say farewell? The original record puts it in frightening terms:
“Mu zhu tong ru yu tuo” — eye pain. How bad? As if the eyeballs would fall out!
“Xiong xie ji bei ru chui sui zhuang” — the sides of the chest and the back hurt as if they had been smashed with a club!
On top of that, a day-and-night cough — coughing without stopping, day and night — and yin shi ju fei — he could not get food down, and he could not sleep either. Pain on top of coughing, no food, no sleep — his whole body collapsed.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Does this case sound familiar? Doctor Xu Lingtai once treated a patient with exactly this body-aching-like-being-beaten presentation. In one case it was the eyes, in the other the body — and both had day-and-night coughs. Pain and cough together, no food, no sleep — that really wears a person down. No wonder the man felt he had no chance.
Doctor Miao’s first move: three big bowls of “tong bian” a day
What did Doctor Miao prescribe for Yu Zhongfu? Something that would make any anti-TCM critic leap out of his chair: three large bowls of tong bian every day.
What is tong bian? It is the urine of a young boy — what folk medicine calls “boy’s urine.”
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Can boy’s urine really cure disease? I have talked about tong bian many times. Back in his day, Doctor Xue Lizhai (Xue Ji) loved using it. What are its properties? It is cold in nature; it nourishes yin and lowers fire; it cools the blood and resolves blood stasis — cooling the blood while dissolving the stagnant blood inside it. In the old days, when a person was injured and blood stasis formed, they would quickly drink boy’s urine to scatter the stasis, and the injury would recover much more easily. So this is a blood-cooling, stasis-resolving medicine. Doctor Miao had him drink three big bowls a day.
Seven days of passing black blood — and the pain was gone
The tong bian went on for days. For seven days, Yu Zhongfu passed black blood again and again — from both openings below, in his stool and his urine, dark blood everywhere.
And then? The pain was gone.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why? Blood stasis. Pain of the kind “aching as if beaten with a club” is always worse at night and lighter by day — that kind of pain is caused by blood stasis. I have told the story of Doctor Xu Lingtai’s patient Mo Xiudong, whose body hurt at night as if beaten with a club; every physician failed, no medicine worked, until Xu Lingtai saw at a glance that it was blood stasis and used every means to invigorate the blood and dissolve the stasis — and the pain cleared up. So take this seriously: a considerable share of bodily pain is linked to blood stasis. Take back pain, for instance — some is kidney deficiency, some is cold-damp, but some genuinely is blood stasis! Especially back pain from kidney disease: a little sang zhi (mulberry twig) and si gua luo (loofah) with some blood-cooling, blood-invigorating herbs, and it clears up quickly. Body pain from blood stasis deserves your attention.
Round two: the cough and fever remained, so Doctor Miao opened a lung-clearing formula
The stasis was dissolved, but the cough and fever were unchanged — still coughing, still hot. Doctor Miao wrote another prescription, this time a lung-clearing, yin-nourishing formula:
Er dong — tian men dong (asparagus root) and mai men dong (ophiopogon root) — to nourish the body fluids; bei mu (fritillaria bulb) to clear heat and resolve phlegm; su zi (perilla seed) to open the lung qi and send it downward; ju hong (tangerine peel) to regulate the lung qi; bai shao yao (white peony root) to astringe the liver and nourish yin; bie jia (turtle shell) to draw the hidden deficient heat out; qing hao zi (sweet wormwood seed) for bone-steaming tidal fever, pulling heat outward; sang bai pi (mulberry root bark) to nourish yin; wu wei zi (schisandra berry) to tonify the lung qi; bai bu (stemona root) to stop cough, moisten the lung and kill the “worms” of the lung; pi pa ye (loquat leaf) to send the lung qi down; zhu li (bamboo sap) to resolve phlegm heat — and the tong bian once more.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Look at this formula — clear heat, generate fluids, clear the lung heat; the basic strategy is to drive heat outward. Why the sour herbs, wu wei zi and bai shao yao? Because when a person coughs, qi disperses without limit, and some of it needs to be pulled back — sourness astringes. He drank this for several days, yet the illness did not improve — and that is where the trouble began.
The setback: his brother secretly added a handful of huang qi — and it backfired
After the medicine had been taken for a while without improvement, Yu Zhongfu’s mother — the lady of the house — and his brother Yu Runfu started muttering: Isn’t he deficient? Shouldn’t we be using some ginseng and huang qi?
Now, everyone should know: Doctor Miao Xiyong was a master of ginseng — he loved using it. But this time he shook his head firmly: No. This formula absolutely must not have ginseng or huang qi added!
Yu Runfu would not accept it. He quietly got hold of some huang qi, two qian (6 g), and put it into the decoction. Yu Zhongfu drank it — and it backfired!
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This Mr. Yu was exquisitely sensitive: he spent the whole night with his eyes wide open, unable to close them, stifling and hot — mu bu jiao jie, his eyelashes never once met. Ordinarily a little qi-tonifying herb would not cause this, but his illness was too severe and his body’s imbalance too pronounced — the slightest deviation and he could not take it. From then on the whole family believed Doctor Miao: so that is why he forbade ginseng and huang qi! There really are times when tonics must not be used.
Doctor Zhao Shaoqin treating kidney disease: he, too, absolutely forbids tonics
Doctor Miao’s insistence reminded Doctor Luo of a modern master.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I often speak of Doctor Zhao Shaoqin, the warm-pathogen master of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, who was especially skilled at chronic kidney disease. He absolutely forbade tonics — not a single one. His reasoning: the kidney channel is congested with damp-heat; with damp-heat blocked inside, the moment you add some deer antler or a big tonic herb, you are in trouble! So he told patients firmly to avoid tonics, and instead cleared and pushed heat outward, cooled the blood and invigorated the blood — with excellent results. This is exactly what Doctor Miao said: when damp-heat is obvious, pouring tonics in is pouring oil on a fire.
Who is actually suited to ginseng?
At this point Doctor Luo answered a question everyone asks: can anyone take ginseng?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: No! Ginseng suits people who are genuinely weak, exhausted, qi-deficient, short of fluids, worn out day after day — people whose vital qi (yuan qi) is depleted do wonderfully on it. Who must not take it? Above all, people with liver fire — tongue habitually very red, coating yellowish and dry, little saliva on it, a quick temper, prone to anger, a bitter taste in the mouth, dry heat in the body, blood surging upward, both eyes red — for them ginseng is pouring oil on the fire. Whether you carry liver fire, you know yourself: are you quick to anger and hot-tempered? Does your qi rush upward? If so, do not take ginseng.
Holding fast to the formula, cured in a month
After the brother’s huang qi “experiment” taught the family a lesson, the Yus trusted Doctor Miao completely. So they held fast to the formula and kept taking it, and also had some pills made to dissolve slowly in the mouth. Persisting in driving the heat outward, after one month the illness was cured.
Only then did Doctor Miao explain the true root of the disease.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Miao wrote afterward: Yu Zhongfu’s illness began with nai weng zhi bian — his father’s death. Grief too deep had bottled a fire inside, and then geng chu nao nu — he ran into something infuriating. This was no deficiency pattern; it was liver qi constraint and liver fire rushing upward — liver fire burning within; and grief injures the lung, so the lung was hot as well. Liver fire and lung heat slowly scorched the blood into stasis, and stasis and heat became locked together. That is why Doctor Miao first used tong bian, a cooling herb, to dissolve the stasis, and then used cooling, lung-moistening, fluid-generating, phlegm-resolving herbs to settle the lung heat — from beginning to end, not one warming herb.
A note from the narrator: the fire of losing a loved one truly harms the body
The case looks simple, but Doctor Luo says it moved him when he read it.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: After a family member dies, grief that goes too deep really does unbalance the five organs, and one genuinely should take some Chinese medicine to readjust. Look at Yu Zhongfu: after his father’s death, step by step he arrived at eyes aching as if they would fall out, a body aching as if beaten with a club, and a cough that lasted a month — the fire of bereavement, unable to get out of the body, truly injures it. When my own father passed away, I was so grief-stricken that I had diarrhea for a month! I did not treat it at the time, but I knew in my heart what the prescription should have been: drain the liver fire, regulate the liver qi, strengthen the spleen and astringe. And sure enough, at the same time the following year, I had diarrhea again. Grief injures the lung; liver fire injures the liver — one liver, one lung, and that is why so many people cough for a long time and end up with lung problems. When the liver fire is regulated and the lung heat cleared, only then can the spirit settle — that is the logic of Chinese medicine.
Bonus: when emotions surge, remember to adjust yourself
Finally, Doctor Luo turned the lesson toward each of us.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When emotions surge, first learn to resolve them yourself; second, a round of Chinese medicine can help you pass through that period more easily. Someone will say: you should be broad-minded — look at Zhuangzi, when his wife died he drummed on a basin and sang — banged a pot and sang! Let me tell you: that is all nonsense, it only means the feelings were not that deep. When feelings really run deep, after losing a family member can you still sing? Nobody should boast. When a loved one dies, the blow is more than anyone can bear — at that moment you must adjust. You will be hurt, no question, but Chinese medicine can help you get through it more smoothly.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Miao Xiyong later cured the two brothers, Yu Zhongfu and Yu Runfu, and they became his most loyal followers — they appear again and again in his book and helped him a great deal. Look at this case: eye pain, body pain, cough — the symptoms look like a jumble, but there was only one root cause — emotion. Clear the liver fire, push out the lung heat, dissolve the blood stasis — and the man recovered.
Arranged from Doctor Luo Dalun’s explanation of Doctor Miao Xiyong’s case records. The original case comes from the Xian Xing Zhai Yi Xue Guang Bi Ji (Extensive Medical Notes from the Studio of First Awakening), by Doctor Miao Xiyong (late Ming dynasty).