Coughing or Vomiting Blood for Years, Nothing Works? — Doctor Zhang Xichun: Shan Zhu Yu with Long Gu and Mu Li Stopped the Bleeding

Opening: how can a “tonic” stop bleeding?

Last time we discussed shan zhu yu’s power to converge and secure primal qi, and its marvelous ability to unblock the channels and collaterals — after anger injures the qi and blood and the channels clog up, the resulting back and leg pain and chest and abdominal pain all respond well to it. Today Doctor Luo Dalun reveals a new talent of shan zhu yu: it is superb at stopping bleeding.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Today we continue with Doctor Zhang Xichun’s experience — how he used shan zhu yu. Today we discuss a new function, and what is it? Shan zhu yu is also excellent at stopping bleeding. Doctor Zhang Xichun held that the nature of shan zhu yu is adept at treating ruptured internal blood vessels or lung collaterals that cause persistent coughing of blood or vomiting of blood that never heals — your blood vessel is broken inside, it drags on for a long time and never gets better, but shan zhu yu has a convergent, astringent nature, and it is able to heal it.

The young woman who coughed blood for three years: a hundred remedies failed, night sweats every night

Shan zhu yu can stop bleeding — how did Doctor Zhang Xichun discover this? You may not believe it, but it was discovered by accident. In Luzhuang Village, Cangzhou, there was a young woman surnamed Ma who coughed blood for a full three years. Where did the blood come from — the lungs or the stomach? She couldn’t say herself — we would analyze it as coming from the lungs, because she coughed it up.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: She coughed blood for three years; a hundred remedies failed, no matter how they treated it, it never got better. Occasionally she’d have a good spell, but it would immediately relapse, so those three years were pure misery. Eventually Doctor Zhang Xichun was called in.

At the first consultation Doctor Zhang Xichun asked the key question and found the decisive symptom: the young woman sweated heavily at night — she sweated without stopping while asleep, what Chinese medicine calls “night sweats” (dao han). Night sweats generally belong to yin deficiency; most such people are yin deficient. Doctor Zhang Xichun thought to himself: let me first remove this night-sweat symptom. Her upright qi is insufficient, so let me first converge and secure it.

Three astringent herbs, one liang each: one dose stopped the sweats, three doses stopped the blood

So he wrote an extremely simple prescription: shan zhu yu, raw long gu, and raw mu li, one liang each. This is a combination Doctor Zhang Xichun used often — shan zhu yu is convergent, and long gu and mu li are convergent too. Three herbs at one liang each is a fairly large dose. He told her to decoct them in water and drink the soup.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun’s original intention was simply to stop the sweating first — what does nonstop sweating tell you? Qi and blood are insufficient, and there may especially be some yin deficiency with heat, so let me first converge things for you. Shan zhu yu also has some yin-nourishing action — it nourishes yin and builds the blood. And what happened? One dose stopped the sweating — the very first dose stopped the night sweats. She took one more dose, and then another the next day — and from then on the coughing of blood was cured too.

A doctor who loved to ponder: why did the blood stop instead?

The sweating stopped, and the blood stopped too — most people would have happily packed up and gone home at this point. But Doctor Zhang Xichun was no ordinary man: he loved to ponder.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun accumulated a tremendous amount of experience in his early clinical career. How did he accumulate it? Exactly this way — one herb at a time, one use at a time. This is the precious thing about the old doctors. Why did his experience later become so rich? Because every time he used a medicine, he would think: why is it so? Through this very episode he thought: after using shan zhu yu, why did the blood stop instead? And so he gained a new understanding of shan zhu yu’s convergent nature.

He analyzed it very carefully: coughing blood that drags on and never heals must mean the collaterals in the lungs have ruptured. What are collaterals? Chinese medicine speaks of the channels and collaterals — the “channels” (jing) are the great thoroughfares, the big passages; the “collaterals” (luo) are the fine passages. If the collaterals in the lungs, or the blood vessels in the stomach, have a point of rupture, then shan zhu yu used together with long gu and mu li can converge them, sealing the ruptured spot in the collateral and stopping the blood — that is Doctor Zhang Xichun’s insight.

Cousin Zhang Quan: vomited blood every day, cured in three doses

Once he had the insight, he put it to use. In Doctor Zhang Xichun’s own village there was a cousin called Zhang Quan, in his thirties, who vomited a few mouthfuls of blood several times a month. At first it came once every ten days or half a month; later it progressed to vomiting blood every single day, and repeated treatments failed — no matter what was tried, it never got better.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When Doctor Zhang Xichun was called in, he felt the pulse — calm, with a slightly hollow quality (kou mai). What is a hollow pulse? The pulse feels empty in the middle — when you press down, it is hollow beneath the fingers, a faint sensation of emptiness; it is a sign of blood loss. Doctor Zhang Xichun thought: at this point I still need to converge things for you. He used this same formula — cured in three doses. Just three doses and it was done.

Later he added a little fine san qi (notoginseng) powder — three qian (about 9 g) — taken with the decocted soup, using this method to treat cases of vomiting blood or coughing blood that had dragged on a long time and never healed, and they all recovered almost effortlessly. Friends, this is one of Doctor Zhang Xichun’s experiences — and very few people still use it today.

Why is Doctor Zhang Xichun’s experience especially worth studying?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun’s experience is truly worth studying. Why? Because it all comes from practice, and it contains no empty words — in every single case he wrote down the patient’s address and full name clearly. This is absolutely genuine, down-to-earth experience. If we go into it and study it, perhaps we can work out new ways of treating illness. Think about it — who today still uses shan zhu yu for coughing blood? You are all masters, you understand Doctor Zhang Xichun’s scholarly thought. If we encounter this kind of situation and put it to use, we may find new approaches.

The great treasure-house of Chinese formulas: the lesson of Tu Youyou

Actually, thinking and methods like this appeared constantly throughout the dynasties of Chinese medicine. Chinese medical methods, by statistical count, number in the hundreds of thousands — perhaps more than half a million formulas. Among these half-million formulas, a great many are the results of the ancients’ practice, refined through enormous clinical experience. If we study them now, the rewards would be immense.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Our Tu Youyou found artemisinin precisely from an ancient formula — how to use the herb qing hao (sweet wormwood)? She won the Nobel Prize and contributed to human health. If we truly study Chinese medical formulas carefully, and study the proven effective ones, many new treatment ideas will very likely emerge in the future. This is a special characteristic of the Chinese materia medica.

What we learn is a way of thinking: the shan zhu yu that generalizes from one case

Of course, having studied today’s lecture, it doesn’t mean we can all now treat any vomiting of blood or stomach bleeding — that’s not necessarily so. What we teach you is a way of thinking: if you truly encounter such a situation and have shan zhu yu at hand, using it is permissible; but more importantly, learn Doctor Zhang Xichun’s spirit of exploration.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He simply thought: shan zhu yu can converge — then he tried it, and discovered it stopped the bleeding. He broke through shan zhu yu’s usual scope of application and put it to use for stopping blood. What does this show? It shows that Doctor Zhang Xichun’s thinking had the quality of generalizing from one instance to ten thousand. If we learn this way of thinking and apply it to problems in daily life, we may achieve breakthroughs in any field we work in. This is what we want to teach you.

More secrets of shan zhu yu — and a preview: tomorrow we talk about huang qi

Today’s topic was shan zhu yu’s final characteristic — excellent at stopping bleeding. In fact Doctor Zhang Xichun believed shan zhu yu has other qualities too: for example, in hernia, or internal wind, when a person sweats without stopping all over the body and the limbs twitch, he would also use shan zhu yu, and so on — but we won’t go into all of those today.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What will we talk about starting tomorrow? Huang qi (astragalus). This herb is especially important, and Doctor Zhang Xichun was especially skilled at using it. Tomorrow we’ll discuss exactly how Doctor Zhang Xichun used huang qi. Thank you all — that’s all for today. See you tomorrow!

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lectures on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s medication experience; the case comes from Records of Chinese Medicine with Reference to Western Medicine (Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu), published in installments between 1918 and 1934.