Suddenly Drenched in Cold Sweat, Ice-Cold All Over, About to Faint? Doctor Wang Mengying’s Emergency Rescue of Zhou Guangyuan from Yang Qi Collapse — Why You Must Take Daily Tonifying Seriously

Patient search terms: sudden cold sweat / feeling icy cold / about to faint / prostration / collapse / qi deficiency / low blood sugar / orthostatic hypotension

Corresponding medical names: vasovagal syncope · hypoglycemia · orthostatic hypotension · acute prostration

Opening: a great physician, and the boss who idolized him

Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today we begin the story of a new great physician — Doctor Wang Mengying. He was one of the great masters of Qing dynasty Chinese medicine, one of the Four Great Masters of Warm Disease, especially skilled at treating warm diseases. The Yu Ling Gao (Jade Spirit Paste) you all know so well — that was his creation.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Where do I begin the story of Wang Mengying? I’ll begin with his story with his good friend Zhou Guangyuan. Wang Mengying had a book called Hui Chun Lu (Record of Returning Spring), which recorded his medical cases — and who compiled and published that book? It was none other than this Zhou Guangyuan. What was the relationship between these two men? It’s an amusing story.

Orphaned at 14, he went out to work carrying one sentence from his father

Wang Mengying’s family was desperately poor when he was a child. His father died when he was just 14 years old. Before he died, his father told him: “Remember this — you must do things that benefit society. If you can one day be of benefit to society, then I can close my eyes in peace.”

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This sentence moves me deeply. So Wang Mengying took his father’s words with him and went out to work, ending up in Hangzhou, working by day and studying Chinese medicine in his spare time. At night, in the counting room, he lit a candle and studied medicine with all his might — it was hard, so very hard.

Whose house did he end up working in? Eventually he went to work for Zhou Guangyuan. Zhou Guangyuan was a salt merchant — a man of means, wealthy.

A candle in the counting room: clerk by day, student of medicine by night

At first, Zhou Guangyuan paid no attention to this young clerk at all. But then, over time, Wang Mengying treated him several times — and brought him back from the brink of death.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What did Zhou Guangyuan say later? “This is no clerk of mine — good heavens, this is an idol I worship!” For the rest of his life, this boss treated Wang Mengying as a good friend and an idol — he compiled and published Wang Mengying’s books; wherever Wang Mengying went to live, he followed. A boss who turned into a devoted fan.

The first medical case we’re talking about today is recorded in Hui Chun Lu — and it was written down by Zhou Guangyuan himself — he recorded the story of his own illness.

The first patient was his own boss — and it happened in the toilet

That year was the jiashen year, in summer. Zhou Guangyuan went to the toilet — deng ce, using the latrine, the washroom. And there in the washroom, suddenly, something went wrong:

Body cold, cold sweat pouring — his body suddenly turned cold, his arms and body went icy, with a strange feeling as if his arms were no longer part of him, and at the same time cold sweat broke out, cold sweat streaming — what the old storytelling ballads call the “white-hair sweat” — it was deficient sweating, xu han; qi exhausted, body weary — his qi couldn’t come up, he had no strength left, his spirit was weary, his head already dizzy and muddled, as if hollowed out.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Everyone saw it — oh no, the boss is in trouble! Quickly, carry him out. At that moment Wang Mengying arrived — back then he was still only a young clerk. One look at Zhou Guangyuan: face deathly pale, lips without blood, pale, dark, purplish, cold sweat pouring off him, eyes lifeless, half-closed and barely able to open, not an ounce of strength. Wang Mengying took one look and said a few words — “Yang qi is about to collapse!”

One look: yang qi is about to collapse! He was going into prostration

What does “yang qi about to collapse” (yang qi yu tuo) mean? It means this person’s yang qi is about to disperse.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Friends, what is this? This is what ordinary people call — prostration — he was about to go into collapse. Prostration is an internal-medicine emergency, and it’s quite common in modern life — don’t think it’s rare. When does it appear? Face pale, cold sweat streaming, dizziness and blurred vision, the head dizzy and hollow, the body ice-cold; in severe cases, loss of control of bowel and bladder; even more severe, a sudden faint, and it can become dangerous. When you feel the pulse, it’s chaotic and deficient. This is an extremely serious emergency.

What is prostration? Both Chinese and Western medicine weigh in

How do we understand the two characters xu tuo? Xu (deficiency) — first of all, upright qi is insufficient; tuo (collapse) — the upright qi is about to leave the body and scatter away. Collapse because of deficiency.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In modern medical terms, the human body is a very delicate system. What controls the heartbeat? Sodium and potassium metabolism — that is, electrolytes. If for some reason the electrolytes become disordered, it really can make the heart suddenly fail. For example, after prolonged diarrhea, fluids are badly damaged, blood is badly damaged — Chinese medicine says upright qi is insufficient; Western medicine says blood volume is low and electrolytes are disordered. So it’s real: someone with a bad stomach stands up after using the toilet and suddenly can’t — an acute emergency strikes. Another example is profuse sweating — bathing, steam saunas, and especially people who drink alcohol and then go into a sauna, thinking it detoxifies them — it does not detoxify! Pouring out sweat raises the alcohol concentration in the body, and big problems can follow. I’ve seen examples myself — a boss finished his drinks, sat upright in the sauna room, and that was it. When bodily fluids are severely depleted, the old term was “qi-water-sweat collapse.”

Prostration is still common today. The most typical is hypoglycemia: in diabetic patients whose blood sugar metabolism is disordered, right after a meal the blood sugar is very high, then by the time before the next meal they’re hungry and blood sugar drops — friends gather for tea, with some tea snacks — the old term is “tea intoxication” — and immediately the hands shake, the body turns cold, cold sweat pours, the stomach feels hollow with hunger, and it’s easy to go down with a thud. High blood sugar won’t suddenly endanger you, but low blood sugar is a serious event — diabetic patients must be vigilant. There are also people with blood deficiency: squatting on the ground, they stand up and their vision goes black, and down they go — this is orthostatic hypotension, caused by insufficient qi and blood.

Chinese medicine strictly distinguishes yang collapse and yin collapse: in yang collapse, the whole body is ice-cold, the face pale, the spirit dull and unresponsive; in yin collapse, the tongue is red, the mouth and tongue dry, the person restless and talking nonsense — yin fluids are severely damaged. Collapse of both yin and yang is extremely dangerous.

The lifesaver wasn’t medicine from a cabinet — it was a three-year-old piece of dried ginger worn on someone’s body

The diagnosis was made. Now what? There was no medicine at hand — no time to get any!

Just as everyone was panicking, someone nearby happened to be wearing a piece of three-year-old dried ginger — in the old days people had the habit of wearing ginger, saying it warded off evil. The piece was about four to five qian (roughly 15-19 g). Wang Mengying grabbed it at once — this was life-saving material! He pounded it, decocted it into a strong soup, and poured it down Zhou Guangyuan’s throat.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Once it went down, Zhou Guangyuan felt some relief. He was pulled back, and only then did they calmly go to fetch medicine — using tonifying herbs: ren shen (ginseng), huang qi (Astragalus), bai zhu (Atractylodes), and gan cao (licorice) — the licorice usually honey-fried. Ren shen restores the original qi, huang qi tonifies qi, ren shen and huang qi used together, with bai zhu to strengthen the spleen and gan cao to harmonize all the herbs. This tonified yang qi and the qi of the spleen and stomach — because Zhou Guangyuan was, after all, on the deficient side, qi deficient — so tonify the qi.

And that small case ends. This was the beginning of Wang Mengying’s rise — having finished studying medicine and begun treating people, his very first case was treating his own boss. From then on began a lifelong friendship with Zhou Guangyuan.

Zhou Guangyuan’s whole life: a qi-deficient man should keep tonifying even in peacetime

Looking at Zhou Guangyuan’s case records, you can see his constitution was somewhat deficient — I’d guess he was plump and fair-skinned, a qi-deficient man. So for his whole life, Wang Mengying treated the various illnesses that his qi deficiency caused.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Zhou Guangyuan actually needed tonifying his whole life. But very unfortunately, that was the era of the Taiping Rebellion fighting against the Qing court. Their lives looked peaceful, but in reality they often had to flee. Zhou Guangyuan was well-off at first, but later no longer had those conditions. So Wang Mengying had to treat him every so often, once every few years — and several times he nearly died. A qi-deficient person with insufficient yang qi will gradually be invaded by cold, and can easily develop toward yang deficiency.

There are actually quite a lot of qi-deficient people in daily life. After the pandemic, how many people suddenly went, just like that? Doctor Zhang Xichun recorded such an event: he treated a man who was a teacher — portly, lecturing every day, consuming his qi. After treating him, Doctor Zhang said: “Take some of this medicine and make it into pills, and keep taking them.” He didn’t listen. One day later, walking home from school, halfway there, his breath failed to come up, and he was gone in an instant — that was a heart problem. But what was the cause? A qi-deficient person needs tonifying; tonifying regularly — like what we today call exercise — is good for the body.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Life is really fragile. Most people have no problem, but sooner or later some will run into trouble. If you can tonify in advance — in today’s peaceful era, most people have the conditions — regularly supplement a little and keep the qi full, you won’t reach that dangerous state. For those with blood sugar disorders, tonify the spleen and stomach and regulate the spleen qi; if you usually have dampness, drain the dampness; if you have blood stasis, resolve the stasis. In short, regulate yourself — don’t let low blood sugar suddenly become a crisis.

When are you most likely to “suddenly go down”?

Besides tonifying, the other key point is: don’t put yourself in those situations.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What situations? First, when the air pressure is especially low — those muggy, heavy days when rain is coming. Medical statistics show that when air pressure is low, the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease rises. Because when pressure is low, the qi-blood circulation system needs more force to circulate. You notice on a hazy day before rain, even breathing feels laborious; on a clear, cloudless day, breathing is easy. When air pressure is low, people with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular conditions must be careful. Second, climbing high — going up to plateau regions, where the pressure changes. Third, sudden cold and sudden extreme heat — both can cause disorders of qi-blood circulation. Some people get dizzy as soon as they arrive in Sanya — qi-deficient people, when the intense heat blazes down, the sweat bursts out, qi follows the sweat and escapes, and suddenly they faint — similar to heatstroke. Fourth, emotional shock — some people, when furious, suddenly black out. That’s also a form of collapse, slightly different from the deficient kind — it’s collapse triggered by emotional shock.

Doctor Luo also told an example he witnessed himself: when he was a child, his father was a university teacher, and a colleague went down to the countryside to work. There was a flood; the man was walking on a bridge to receive someone, missed his step, fell into the water and died. When the news came back to the faculty housing compound of the university, the wife’s aunt nearly went mad when she heard — wailing and shouting, she ran toward the school gate, running with no destination, and after about a dozen steps, she slammed face-down onto the ground — and was gone in an instant. That was collapse caused by emotional shock.

Closing: why switch to Wang Mengying?

The case we told today, Doctor Luo told once on the Hundred Schools Forum (Bai Jia Jiang Tan) television program. Originally he wanted to tell several cases in one day, covering the whole experience of Zhou Guangyuan and Wang Mengying, but he found that telling one case thoroughly, together with its related knowledge, was already plenty.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Everyone, remember the concept of “prostration” (xu tuo): when the body’s upright qi is insufficient and it meets a harsh external situation, the upright qi scatters away, and suddenly a critical condition appears. In modern medical terms, hypoglycemia, anemia (blood deficiency), and cardiac arrhythmia can all produce it. Ancient Chinese medicine divided it into yin collapse and yang collapse; in practice, yang collapse is more common; when both yin and yang collapse, it is already a critical condition that truly requires intensive treatment. Try not to put yourself in those situations — if Zhou Guangyuan hadn’t had Wang Mengying beside him, he would have fainted in the toilet with no one finding him, and he might have been gone.

Also, why switch to Wang Mengying now? Doctor Wu Jutong’s cases aren’t finished yet — his external-contraction cases are extremely long, and each treatment is very complex. Telling those to ordinary people leaves them lost in a fog, which isn’t quite right. By contrast, Wang Mengying’s cases are vivid and strongly story-driven; and besides, Wang Mengying was the first medical case reader Doctor Luo encountered when he began reading Chinese medicine books — he has a deep emotional attachment. The earliest ancient-physician stories he wrote were about Wang Mengying, and the one he recorded for the Hundred Schools Forum was Wang Mengying too. He was a man of very striking character.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue with the story of Doctor Wang Mengying treating Zhou Guangyuan.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture series on the medical cases of Wang Mengying; the case comes from Hui Chun Lu (Record of Returning Spring, also known as Wang Shi Yi An, Doctor Wang’s Medical Cases), by Doctor Wang Mengying of the Qing dynasty (1808-1868).