Smallpox Epidemic or Sore Throat Plague? Three Life-Saving Formulas from the Qing Master Doctor Wang Mengying

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today we’re not analyzing a specific case — we’re telling the story of a great Qing-dynasty physician making a big move. This man is Doctor Wang Mengying. In the middle of a great plague, he brought out three formulas all at once, and we still use them in our daily lives today. These three formulas can ward off plague, treat sore throats, and rescue acute emergencies — each one is worth remembering.

Opening: September in Hangzhou, and smallpox arrives

The story begins with “the weather going wrong.” Doctor Wang Mengying recorded that in that year the autumn was extraordinarily dry, and the winter was unusually warm — by the time winter arrived there was almost no frost or snow, and even the water in the rivers and wells nearly dried up.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Everyone, take note: winter is supposed to be cold. When it turns warm, trouble follows — the body’s yang qi leaks outward, and people with insufficient yin fluids (jin ye) lose even more moisture, making them especially vulnerable to warm-heat pathogens. A year like this — “dry autumn, warm winter” — is almost always followed by an epidemic.

Sure enough, in September smallpox broke out in Hangzhou, striking children most of all, and more than a hundred people were dying every day. Doctor Wang said: this is a “pox epidemic” (dou yi) — a bean-named plague, and its treatment is completely different from the mild chickenpox people usually think of. At the time, pediatricians hadn’t studied this much, but he already had a plan in mind: with a winter this warm, yang qi was leaking out early, and come next spring there would likely be a wave of throat diseases — the sore, swollen, ulcerated throats caused by external contraction, which the old doctors called “hou sha” (throat eruptions). What to do? He first brought out one formula and asked everyone to use it for prevention.

Move one: Jia Wei San Dou Yin — barring the plague at the door

This formula is called Jia Wei San Dou Yin (Augmented Three-Bean Drink): raw mung beans, raw yellow soybeans, and raw black soybeans — if black soybeans aren’t available, raw white hyacinth beans will do — plus raw licorice root and honeysuckle flowers, decocted in water and drunk. For children who haven’t broken out with pox yet, taking it regularly prevents the disease; at the very start of an outbreak, drink it promptly and severe cases turn mild; once the pox has fully erupted, drink it freely and frequently so the pox toxin disperses and even an adverse course turns favorable; near the end, drink it frequently for a few more days and the residual toxin will be completely cleared away.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Wang himself praised this formula: “Extremely simple, most gentle in nature, safe to take for a long time without any side effects — a perfect and benevolent kingly way.” You see, mung beans, yellow soybeans, and black soybeans boiled up are just bean juice — a drink that tastes good, children love it, and people of every constitution can take it. This is how you use mild, everyday food to build up your upright qi (zheng qi) and gently see the pathogen off.

Doctor Wang also fired off a jab: some people in Hangzhou were superstitious that “once pox breaks out you mustn’t eat beans” — since all three ingredients were “beans,” they considered it taboo. He said this was simply a lack of culture — it had nothing to do with taboo at all.

The fine points of San Dou Yin: why did black soybeans replace adzuki beans?

There’s a history here. San Dou Yin is an ancient formula, said to have originated with Bian Que, the legendary physician, and it originally used adzuki beans (chi xiao dou). Doctor Wang swapped them for black soybeans — the kind with black skins that are green inside when you break them open. Why the change?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He said black soybeans nourish yin. That year dryness was in command, people’s body fluids were running low, and black beans’ yin-nourishing action fit the situation perfectly; combined with honeysuckle and licorice, the detoxifying power was even greater. Later physicians followed Doctor Wang’s example, and everyone has used black beans ever since. When we make San Dou Yin today, after boiling the three beans you can add a little smoked plum (wu mei) and white sugar — sour and sweet together generate yin (suan gan hua yin), making the yin-nourishing effect even better. And if a plague really is circulating, add some honeysuckle and licorice. Beans are grains — they strengthen the spleen — and honeysuckle helps clear heat. Children are “pure-yang bodies,” with an abundance of yang qi; drinking this nourishes yin and clears toxins, brightens the eyes and prevents sores — the benefits go on and on.

Move two: Qing Long Bai Hu Tang — “subduing the dragon and taming the tiger” for the throat

The second move is even cleverer — it’s a food therapy formula: olives (qing guo) plus raw white radish, boiled in water and drunk as tea, with the radish as the main ingredient. Doctor Wang explained it himself: olives are green, and green enters the liver channel (gan jing) — they clear the fire of the liver channel; radishes are white, entering the lung channel (fei jing) — they transform the dryness-heat that comes into the lungs from outside, and help the qi flow downward. Together, the two dissolve the phlegm lodged in the channels and neutralize the toxins accumulated from rich, fatty food — subduing the dragon and taming the tiger, keeping the organs clear and harmonious. It does far more than just prevent throat disease.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: These two ingredients are available everywhere, edible by everyone, and safe to take over the long term. Doctor Wang called this “a treasure that dissolves illness before it has a chance to form.” If you often feel a little heat, have an uncomfortable throat, or a hoarse voice, eat radish alone to transform phlegm and smooth the qi, and add a few olives to soothe the throat — the effect is even better. Sore throat — what to do? Lots of people go around asking that question. Remember this formula: radish boiled together with olives works far better than radish alone.

The prophecy comes true: mediocre doctors pour oil on the fire, while Doctor Wang stays calm

What happened next proved Doctor Wang right: the following spring brought no rain, and hou sha (throat eruptions) swept through in a great epidemic, with a great many gravely ill patients. But most doctors at the time didn’t know the cause — they treated it as an ordinary external contraction, and simply kept dispersing and clearing heat — pouring oil on the fire, making each case worse.

Doctor Wang, however, was fully prepared: for severe cases he used Bai Hu Tang (White Tiger Decoction) with modifications, for the most serious he used Xi Jiao Di Huang Tang (Rhinoceros Horn and Rehmannia Decoction) with modifications, and at the same time he put the third formula to wide use — the number of lives saved was beyond counting.

Move three: Xi Lei San — the story of an orphan raised to adulthood

The third formula is called Xi Lei San (Xi Lei Powder), and it’s for external use. There’s a wonderful story behind it.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The source of this formula is the great Qing-dynasty cold-damage scholar Doctor You Zaijing — the one who wrote Shang Han Guan Zhu Ji (Commentary on Cold Damage Threaded with Pearls) and Jin Gui Yi (Wings to the Golden Cabinet). Jin Gui Yi preserves this formula, but it wasn’t his — it was the treasured family secret of his friend Zhang Ruifu. Mr. Zhang had a nephew who had been an orphan from childhood; Zhang took the boy into his home, raised him to adulthood, and helped him marry and establish himself. In those days that was a remarkable act of kindness. The Zhang family had a formula that treated ulcerated-throat hou sha — the kind of external-contraction disease in which the throat rots and ulcerates — with extraordinary results, and Doctor You preserved it in his book together with the story behind it.

When Doctor Wang Mengying saw the formula, he thought it was wonderful — and remembering how virtuous the Zhang family’s conduct had been, he quoted a line from the Book of Songs (Shi Jing): “Xiao zi bu kui, yong xi er lei” — “A filial son never runs dry, and Heaven forever bestows excellence upon his kind.” “Xi” means “to bestow,” and “lei” means “excellence” — and so the formula was named Xi Lei San (by its ancient meaning it should properly be read “Ci Lei San”).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The original formula contained ivory shavings, pearl, refined indigo naturalis (qing dai), plum-blossom borneol (bing pian), bi qian (a small wall spider), rhinoceros bezoar (niu huang), and human fingernail clippings — for a male patient you used a woman’s nail clippings, and for a female patient a man’s — all ground into a fine powder and blown onto the throat, with excellent results. What the pharmacies sell today is an improved eight-ingredient Xi Lei San: watermelon frost, mirabilite (han shui shi), artificial bezoar, pearl, borax, borneol, and so on — clearing heat and reducing swelling, effective for the swelling, pain, and ulcers of the throat and mouth, and even able to suppress hot skin conditions when applied on top. Old-school practitioners said human fingernails themselves have a detoxifying action — in the past, people with an uncomfortable throat would put a bit of nail clipping into a cigarette and take a puff, and their throat would feel clear. Human fingernail was genuinely used as a medicine in ancient times.

Doctor Luo’s closing note: these three formulas still work today

The situation Doctor Wang faced back then, we face too: when winter is warm when it should be cold, or summer is exceptionally hot, and people are struck by warm-heat pathogens, showing red tongues, yellow coating, scanty urine, and fever — everything he wrote is still useful.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So today I’m introducing them to you — Jia Wei San Dou Yin, Qing Long Bai Hu Tang, and Xi Lei San: one taken internally to prevent plague, one as food therapy to protect the throat, and one applied externally for acute emergencies. Doctor Wang’s methods are mostly things you can reach for in daily life, yet their effects are remarkable. In the climate changes ahead, in the disease prevention of the future, we really do need to be more careful. Keep these three formulas in mind — one day they may just help you.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture series explaining Doctor Wang Mengying’s medical cases. The case records come from Wang Shi Yi An (The Medical Cases of Doctor Wang) and other writings of Wang Mengying (Qing dynasty, c. 1808–1868).