What Is Jing Fang (Classical Formulas)? Doctor Ni Haixia’s Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine Lecture: From Gui Zhi Tang to Cheng Qi Tang — a System of Classic Formulas You Can Put to Use

Patient search terms: what is jing fang (classical formulas) / how to use Gui Zhi Tang / Ma Huang Tang / Da Qing Long Tang and Xiao Qing Long Tang / which Chinese medicine to take for a cold / how to treat gallstones / Chinese medicine for kidney stones / waking up at 1 a.m. with liver cancer / treat the liver by strengthening the spleen / Chinese medicine for brain tumors

Corresponding medical names: jing fang (classical formulas) in practice · Gui Zhi Tang (Cinnamon Twig Decoction) · Ma Huang Tang (Ephedra Decoction) · Ge Gen Tang (Kudzu Root Decoction) · Da Qing Long Tang (Major Blue-Green Dragon Decoction) · Xiao Qing Long Tang (Minor Blue-Green Dragon Decoction) · Bai Hu Tang (White Tiger Decoction) · Cheng Qi Tang (Order the Qi Decoction) · Si Ni San (Frigid Extremities Powder) · Zhu Ling Tang (Polyporus Decoction) · yin excess (solid masses) and cancer

Opening: a master of Han-Tang medicine comes to Guangxi

The lecture was hosted by Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine. Doctor Ni Haixia had studied Chinese medicine for more than thirty years; he was also deeply versed in ming li (fate calculation and physiognomy) and was widely regarded as one of the rare geniuses of his generation. He practiced in Florida, in the United States, and from 2000 to 2003 served as the highest-ranking member of the Florida State Board of Acupuncture — the committee that licenses practitioners, renews certifications, and oversees continuing-education programs. In 1994 he completed his “Tian Ji” (Heavenly Secrets) course — using the principles of the Yi Jing (Book of Changes) to explain everything in the universe, including Ba Zi (Eight Characters), Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star Astrology), Feng Shui, fate calculation, and physiognomy. From 2004 on he publicly selected disciples for his “Ren Ji” (Humanity Secrets) course, whose contents included the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic), the Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage), and the Jin Gui Yao Lue (Essentials from the Golden Cabinet). At the time he was also translating the Shang Han Lun into English.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: I have been fighting alone overseas. The Taiwan government only knew how to add flowers to brocade; it never knew how to send charcoal in the snow. As a doctor, every day when I go home to eat, I talk with my wife and recall the patients I saw from morning to afternoon — did I make any mistake? Did I strike too hard? Did I strike too softly? That self-review is a routine I do every single night, with one sole purpose: I want every patient to receive the best possible care.

On American medicine he said: for two hundred years America has poured endless manpower, money, and resources into developing Western medicine, and the result is almost nothing. Mainstream American medicine has begun to move toward Chinese medicine, gradually bringing acupuncture into the medical system. “We should advocate correct medicine — the medicine that gives patients the best service. Cut away what is unnecessary, and leave the best things to the next generation.”

What is jing fang? It means “classical formulas.” Their power is enormous, so they must be used with great care. Doctor Ni practiced clinically in America for many years, facing foreigners and a litigious medical environment — yet he never had a single malpractice dispute. Why? Because he was careful, the results were good, and patients came to him only when they had no road left to walk.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Let me explain how Chinese medicine treats a cold with a garbage metaphor. Leave a pile of garbage there and the flies and mosquitoes all come. Western medicine hires people to kill the flies and mosquitoes (kill the viruses, use antibiotics). Chinese jing fang hires people to carry the garbage away. Jing fang is precisely what clears the garbage.

He stressed that antibiotics cannot kill viruses. A cold is caused by a virus, yet antibiotics are prescribed — that is a double injury: the virus is still in the body, and the antibiotic damages the body on top of it. People in their thirties with yellowed, blackened teeth are mostly people who took penicillin or tetracycline for colds back in the day — the residue of those drugs.

Gui Zhi Tang: the foundation of six out of ten formulas in the classical canon

More than 60% of the formulas in the Shang Han Lun are derived from Gui Zhi Tang. If you thoroughly understand Gui Zhi Tang, you never have to memorize the later formulas — you can write them out correctly on your own. Gui Zhi Tang has five ingredients: gui zhi (cinnamon twig), bai shao (white peony root), sheng jiang (fresh ginger), da zao (jujube dates), and zhi gan cao (honey-fried licorice).

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Enter through yin and yang. Gui zhi is acrid-sweet and dispersing — that is yang. Put it in your mouth and it is a little spicy, a little sweet. Bai shao tastes sour; sour and bitter drain and purge — that is yin. Gui zhi is red in color and rich in flavor, so it definitely enters the blood portion. The heart is the sovereign ruler; the spirit issues from it, and the heart itself does not take disease. The arteries and veins of the whole body are equal in length: the artery is dispersal — the heart jets the blood out to the tips of the limbs; the vein is return — what pulls the blood back from the tips of the limbs along the veins to the heart is bai shao. That is why gui zhi and bai shao are used in equal doses — gui zhi 15 g, bai shao 15 g.

If you used only gui zhi and bai shao, you would speed up the arterial-venous circulation too fast and the heart could not bear it, so honey-fried licorice is added to slow things down. “When the liver is distressed by urgency, eat something sweet to relax it” — zhi gan cao (licorice fried with honey) relaxes, so the heart does not palpitate. Zhi Gan Cao Tang (Honey-Fried Licorice Decoction; for palpitations with a knotted or skipping pulse) uses honey-fried licorice as its main force; you can boldly use 12 g or more.

Sheng jiang is yellow, entering the spleen and stomach. The jujube is red on the outside and yellow inside, supplementing the fluids of the small intestine. When gui zhi and bai shao speed up the blood and drive the fluids of the muscles outward, sheng jiang refills the stomach fluids and the jujube refills the intestinal fluids — otherwise, with only gui zhi and bai shao, the patient easily ends up constipated after taking it. That is a perfect combination.

Variations on Gui Zhi Tang: varicose veins, Xiao Jian Zhong Tang, and children’s abdominal pain

Gui Zhi Tang treats Greater Yang wind stroke (tai yang zhong feng): sweating, aversion to wind, and a floating pulse (a pulse you feel as soon as your fingers lightly touch the skin — the disease is on the exterior). Whenever Zhang Zhongjing, in the Shang Han Lun and the Jin Gui Yao Lue, wanted to add to a formula — whenever he saw abdominal pain — he added bai shao. This is why.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: A patient comes in with a cold and asks on the side: “Doctor, I’ve had terrible varicose veins in my legs for years — can you fix those too?” Yes — increase the bai shao. Keep gui zhi at 15 g and raise bai shao from 15 g to 40 g. Double the action of bai shao, and the blood is pulled back into the veins; the varicose veins heal, and the cold heals too.

Xiao Jian Zhong Tang (Minor Fortify the Middle Decoction): take Gui Zhi Tang, double the bai shao (twice the dose of gui zhi), and add one spoonful of maltose before drinking. The abdomen is yin; the abdominal cavity holds a great many veins. When bai shao is twice the dose of gui zhi, the speed of pulling back is twice the speed of pushing out, and the venous circulation of the abdominal cavity is accelerated at once — the pain goes away. For children with abdominal pain (heat inside, cold outside), drinking Xiao Jian Zhong Tang strengthens the spleen-stomach function; food tastes good again and the child gains weight — this is the restoration of stomach qi.

One touch of the hand tells you whether a person is healthy: diagnosis by yin and yang

Doctor Ni calls himself a “yin-yang practitioner.” He diagnoses every illness with yin and yang, and he prescribes with yin-yang concepts as well. The back of the hand is yang, the palm is yin — within yang there must be yin, and within yin there must be yang. The back of the hand is yang, but it must contain yin; the palm is yin, but yang qi lives inside it — that is why the palm feels warm to the touch. The boundary where yin and yang meet is the ring at the wrist where the red and white flesh join.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: A patient comes in. I touch the palm with one hand and the back of the hand with the other — the palm is warm, the back of the hand is cool. Then I touch the forehead; it is cool. That is perfect — completely normal. No blood test needed. One touch tells you. When a child wants to skip school by faking a fever, the mother knows by touching the hand that it is a fake — the temperature cannot lie. Also, a child who stretches and yawns has no disease — only healthy people stretch. Unhealthy people never even think of it.

The heart and small intestine are interior-exterior paired: Chinese medicine is physics

The heart and small intestine are paired as interior and exterior. The heart beats constantly, vibrating constantly, like a car engine that generates heat when it runs. Without something to control the heat, it becomes a fever. The body has a water tank — the lungs sit above the heart and wrap the entire heart. The Huang Di Nei Jing says the lung governs descending and purifying (fei zhu su jiang): the heat produced by the heart is suppressed by the lung’s function down into the small intestine. This is called the heart transferring heat to the small intestine (xin yi re yu xiao chang). Receiving the heart’s heat, the small intestine moves together with the heart, and the two have the same temperature. Only when the small intestine is hot can it digest food — you have to heat rice to cook it; the human body is the same, and food is digested in the small intestine by this heat.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Chinese medicine is physical medicine; Western medicine is chemical medicine. We pay attention to temperature, speed, time, and pressure. The heart’s heat is pressed by the lung down into the small intestine; the small intestine’s temperature is normal; the lung governs the skin and body hair, so the pores are normal. That is “within yang there must be yin, and within yin there must be yang.” Touching the hand and the forehead is measuring temperature — yin and yang are known at a glance.

Ma Huang Tang: Greater Yang cold damage — sweating out the sweat trapped under the skin

The first of the three Greater Yang conditions is wind stroke (Gui Zhi Tang); the second is cold damage (Ma Huang Tang): aversion to cold, fever, no sweat, body pain and bone-joint pain, and a floating-tight pulse.

The mechanism: the pores of the skin are the “xuan fu” (the mysterious mansion, as the Huang Di Nei Jing calls them). When cold constricts the pores, sweat cannot get out, and a great deal of sweat stays trapped between the skin and the muscles. The body is 70% water, but the water the body can actually use is hot water — water in its vaporized, qi-ified form. The sweat leaves the sweat glands and cannot return; it sits beneath the skin, and its temperature drops (water that cannot move just sits there) — hence the aversion to cold. Where it is blocked, there is pain — hence the body and joint pain.

Ma Huang Tang: ma huang (ephedra), xing ren (apricot kernel), gui zhi (cinnamon twig), zhi gan cao (honey-fried licorice). Ma huang is very light, so it can reach the surface of the skin; gui zhi is heavier, so it reaches the muscles. Ma huang alone will not cause sweating — without gui zhi pushing the wave, the medicine cannot reach the skin’s surface. The sweat that ma huang brings out is “ma huang’s sweat” — it drives off the sweat lying under the skin, and this skin sweat comes from the lung. Xing ren is white in color and enters the lung; it is used in equal measure to ma huang, to prevent the lung’s fluids from being insufficient after the sweating. Zhi gan cao cushions, so that ma huang and gui zhi are not too fierce.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia (case): A patient was carried in by his two sons wrapped in a cotton quilt, curled up and shaking. He was afraid he was having a stroke — the hospital had told him these were stroke warning signs. I felt his pulse: floating and very tight. Floating because the disease was on the exterior; tight because the sweat layer was thick. This was Greater Yang cold damage. Never mind what Western medicine called it — where there is the symptom, use the formula. I prescribed Ma Huang Tang. The next morning they called: by morning, Dad was gone — he had gone out to exercise. Chinese medicine has a standard for curing colds: exterior patterns recover around noon of the next day. When you get hungry at noon and start eating, you are well. For internal diseases (liver cancer, lung cancer), the test is whether you get hungry in the middle of the night — if you wake at 3 a.m. starving and start eating, you are improving.

Ge Gen Tang: Greater Yang warm disease and facial paralysis from wind

The third Greater Yang condition is warm disease (wen bing) — warm disease does not require hot weather. It is a cold caught in a “warm” state: a child with exuberant yang qi runs around sweating heavily, and while sweating falls into water, is hit by a cold draft, or walks into an air-conditioned room — that is warm disease. It is actually rarer in the cold north, because when it is cold outside children do not run around sweating.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Ge Gen Tang is Gui Zhi Tang plus ma huang plus ge gen (kudzu root). It treats “xiang bei jiang ji ji” — the stiff, tight back of the neck, that bristling-pores feeling — because you need to open the pores of the neck and back, so a partial dose of ma huang is used. Ge gen is a vine plant; its root is below, and the sap slowly rises to the very tip — it can draw water up from the earth and transport it to the highest point. So ge gen can carry fluids to the head and the neck and back. A child sweats, gets hit by wind, and develops dizziness, fever, and a stiff neck — one dose of Ge Gen Tang cures it.

Facial paralysis from wind (face drooping): someone drinks alcohol, gets hot, and stands in front of an air conditioner — the next morning the face is twisted to one side. Heat and sweat, then wind blowing onto the face. When there is no stiff neck, increase the ge gen in Ge Gen Tang. Ge gen itself is nontoxic and can be used in large amounts. Gui Zhi Tang releases the exterior and pushes the wind out; ge gen delivers fresh fluids to the face — it heals quickly.

Da Qing Long Tang: exterior cold with interior heat — the nemesis of epidemics

Da Qing Long Tang pattern (exterior cold, interior heat): the whole body is cold and shivering with no sweat, the muscles and bones ache — but the tongue is yellow and dry, the patient is thirsty and wants ice water, the cough brings up thick yellow phlegm, and there is no appetite. Afraid of cold, shivering — and yet wanting ice water: that is Da Qing Long.

Composition: ma huang, xing ren, gui zhi, zhi gan cao (Ma Huang Tang) plus shi gao (gypsum), sheng jiang, and da zao.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Ma Xing Gan Shi Tang (Ephedra, Apricot Kernel, Licorice, and Gypsum Decoction) treats hot coughs with yellow phlegm — ma huang and xing ren open the lung, gypsum removes the heat. Without gui zhi to assist it, ma huang does not cause sweating. When a cough has gone on so long that the bronchial tubes are damaged and there is stagnant blood, Ma Xing Gan Shi Tang is not strong enough; Sun Simiao added dan pi (tree peony bark), yi ren (coix seed), and dong gua ren (wax gourd seed) on top of it (the Qian Jin Wei Jing Tang / Reed Rhizome Decoction family) to treat coughing blood. The distinction is simple: no appetite — Da Qing Long Tang; appetite still there — Ma Xing Gan Shi Tang.

Gypsum is the medicine that has dealt with shi yi (seasonal epidemics) for thousands of years, and Da Qing Long is the main formula for handling epidemics. When H1N1 swept through in 2009, the heat-clearing, toxin-resolving formula announced by the government followed the same line of thinking as Western antiviral drugs — but in fact Da Qing Long Tang is the prescription for H1N1: sweat it out, the virus runs away, and the stomach and intestinal fluids return immediately thanks to the fresh ginger, jujube, and honey-fried licorice. If by noon the next day your appetite is back, you are well. Even if, in the hospital, a patient catches a superbug (type AB) on top of it — if the person is still coughing, feverish, with yellow phlegm and no appetite, it is still a Da Qing Long pattern, and Da Qing Long is still the formula.

Xiao Qing Long Tang: exterior cold with interior cold — raw Pinellia and hydrocephalus

Xiao Qing Long Tang pattern (exterior cold, interior cold): aversion to cold with high fever, fear of cold, no sweat, severe coughing, phlegm that is clear and white, no thirst, or only a craving for hot water, and no appetite. Remember four characters and you can use it: “exterior cold, interior heat — Da Qing Long; exterior cold, interior cold — Xiao Qing Long.”

Composition: ma huang, gui zhi, bai shao, zhi gan cao (Gui Zhi Tang) plus gan jiang (dried ginger), xi xin (Asarum), wu wei zi (Schisandra berry), and ban xia (Pinellia).

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Gan jiang is white and enters the lung (sheng jiang is yellow and enters the spleen and stomach); Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang (Licorice and Dried Ginger Decoction) is for insufficiency of lung yang. Xi xin can penetrate the interior yang all the way out to the surface of the skin — in Lesser Yin disease with a faint, thin pulse and “only wanting to sleep” (you wake after a whole night’s sleep and are still exhausted), xi xin brings the interior yang out. Wu wei zi stops cough. Ban xia removes water-qi — the Xiao Qing Long patient with an unbearable tickle in the throat has water-qi rushing upward; ban xia removes the water and stops the cough.

Sheng ban xia (raw Pinellia) specializes in draining “the highest water” — and the place where water is most costly is the brain. For hydrocephalus and brain tumors, Western medicine inserts a tube in the skull to drain fluid; the Chinese medicine choice is to take raw Pinellia. But it must be sheng ban xia — fa ban xia (processed Pinellia) and jiang ban xia (ginger-processed Pinellia) have both been processed and their power is lost. Fresh ginger or dried ginger can neutralize Pinellia’s toxicity, which is why classical formulas always pair ban xia with gan jiang — so the voice stays intact. Raw Pinellia carries the legend of the “mother-in-law herb” (in old tales, a mother-in-law put raw Pinellia in the daughter-in-law’s food to make her lose her voice — actually a misunderstanding; paired with ginger and dried ginger there is no problem at all).

The six channels and Bright Yang: Bai Hu Tang, Cheng Qi Tang, and colorectal cancer

Zhang Zhongjing’s six-channel pattern differentiation is not a contrived scheme tacked onto acupuncture. The Huang Di Nei Jing says: Greater Yang governs opening, Bright Yang governs closing, and Lesser Yang is the pivot. In Greater Yang disease the pores are opened (ma huang, gui zhi, ge gen, Da Qing Long, and Xiao Qing Long all live in the Greater Yang chapter). Bright Yang governs closing, and it divides into channel heat and bowel excess.

Bright Yang channel heat (Bai Hu Tang pattern): a complete picture of heat with no trace of cold — thirst, scorching dryness, craving ice water. “There is no death in Bright Yang” — no one dies of a disease while it is in the Bright Yang stage. Shi gao (gypsum) is white and enters the lung; it is a yang medicine, not a cold medicine. In small doses (under 50 g) it is a little white cat; in large doses (8 to 10 liang, i.e. 400 g) it is a tiger-hunter. For breast cancer with a hard breast lump and inverted nipple (the yang has all sunk inward), a large dose of gypsum restores the yang, and the nipple comes back. Pair it with mu li (oyster shell) — mu li is white and salty; saltiness softens hardness, and it attacks tumors and hard lumps; gypsum plus oyster shell is a fine formula for breast-cancer masses. Once the mass is broken apart there is inevitably residual water — add water-draining herbs (huang qi (Astragalus) and fu ling (Poria), 30 g) to push the water out; the cancer cells are routed, and their water supply is cut off.

Bright Yang bowel excess (Cheng Qi Tang pattern): constipation of excess type — Da Cheng Qi Tang (Major Order the Qi Decoction: da huang (rhubarb), mang xiao (Glauber’s salt), hou po (Magnolia bark), zhi shi (immature bitter orange)), Xiao Cheng Qi Tang (Minor Order the Qi Decoction), Tiao Wei Cheng Qi Tang (Regulate the Stomach and Order the Qi Decoction), Da Huang Gan Cao Tang (Rhubarb and Licorice Decoction), Da Huang Mu Dan Pi Tang (Rhubarb and Tree Peony Bark Decoction), and others. Mang xiao is white with a slight salty taste; saltiness softens hardness — it attacks and breaks up rock-hard impacted stool. Stool as hard as stone is sliced into pieces by mang xiao and driven out. Hou po removes dampness; da huang opens the bowels.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia (case): A seventy-something Taiwanese man had colorectal cancer blocking the anus. He would rather die than have surgery and a colostomy bag, so he flew from Taiwan to America to see me. I looked at his tongue — deep yellow coating, heat inside. I prescribed a modified Da Cheng Qi Tang: hou po 15 g, da huang 20 g, zhi shi 15 g, boiled in six bowls of water down to two, with one bowl of the decoction used to dissolve 10 g of mang xiao. He took it for three weeks — the tumor disappeared, and the feeling of being blocked at the anus was gone. Colorectal cancer that can clearly be controlled with Chinese medicine — the moment you cut it open it enters the yin stage, the cancer metastasizes to the lung and liver, and the patient dies of the surgery’s aftermath rather than of the colorectal cancer itself.

Gallstones: sub-hour abdominal pain, Si Ni San, and drinking vinegar

Diagnosis and treatment of gallstones:

Onset time: sudden severe abdominal pain between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. (the zi hour) — nine times out of ten it is gallstones. This is the hour when the gallbladder channel is on duty.
Diagnostic point: one cun below Yanglingquan (GB34) is the external tender point for gallstones. Acupuncture at that point stops the pain during an attack.
First aid: in the emergency room in the middle of the night, a mouthful of vinegar stops the pain (vinegar is sour, and sourness enters the liver and gallbladder).
Si Ni San (Frigid Extremities Powder): chai hu (Bupleurum), huang qin (Baikal skullcap), zhi shi, bai shao, and zhi gan cao. Chai hu enters the Triple Burner and can open and dilate the bile duct; huang qin removes heat; zhi shi (small-orange-like, deep-colored, thick-flavored, entering the heart) rides the heart’s vibration down to the gallbladder, and the stones are ejected in jets; bai shao relaxes urgency. Add wu bei zi (Chinese gallnut) and hai jin sha (Lygodium spores) to dissolve and expel the stones.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Si Ni San and Si Ni Tang (Frigid Extremities Decoction) are worlds apart. Si Ni San treats yang patterns (the patient screams in agony, hands and feet cold, but the complexion is good and strength is good). Si Ni Tang is for restoring yang and rescuing collapse (the person is dying, the eyes and complexion are dim, the voice is gone) — sheng fu zi (raw aconite) strengthens the heart, gan jiang strengthens the lung, zhi gan cao cushions; these three herbs rescue heart-lung failure. In an emergency you also needle: Juque (CV14), Guanyuan (CV4), Gongsun (SP4), and prick Shaoshang (LU11, the heart-channel emergency point).

Everyday prevention: along the southeastern coast (Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangxi, Guangdong, Taiwan) people eat sea salt and love vinegar — very few get kidney stones. Inland, in Qinghai and around, people eat qing yan (lake salt from inland salt lakes) — nobody there gets kidney stones; what they get is gallstones. Why? Because vinegar works on the liver and gallbladder, while lake salt expels kidney stones. Keep aged vinegar at home — if gallstones strike at 2 a.m., drink some and it stops. Use lake salt, and you are guaranteed no stones.

Kidney stones: the Taixi tender point and Zhu Ling Tang

Kidney-stone attack: agonizing lower-back pain, unable to pass urine. Diagnosis: press around Taixi (KI3) on the inner ankle (along the Kidney channel of Foot Lesser Yin) and there is a tender point (an ashi point) — the patient cries out: “Doctor, don’t press there, my back hurts!” That confirms the diagnosis. Needle the tender point, and the patient feels something flowing and starting to move inside.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: The prescription is Zhu Ling Tang (Polyporus Decoction): zhu ling (Polyporus), hua shi (talcum), e jiao (donkey-hide gelatin), ze xie (Alisma), and fu ling (Poria). Hua shi smashes the stones (talcum is brittle but its surface is sharp). The stone passes through kidney, ureter, bladder, and urethra, cutting many wounds — hence blood in the urine — and e jiao stops the bleeding. Zhu ling, ze xie, and fu ling gather the water of the upper, middle, and lower burners into the kidney and bladder, and the stone is pushed out. Note: no licorice when passing stones — licorice holds water (in the desert, licorice anchors the sand and preserves water); with licorice the water stops moving and the stone cannot come out. That is why draining water (as in cirrhosis ascites) also excludes licorice. With Zhu Ling Tang the stone passes without bleeding — the patient is showering and the stone clatters down; he picks it up, it is the size of a chess piece, and there is not a bit of pain.

Distinguishing palpitations: for xin xia ji (palpitations under the heart — the heart beats weakly, the jetting force is insufficient) use Gui Zhi Gan Cao Tang — heavy gui zhi, no bai shao. For qi xia ji (palpitations below the navel, water-retention type) use Fu Ling Gan Cao Tang (Poria and Licorice Decoction).

Yin excess and cancer: waking at the chou hour, treating the liver by strengthening the spleen, and Si Shen Tang

Differentiating yin excess (cancer): excess means there is something there, and its symptoms are continuous.

Liver cancer (the liver family): the liver channel’s qi and blood flow peak at the chou hour (1 to 3 a.m.). The patient wakes at exactly 1 a.m. every day and cannot fall back asleep until 3 a.m. — continuously, for a year, before the hospital can find a 2 cm tumor. Doctor Ni’s example: a patient flew from California to Florida — a three-hour time difference — yet he still woke at 1 to 3 a.m. local time. This is not occasional insomnia (the insomnia of being angry at one’s son is only occasional) — it is continuous, and that is yin excess.
Lung cancer: the lung opens at the yin hour (3 to 5 a.m.) — waking at 3 to 5 a.m.
End-stage yin excess: yin and yang are separated — yang above, yin below. The patient sits with eyes wide open and cannot sleep all night, edema below, and severe pain in the middle.

The first rule of treating the liver: keep the bowels moving. For constipation, use Da Cheng Qi, Xiao Cheng Qi, Da Chai Hu (Major Bupleurum Decoction), or Tiao Wei Cheng Qi according to the pattern; for stool like sheep droppings — black, in little pellets — use Ma Zi Ren Wan (Hemp Seed Pills). Second rule: to treat the liver, first strengthen the spleen (the Nan Jing: “When you see liver disease, know that it will transmit to the spleen; first strengthen the spleen”). This does not mean Xiao Jian Zhong Tang (its sweetness adds burden to the spleen) but bland-flavored herbs: deng xin cao (rush pith), chen pi (aged tangerine peel), bai zhu (Atractylodes), cang zhu (black Atractylodes), fu ling, lian zi (lotus seed), bai guo (ginkgo nut), yi ren (coix seed), qian shi (fox nut). Before ascites appears, drink a little Si Shen Tang (Four Spirits Soup: lotus seed, ginkgo nut, coix seed, fox nut, etc.) every day — if the urine flows freely, ascites cannot develop. This is “naturally strengthening the spleen.” Once ascites is present, drain the water with fu ling, ze xie, chen pi, and bai zhu (the Wu Ling San family).

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia (case): A liver-cancer patient with ascites. Western medicine said he had three months to live at most. I first tried to drain the ascites, but the water would not come out. I asked — his stool came out like sheep droppings, in little pellets. I had forgotten to open the bowels! I added Ma Zi Ren Wan to move the stool. That same night he passed more than 2,000 cc of urine; within two or three days the belly was flat and his appetite was wide open. I had not prescribed a single liver herb — and the ascites was gone. That patient went on to live more than eight more months. The liver-cancer patient I treated longest lived three and a half years. And there is a liver-cancer boss in Taiwan who drinks and socializes every day (“I have you here, so drinking is fine”) — no biopsy, no imaging — and it has been thirty years now.

The liver-soothing formula: chai hu, huang qin, yu jin (turmeric root tuber, 30 g), long dan cao (gentian root, 15 g), plus qian cao (madder root — from the Huang Di Nei Jing, also called lu xian cao) and bie jia (turtle shell — it can sink to the deepest place in the mud, invigorating blood and transforming stasis). Liver enzymes drop rapidly, and hepatitis-B virus falls to almost undetectable levels. The herbs are chosen according to the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (Divine Husbandman’s Classic of the Materia Medica — not Li Shizhen’s Ben Cao Gang Mu), working backward from the symptoms in the Shang Han Lun and Jin Gui to the properties of the herbs.

Sheng fu zi and mineral sulfur: brain tumors, lymphoma, and uremia

Sheng fu zi (raw aconite): white in color, salty in taste. Saltiness attacks hardness — it is a yang medicine. It anchors the heart and protects the heart vessels; as long as the heart cannot stop, you rely on sheng fu zi.
Shi liu huang (mineral sulfur): the most steadfast and most yang medicine between heaven and earth — pale yellow, spewed from the mouths of volcanoes. It can reach the highest place in the body — the brain — which sheng fu zi cannot reach. Brain tumors require shi liu huang. When yang enters, the yin excess dissolves into water, and sheng ban xia (raw Pinellia) is paired to drain the water down. “In my research on brain tumors, using shi liu huang with sheng ban xia — the results are really good.” The claim that mineral sulfur is “poisonous” is a misconception passed down by hearsay — ducks are the first creatures to eat sulfur and nothing happens to them; if you eat sulfur, a little duck-meat soup and a duck leg afterward neutralizes it.
Lymphoma (the Triple Burner system): the Triple Burner lymphatic system in Chinese medicine is pale yellow, spread between the muscles and between the organs like a net of lard. For lymphoma, shi liu huang attacks the hardness — there were two patients with inguinal masses so large their legs could not close and walking rubbed them painfully; shi liu huang resolved both quickly.
Uremia: to treat water, first strengthen fire. Strengthen the heart with sheng fu zi; the heart fire descends to the small intestine; the small intestine’s fire vaporizes the bladder’s water (bladder urine exists in a vaporized state — it is steam pressure that gives urination its force). The good vaporized water rises to the liver to help it detoxify (water generates wood); part of the water goes to the gallbladder, part to the eyes — this is the physiology the Huang Di Nei Jing describes. Western dissection of a corpse cannot see this vaporization system. When urine will not come out and the belly swells, the small intestine is too cold — strengthen the heart and reinforce the kidney (pao fu zi / processed aconite): sheng fu zi and pao fu zi used together (one strengthens the heart, one strengthens the kidney), combined with shu di (prepared Rehmannia) and sheng di (raw Rehmannia).

The environment of cancer: hot water and cold water

The water in your body must be hot water — that is what Chinese medicine calls “qi.” Cold water is the environment that viruses, cancer, and masses love most. Cancer cells do everything they can to turn the body’s hot water into cold water — to create the environment in which they can best survive. Lung cancer with pleural effusion, liver cancer with ascites — this is the same principle. Chinese medicine treats disease by changing the environment — make the environment hot; with no cold water and no food supply, the cancer cells retreat on their own.

💬 Doctor Ni Haixia: Stop drinking milk, and be careful with vitamin tablets. The drug companies tell you how much vitamin C you need each day — but it is the vitamin C in natural fruit that can really fight cancer. Vitamin C tablets not only fail to fight cancer, they feed it (vitamin C feeds breast tumors). People who use yang medicines run hot, and for them eating fruit is a good thing. Dietary advice: congee, street food stalls are all fine; eat less barbecue (it is drying, and the stool tends to get hard); keep it light.

At the close, the host summed up: “Is jing fang far away? If I wish to use it, jing fang is near.” The best treasure is already in your pocket, already by your side.

(Compiled from Doctor Ni Haixia’s lecture “The Wonderful Uses of Classical Formulas” at Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine. The “Professor Li Haixia” mentioned in the transcript was a slip of the tongue on stage / a transcription error — the speaker is Doctor Ni Haixia.)