Li Dongyuan: The Earth-School Master Who Rose from the Chaos of the Jin-Yuan Era

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: We have finished Zhang Xichun. Today we begin a new family — Li Dongyuan. Why follow him next? Because Zhang Xichun cared so deeply about the spleen and stomach, and talked about sinking qi that needs to be lifted upward — where did all those ideas come from? Their source is Li Dongyuan. So let us trace the doctrine of the spleen and stomach through this unbroken line of masters.

I. A Great Physician from Troubled Times: He Lived in the War-Torn Jin-Yuan Age

What era did Li Dongyuan live in? If you have heard the storytelling classic The Biography of Yue Fei, Li Dongyuan lived roughly in that period — the Jin dynasty, a little later than Yue Fei’s time.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What exactly was the Jin-Yuan period? The Northern Song was destroyed; the great Jin state took the north and fought the Southern Song. Then the Mongols rose and destroyed the Jin in turn. Li Dongyuan lived right in the middle of that history — turmoil, war, back-and-forth campaigns — today one side attacks, tomorrow the other.

What characterizes such an age? Chaos, famine everywhere, plagues erupting on all sides — ordinary people often could not even get food.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice a pattern — great physicians often emerge from times of upheaval. Zhang Zhongjing came out of the end of the Eastern Han (the Three Kingdoms wars, with epidemic disease raging in the cold seasons), and so we have the Medical Sage. It was the same with Li Dongyuan: the suffering of his age drove him to think about how to save people.

What did Li Dongyuan witness with his own eyes? When the great Jin state was destroyed by the Mongols, the eastern capital Bianliang (Kaifeng) was besieged for months, and inside the city even tree roots were eaten bare. Later the weather turned hot, the Mongol soldiers could not bear the southern heat and withdrew north; the city gates opened, and the starving masses rushed out to eat — and huge numbers of people died. Every day, thousands of bodies were carried out through the twelve city gates.

Why? People whose spleen and stomach had been starved and damaged suddenly ate — and their spleen and stomach completely collapsed. What was circulating at the time may have been plague such as the rat-borne disease, but why did the epidemic rage so fiercely? Also because the spleen and stomach had collapsed.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Li Dongyuan learned the hard lesson and concluded — the spleen and stomach are supremely important. So everything he wrote in his lifetime is built on the spleen and stomach; his famous Pi Wei Lun (Treatise on the Spleen and Stomach) explains its importance. He is one of the founders of the Earth School of Chinese medicine (earth = the spleen and stomach).

II. Even Confucian Scholars Began to Question: How the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan Period Came to Be

Before the Song dynasty, Confucian thought was relatively fixed, and the authoritative views were basically unanimous. But from the Song dynasty onward, Confucianism split into schools, and different voices appeared — even authority could now be questioned.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This directly influenced the Jin-Yuan period — many physicians were originally Confucian scholars, and once Confucian scholars dared to question authority, medicine began to branch as well. So from the middle of the Jin-Yuan period onward, the various schools flourished, and the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan period appeared, each with his own emphasis.

Li Dongyuan placed special weight on the spleen and stomach. He said this was no eccentric heresy — it all comes from the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon). His teacher Zhang Yuansu (Elder Jiegu) derived everything from the Inner Canon, and Li Dongyuan took the passages emphasizing the spleen and stomach and developed them — and a new medical school was born.

III. His Name Was Not Actually Li Dongyuan

Li Dongyuan’s real name was Li Gao, courtesy name Mingzhi (Li Mingzhi), a native of Zhengding, Hebei.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why “Dongyuan”? Zhengding was called the “Dongyuan State” in the early Han dynasty. In his later years Li Dongyuan styled himself Dongyuan Laoren (the Old Man of Dongyuan), and later scholars simply called him Li Dongyuan. If you traveled back in time and called him Li Dongyuan, he would not know whom you were addressing — his name was Li Gao, courtesy name Mingzhi.

IV. Richest Family in the Region, and a Legendary Tale

Li Dongyuan’s family was extremely wealthy — when the great Jin state first took over and took a census, his family was the richest in the whole Hebei region.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why were they rich? A notebook novel tells the story: an ancestor was reading at night when a beautiful woman appeared from the ground, wrote the line “ashamed to match the twin nanmu trees,” and vanished. The family later realized “twin nanmu” was a code for gold, dug up a basket of gold with a note on top reading “one basket of gold,” predicting that a descendant of the Li family would become famous in medicine. This is clearly a legend — archaeology shows that Li’s ancestors were great Song-dynasty generals guarding the frontier; when the great Jin state arrived, they went into hiding and made up the story.

When Li Dongyuan was young, the family wanted to raise a Confucian scholar and hired many fine tutors. He was of lofty character, grave and sparing of words, earnest in conduct. A famous incident: schoolmates dragged him out to play, summoned singing girls, and even urged one to tug at his sleeve — Li Dongyuan took off his clothes on the spot, burned them, and walked away. The story caused a great stir at the time.

V. His Mother’s Death Was the Origin of His Calling

When Li Dongyuan was twenty, his mother fell ill. With the full resources of the richest family in the region, countless famous physicians were summoned — yet no treatment worked.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The doctors disagreed completely — one said east, another said west; their medicinals were cold, hot, warming, cooling, all different; they hoarded remedies; and in the end nothing worked. His mother died, and in the end no one even knew what disease had killed her. Li Dongyuan was devastated. He made a vow: if he ever met a true physician, he would study medicine with all his might to make up for his failure.

So he began searching everywhere for masters. At the time Liu Wansu (Liu Hejian), the first of the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan period, was famous across Hebei — but once he fell ill and could not cure himself — until he was cured by a young man named Zhang Yuansu.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Li Dongyuan’s family had money, so he laid a pile of silver on Zhang Yuansu’s table: I want to learn your learning. Zhang Yuansu looked at him and saw an intelligent young man who genuinely wanted to study medicine, and took him on. Zhang Yuansu was not one of the Four Great Masters, but his disciple Li Dongyuan was.

VI. Zhang Yuansu: A Divine Immortal Opened His Belly and Gave Him Books in a Dream

Zhang Yuansu (Elder Jiegu) was obsessed with the Huang Di Nei Jing. He studied it day and night, and pondered his unanswered questions even in his dreams. Later, in a dream, an immortal cut open his belly and placed several scrolls inside; when he woke, everything became clear to him, and he wrote out the contents of the scrolls — this was the very material he used to teach Li Dongyuan, for years, holding nothing back.

VII. A Life of Hardship, and a Fine Disciple in His Later Years

After completing his studies, Li Dongyuan first worked as a tax inspector (a minor official). Later the Mongols destroyed the Jin and the realm was in turmoil — he was besieged in the city and treated the sick, fighting the plague when plague came; he was taken prisoner and marched to Shandong, then made his way back home. He experienced every kind of human suffering: plague, war, homelessness — and all along the way he kept saving ordinary people.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In his relatively settled later years, he wanted to pass on his learning and asked whether anyone wished to study medicine. Someone recommended a honest Confucian scholar from the countryside — Luo Tianyi (Luo Tianyi). Li Dongyuan asked him: do you want to be a physician who earns money, or a physician who transmits the Way? Luo Tianyi answered: “To transmit the Way.”

Luo Tianyi’s family was very poor. Li Dongyuan taught him without charging any tuition, and even gave him money to support his family — Luo Tianyi declined, and Li Dongyuan said: I have given you all my medical achievements, experience and knowledge; what is a little money compared with that? Devote yourself to medicine with an easy mind.

The detail of entrusting his books on his deathbed is especially moving: Li Dongyuan laid out all his medical materials before him and said to Luo Tianyi — take these, and remember to pass them on. Not for my sake, Li Dongyuan, and not for your sake, Luo Tianyi, but for the sake of all people in ages to come. Luo Tianyi knelt and wept bitterly.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: After Li Dongyuan died, Luo Tianyi later became a court physician. He first published his teacher’s books one by one, and only at the end published his own — the books of Li Dongyuan we read today were almost all compiled by Luo Tianyi. The three masters (Zhang Yuansu → Li Dongyuan → Luo Tianyi) form one of the most admirable lineages of learning in the history of Chinese medicine. Their school is called the Yishui School (because Zhang Yuansu lived by the Yishui River), and its academic core is protecting the spleen and stomach.

This article is compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture series on Li Dongyuan.