Extraordinary Physicians Beget Extraordinary Cures

I have never really believed that any physician could repeatedly cure multiple cases of hepatitis B, whether TCM or Western - until a liver-cancer patient, when seeking my help, told me that his father-in-law's hepatitis B had been cured forty years earlier by an old TCM physician who had been a Kuomintang military intelligence agent, and that the father-in-law's fellow patient had also been cured by this same old doctor. Only then did I come to admire that TCM physician's efficacy greatly, and to believe that some doctors really can repeatedly cure major diseases such as hepatitis B.

Together with this patient and his father-in-law, I have been searching for any words this old doctor of forty years ago may have left behind, hoping to see the medical essays or case records he wrote and glimpse the profundity of his practice. Forty years ago, this old physician, named Zhou Shaoyun, was imprisoned as a military intelligence agent; because of his superb medical skill he was spared the death penalty, and treated patients who came to him in prison.

All we now know is that his ancestral home was Shandong, and that because he had served as an intelligence agent he was jailed in Guizhou forty years ago. From the few prescriptions he left for treating illness, this old doctor used extraordinarily large doses for liver disease; he is one of the very few physicians I have seen who dared to use fierce, heavy doses. Yet every hepatitis-B patient he treated was completely cured within one or two months. Such efficacy is far beyond what other doctors can match.

This is another TCM physician who can stand comparison with Sun Bingyan: both used medicine unconventionally, fiercely yet without causing harm, and with remarkable results. Some of the dosages he used were about three times the maximum doses currently customary among TCM physicians. I strongly suspect that, at the doses customary in today's TCM community, one simply cannot treat major diseases.

If this old doctor had lived to the present, he would be at least 120 years old, so he is most likely already deceased. I have searched his name but turned up no information; perhaps his medical thought and skill have long since vanished from this world along with him, and later generations can benefit only from the few prescriptions he left behind. In any case, this old doctor at least convinced me personally that, when medication is properly applied, TCM is fully capable of curing major diseases such as hepatitis B.