What Did We Really Learn About the Spleen and Stomach? The Earth School (Pi Wei Lun) Series Finale

With this lecture, the story of Doctor Li Dongyuan and his teacher-disciple lineage comes to a close. These three generations of physicians form one of the most celebrated lines of academic transmission in the whole history of Chinese medicine.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The teacher, Doctor Zhang Yuansu (Elder Jiegu), founded the Yishui School and passed all of his learning to his disciple Doctor Li Dongyuan. And Doctor Li Dongyuan did not merely carry it forward — he enriched it enormously and built it into a complete academic system, the doctrine of protecting the spleen and stomach, and then passed it on to Doctor Luo Tianyi. Three generations, one unbroken inheritance.

I. The Dying Wish: These Manuscripts Are Not for You Alone — They Are for the Whole World to Come

In his later years, Doctor Li Dongyuan’s own health began to fail. Why? Because his life had been one long ordeal of displacement, famine and war — he had endured hunger so desperate that he ate grass roots to survive. The toll on his body was enormous.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Before he died, he gave every manuscript he had written to his disciple Luo Tianyi and his brother, and said: these are given to you, but they are not for you personally — they are for the whole world of future generations. Whatever you do, do not lose them; sort them out carefully. Luo Tianyi received the materials and slowly organized them. Later he became an imperial physician at the Imperial Medical Academy (Tai Yi Yuan), gained position, and had all of these books published in proper form.

That is how we can still read this famous doctrine — the doctrine of protecting the spleen and stomach — today. It is a deeply moving story of teacher and disciple, of scholarship handed down across the centuries.

II. After All These Lectures, What Have We Actually Learned?

So what is the benefit of studying this material? It comes down to a single core point: recognizing how important the spleen and stomach are.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Li Dongyuan and his teachers kept pulling passages out of the ancient classics — above all the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon) — to show everyone how vital the spleen and stomach really are. The passages had always been there in the classics, but few people paid attention. These physicians took the important content, developed it in clinical practice, used it, and created new formulas from it. Every master who founded a school was, in the end, a development of the ancient classics.

Why is this especially worth learning right now? Because the number of modern people with injured spleens and stomachs is enormous.

III. The First Knife That Wounds the Spleen-Stomach: Eating Too Well, and Too Chaotically

It is fair to say that the sheer “chaos” of what we eat today is unprecedented in human history.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Primitive humans never had enough to eat, and later there were wars and famines. Looking across history, for most of the time food was not abundant — chili peppers only entered China in the Ming dynasty, and corn and potatoes came very late as well. For long stretches of our past, people did not eat richly at all. Then modern society suddenly began to eat well: the variety of food available to us now absolutely surpasses that of the ancient emperors — an emperor of old might never have tasted lobster, but today anyone can.

It is not just abundant — it is chaotic: every kind of additive, seasoning and chemical product. Excess in eating, rich and fatty food, also wounds the spleen and stomach. Just look at how many diabetics there are today, and how the incidence is shooting straight upward — that tells you how much of it is tied to eating too well.

IV. The Second Knife: The Way We Grow Crops and Raise Animals Has Changed

The second knife is the change in how we farm and how we raise livestock — this too wounds the spleen and stomach.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I have talked with many farmers, and today they have lost confidence in the land itself — they are deeply convinced that without chemical fertilizer and pesticides you simply cannot grow grain or vegetables. The faith of the whole farming community in the soil has collapsed. But can you actually grow food without fertilizer and pesticides? Yes, you can — there are so many organic farms putting it into practice, with excellent results. The problem is cost: organic produce is expensive, and when the price doubles, people stop buying and go back to the cheap, chemically grown option. Chemical fertilizer makes heavy metals exceed safe limits; pesticides leave residues. Livestock farming is the same — chickens and pigs are all given medication. Every day we swallow so many chemical products we were never meant to ingest — how can the spleen and stomach bear it? The spleen and stomach have never absorbed this many “poisons” in all of human history, and now we are forcing them to break these things down — of course they get injured. This is a major reason why the incidence of serious and malignant disease is climbing straight upward today.

That is why I constantly call on people to support organic farming — as long as I have any influence at all, I will use it to support these farmers. Why? Because this is the hope of humanity’s future. If you want to eat clean food and keep your body healthy, support these people.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I buy my own vegetables from organic farms even though they cost more — partly to support the farmers, and partly to treat myself well. Whenever you have the choice, choose organic grains and vegetables as much as you can. Skip a haircut, skip something else — but treat yourself well where it truly counts.

V. The Third Knife: Emotions — the Deadliest One

The third factor, and the one that most affects the spleen and stomach, is emotions.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When your emotions are bad, liver qi stagnates, and liver wood attacks spleen earth — the liver belongs to wood, the spleen belongs to earth; when liver wood cannot flow smoothly, it turns sideways and strikes spleen earth, directly harming the spleen and stomach. Modern people, precisely, carry heavy hearts and chaotic thoughts — every day a stream of unhealthy emotions arises: brooding, clinging, obsessing over what cannot be changed, greed, jealousy… the list goes on. These bad emotions wound the spleen and stomach as surely as if you were taking poison every day.

Look at people with digestive problems: why do those with unhealthy intestines suffer chronic diarrhea? The chance they ate something rotten is very small — it is stress, anxiety, and unhealthy emotions that do it. All kinds of stomach diseases, ulcers, even many stomach cancers are tied to unhealthy emotions. Bad emotions make the body generate stagnation, nodules and lumps, and finally serious disease — far too much of this happens.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Every time I see a difficult, complex disease, my heart sighs — how pitiful that a person could be tortured by their emotions to this degree. The whole body is in chaos; adjust this side and that side flares up, adjust that side and this one flares up. The root is a disordered mind, an unsettled heart, emotions running in the wrong directions. But the patient does not know it; he goes from famous doctor to famous doctor, hoping for one formula that will solve everything — how could it? So if you want to regulate the spleen and stomach well, the first thing is to regulate your own mind.

VI. Calming the Mind Comes First: The Last Words Li Dongyuan Wrote in the Pi Wei Lun

Doctor Li Dongyuan explained so many ways to regulate the spleen and stomach in his book. What did he choose to say at the very end? — How to distance yourself from desire.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Do you see? A great master puts the most important thing at the end: distance yourself from desire. Once desire rises — “I must have another child,” “I must get promoted one more level,” “I need to earn more,” “another million” — you have to run and exhaust yourself chasing it. Keep the mind quieter — this is the thought I often quote from the Dao De Jing — and work steadily; perhaps the goal arrives much sooner, because you are traveling light, not torturing yourself.

At the end of his book Doctor Li Dongyuan wrote: “De sang ji qing, xue qi zi ran xie he” — “Once gain and loss are clear in your mind, your qi and blood naturally harmonize” — you no longer get excited or crushed by winning and losing. When qi and blood run normally, where can evil qi lodge? It has nowhere to settle — “Xie wu suo rong, bing an cong lai?” — “When the pathogen has nowhere to lodge, where can illness come from?” If you keep your mind well, your illness will not grow worse; your body will keep improving. Persist in this and you draw closer and closer to the way of nourishing life — truly “obtaining its genuine delight.” So calming the mind, regulating the emotions, is the very first task.

VII. Back to Basics at the Table: Simple, Plain, Rhythmic

In matters of diet, we should move “against” the direction of modern development — not toward more delicious and better food, but the closer to primal simplicity, the better.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Eat simple, plain food — grown without pesticides, without chemical fertilizer, without pollution — taste the true flavor of food, and do not pile on seasonings. Go in this direction and your spleen and stomach will thank you. Second, keep a rhythm: never alternate a full feast with a starving fast. In Doctor Li Dongyuan’s era people were so hungry they ate tree roots; then suddenly the city gates opened and the enemy withdrew, and everyone wolfed down five steamed buns at once — and died of overeating. The spleen and stomach are terribly injured by uneven hunger and fullness; countless people died that way in those years. So eat with moderation (yin shi you jie), and the body will only get better.

VIII. “Internal Injuries Follow Dongyuan”: He Filled In This Entire Territory

Doctor Li Dongyuan’s academic thought is extraordinarily rich: how to use wind medicinals, when to tonify the spleen, when to lift qi upward, when to clear heat from the lower burner… This school opened a gateway for regulating the spleen and stomach.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What he mainly considered was yang qi — the yang qi of the spleen and stomach. In protecting the yang qi of the spleen and stomach, and in treating the many symptoms of spleen-stomach weakness, Doctor Li Dongyuan filled in this whole territory of Chinese medicine. He is an absolute master. Later generations distilled it into one saying: “Nei shang fa Dongyuan” — “for internal injuries, follow Dongyuan.” When a person is ill and chaotic, very weak, where does the core lie? Two places: the spleen and the kidney. The kidney, other physicians have discussed; but this position of the spleen — Doctor Li Dongyuan’s school explained it with incomparable richness.

Regulate the spleen and stomach well, and food can be turned into nourishment, the body has a source of nutrients, upright qi recovers, and the person has hope. If the stomach qi is ultimately destroyed, upright qi badly damaged, and the body can no longer absorb nourishment from food, then the disease is usually hard to cure. That is why Doctor Li Dongyuan’s status in Chinese medical history is so high.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you are interested, read Doctor Zhang Yuansu’s and Doctor Li Dongyuan’s books carefully — Chinese medicine enthusiasts and students in TCM colleges absolutely must study them closely. Master the books of Zhang Yuansu and Li Dongyuan, and in the field of regulating internal injuries you should be a master yourself. The Pi Wei Lun is a thin little book, but every formula in it comes with its various additions and subtractions — how to adjust for the four seasons, how to vary the medicinals. I have only covered a small part. Penetrate all of that, and you will have real confidence in composing and modifying prescriptions.

IX. The Next Series: Zhu Danxi, the Last of the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan Period

That, in outline, is the end of the Spleen-Stomach series. The Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan period number four in all, and Doctor Li Dongyuan is one of them. Who do we take up next? — Doctor Zhu Danxi, the last of the four.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Zhu Danxi lived in a very different age from Li Dongyuan. Li Dongyuan’s era was war and famine — people starved, hurt their spleens and stomachs, and came down with all sorts of strange illnesses. By Zhu Danxi’s time, the Yuan dynasty had already unified the empire; later it neared its end and the Ming arose. Life was far better than in Li Dongyuan’s day, especially in the Jiangnan region — people lived very well and ate very well. So many of the diseases Zhu Danxi treated were caused by emotions, or caused by eating well — a completely different style of practice. Every great ancient physician had his own character — the era determines how one practices medicine. What exactly was Zhu Danxi’s method? We will tell you in the new series.

This article is adapted from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture series explaining Doctor Li Dongyuan’s medical cases (the finale and summary of the Spleen-Stomach / Pi Wei Lun series).