Doctor Zhang Xichun: From Failed Imperial Exams to Founding China’s First Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, hello everyone. From today on, I am switching to audio to talk about Chinese medicine with you. I have already tried this format in my Dalun Academy — telling the story of the Dao De Jing in recorded voice, and after a while I found it excellent: it is easy to record, easy for you to listen to at your own pace, wherever you are with your phone, one short segment every day that is easy to digest and easy to understand. So from today, let us talk about Chinese medicine in this form.

Now, how should we talk about Chinese medicine? Should we start with materia medica, or with formulas? I thought about this for a long time. After much deliberation, I decided to begin with the physicians themselves — going master by master, one doctor at a time. The first one we talk about today is Doctor Zhang Xichun. His story may take a long time — his case records, his insights. Why start with him? Because Zhang Xichun was a towering figure in Chinese medicine, and as we travel this road together, he is a bridge we cannot avoid.

I. A failed scholar from Yanshan by the sea

Doctor Zhang Xichun was a famous physician of the late Qing and Republican era, born in Yanshan, Hebei Province. Where is Yanshan? Right on the coast of the Bohai Sea, near Tianjin and also near Shandong. Doctor Luo says he once drove through Yanshan — the place sits right by the sea.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When Zhang Xichun was born, it was still the late Qing, and his family followed the old path — the imperial examinations. He went to Tianjin to take the exams, twice in all, and failed both times. After returning home, he obeyed his father’s command and began studying medicine, earnestly learning Chinese medicine while also seeing patients on the side.

Later the late Qing abolished the old learning and promoted the new. Zhang Xichun read widely — he read everything, and he actually knew geometry. In that era almost no one taught Western learning or Western mathematics, so he was hired as a local geometry (mathematics) teacher, teaching students by day and treating patients by the same hand.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: It was during this period that he accumulated a great deal of experience and wrote a book — Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu (Records of Integrating Chinese and Western Medicine). Most of the book’s content was already finished before he became famous.

II. Famous at nearly fifty: from army doctor to a book that swept the nation

Zhang Xichun became famous rather late — he was nearly fifty before his reputation truly took off. How did it happen? At the time, the commander of the Dezhou garrison invited him to serve as an army doctor — and so began his career of full-time medical practice. He traveled with the garrison, met a vast number of patients in the military, his medical skill kept improving, and his name kept spreading.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Then came a crucial turning point. Zhang Xichun wanted to publish his book, so he sent it to a copyright office in Beijing. Coincidentally, someone from Shenyang was there handling paperwork at the same time, saw the manuscript lying on the table — and immediately thought it was superb. He asked: can we publish this? We will sponsor you! So everyone pooled sponsorship money, and the Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu was published. Once published, the book swept the whole country.

III. One medical book leads to China’s earliest hospital of Chinese medicine

After the book was published, the place most affected was Shenyang. Shenyang occupies a very important place in Zhang Xichun’s life story.

At that time Shenyang had a director of the tax bureau — in today’s terms, the head of the tax administration. This director loved Chinese medicine and was a health enthusiast who bought Chinese medicine books whenever he could. One day a friend from out of town said: my wife has an illness — can you find me a famous doctor in Shenyang to see her? Then he described the symptoms.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: On hearing this, the director said: I can treat this myself! I just bought a book called Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu, and it has the method right there. Don’t go looking for a famous doctor — that famous doctor might not be able to cure your wife’s illness anyway. Let me copy out the formula for you; take it home and try it first. So the friend went back and filled the prescription exactly as written — and after a few doses, the illness was cured!

The director thought: remarkable! This book works this well! So he went to consult the secretary of the Marshal’s Mansion — in those days Zhang Zuolin was the Grand Marshal, the period the TV drama The Young Marshal portrays. He said: Shenyang lacks a famous doctor like this. Look at this book — the man who wrote it, Zhang Xichun, is extraordinary, his medical level is superb!

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The two of them talked it over and raised the funds — they brought in more friends to pool money and set up a hospital called the Lida Hospital of Chinese Medicine. They wrote to Zhang Xichun and invited him to become its director: in the past, Chinese medicine was practiced in outpatient clinics — the doctor wrote a prescription, the patient left, and came back the next week; but if you lived in a hospital, we could keep observing you and understand the illness in far more detail. Zhang Xichun looked at this and thought — this is a good idea, a chance to realize great ambitions! So he came to Fengtian (today’s Shenyang) and took part in founding the earliest hospital of Chinese medicine in China.

Was it really the very first hospital of Chinese medicine in the country? Some people have argued with Doctor Luo, saying the south may have had one too. Doctor Luo’s conclusion is: it should be called the earliest and most famous one — a formally established hospital of Chinese medicine with enormous influence.

IV. Flourishing in his fifties, treating the great illnesses others could not

In Shenyang, Zhang Xichun entered the most brilliant period of his life. He was already in his fifties, and at the hospital he could observe patients in detail — many of the case records in his book date from this period.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In this period, the illnesses he treated were major ones — diseases that Western hospitals could not cure, and that the Japanese hospitals could not cure, he treated extremely well. Later, because of the wars — Zhang Zuolin fought against the forces inside the passes, and the situation grew turbulent — Zhang Xichun returned to Tianjin, where he continued to practice and also ran a correspondence course. This correspondence course had enormous influence — many famous senior doctors of later generations were connected to Zhang Xichun’s correspondence course, which trained a great number of Chinese medicine talents. In the end, Zhang Xichun passed away in Tianjin.

V. Thunder and lightning: the “master among physicians” who solved problems in a few doses

Why talk about Zhang Xichun first? Because this man’s way of practicing medicine was so distinctive: the results were excellent, and the methods were extremely direct — in his case records, he often resolved an illness in just a few doses. His style was decisive and formidable.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Zhang Xichun had an enormous influence on the development of Chinese medicine after the Republic. A department once did a survey, asking famous senior doctors: who had the greatest influence on your growth as a physician? I remember the figure was about 80% — 80% of the old masters wrote Zhang Xichun’s name! That shows how great his influence was in his own day. His medical achievement should be counted as the highest peak of the Republican era nationwide.

VI. Integrating Chinese and Western medicine: he did not reject Western medicine

Zhang Xichun had another trait: he did not reject Western medicine. The very name of his book, Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu — “Chinese medicine at the center, Western medicine consulted alongside” — expresses his conviction that Chinese and Western medicine should be integrated: Chinese medicine should embrace Western medicine.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: How did he treat Western drugs? He said we should classify the natures of Western drugs — this one is cold, that one is warm, which channel it enters — and once classified, prescribe them exactly like Chinese herbs, writing out Western drugs too. He was an extremely open-minded physician — not like some doctors who think Chinese medicine is good and Western medicine is useless. As early as Zhang Xichun’s era, he was already talking about integration — whether the two could communicate with each other and work together to treat patients.

VII. His greatest skill: knowing every single herb, thoroughly

Why do I admire Zhang Xichun so much? Because he had one more great trait: his mastery of the properties of every single herb was extraordinarily precise, and he was especially skilled at using single herbs.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Many people learning Chinese medicine start straight with formulas — Si Jun Zi Tang, Si Wu Tang — going out with formulas. But what exactly is the property of each herb, what dosage of each herb is needed to produce an effect, and which herb suits which kind of person — many people do not grasp this clearly. Zhang Xichun was different: when he was learning Chinese medicine, he loved to experiment with single herbs. How much huang qi (astragalus) achieves what effect, how much sheng shi gao (raw gypsum) achieves what effect — he knew all of this with perfect clarity.

Because he understood every single herb so clearly, when he composed formulas afterward — where the formula’s action lands, how strong the medicinal force is — Zhang Xichun held it all in his hand with perfect measure.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So I plan to begin with Zhang Xichun’s knowledge of materia medica — talking herb by herb about their properties. Once you understand the single herbs, you can understand the formulas, and you can understand how the ancients applied materia medica. This is one of Zhang Xichun’s great characteristics.

VIII. Learning from the ancients without being bound by them: taking Doctor Zhang Zhongjing as his teacher, yet never rigidly clinging to the original formulas

Zhang Xichun had one more trait: he studied the Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) with exceptional depth — many of his formulas grew out of the classical prescriptions of the Shang Han Lun, which he then recombined.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He learned from the ancients without being bound by them — he took Doctor Zhang Zhongjing as his teacher, but after learning, he never stuck rigidly to the original formulas. He often modified the classical prescriptions, and modified them very aptly. This is also something we should learn. So I think we should begin with Zhang Xichun — once you understand Zhang Xichun, you will see many places in Chinese medicine clearly. This is an excellent gateway.

Some friends have said: Teacher Luo, we have read the books you recommended by Zhang Xichun, but his writing is somewhat classical and hard to follow. In fact, Zhang Xichun’s writing is already quite plain — the language of the Republic era is very simple, not much different from today’s vernacular. I will translate it again into colloquial speech for you, and add my own interpretation, so you can see it even more clearly.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Today we have made an opening introduction, briefly introducing the life of the great Republican-era physician Doctor Zhang Xichun. From tomorrow, we will talk herb by herb — perhaps one herb for several days, slowly and carefully, about ten minutes or so each day. The recordings will be posted on Ximalaya; search for “Luo Dalun” and you will find them. While I talk about individual herbs, I will weave in the principles of Chinese medicine — I hope you can learn more ideas for staying healthy. Alright, that is all for today — see you tomorrow!

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lectures on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records. The cases come from the Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu (Records of Integrating Chinese and Western Medicine), published in installments from 1918 to 1934.