The Fading Away of the Folk Herb Doctors

After my son caught a cold, his tonsils and epiglottis suddenly became inflamed and swollen with a fierce onset; swallowing food and water was difficult. This is what TCM calls 'throat moth' (hou e) or 'throat bi' (hou bi). The throat is a critical pass of the body; when the disease is fierce, the patient risks sudden death. From ancient times to today, this has been a very dangerous illness.

My wife wanted to go to the children's hospital. Given two adult patients I had known who, after similar childhood illnesses treated with antibiotics, were left with lifelong, incurable sequelae, I refused to go to a Western hospital.

So I looked through TCM works on throat medicine and prescribed according to their pattern-differentiation spirit. In Professor Geng Jianqing's Gengshi Liudai Yanhouchu Chuandeng Lu (Six Generations of the Geng Family's Throat Medicine), I found several corresponding formulas, especially valuing the family-chuandan Danzhi Sheyu Tang, hoping for a clear effect. But after my son took it, the effect was not obvious; according to records by Professor Geng's disciples, this formula generally needs to be taken for a week to half a month to cure.

I am rather impatient. My son could not swallow due to throat pain, and his nighttime breathing was heavy; if the condition progressed too fast, I would have to send him to a Western hospital for antibiotics. In an emergency, I turned to my father's herbal medicine at home. This herb must be used as fresh juice to be effective. For as long as I can remember, I have known my father to treat 'throat moth' and 'throat bi' (acute tonsillitis, acute epiglottitis) with folk green-herb medicine as if by magic: usually just one locally gathered green herb (to this day I do not know its scientific name, nor have I found it in the Zhongyaoji Cidian or the Zhonghua Bencao), crushed and squeezed for juice, dropped into the nose; within one to three days it is definitely completely cured, leaving no sequelae. So I insisted on trying this ancestral method. Based on prior memory and a senior TCM physician's guidance, I gathered 'Chuipencao' (Sedi Herba) in the Beijing suburbs (this senior had told me the green herb my father used was Chuipencao; in fact, when I compared the Chuipencao I gathered with our family's herb, I found it was not Chuipencao at all). Following my father's instruction, I squeezed the juice and dropped it into my son's nose; I saw no effect.

Helpless, I phoned my father to gather the herb from home at once and went to the railway station to ask travelers from my hometown coming to Beijing to bring some; if no one would, I planned to go home myself to fetch it. After the call, my father immediately gathered the herb and hurried to the station (there is a train from my hometown to Beijing West), found a fellow townsman visiting Beijing, who, at my father's pleading, agreed to bring the medicine to Beijing West for me. On getting the herb, I immediately squeezed the juice and, as my father had taught, dropped about 5 ml into my son's nose.

The next morning, my son told me while eating, 'Dad, my throat is better; Grandpa's medicine worked.' This was an effect the oral decoction and the Chuipencao nasal drops of the previous days had never achieved. Besides miraculously treating throat conditions, my father also treats all kinds of venomous-snake bites and nameless swellings with the speed of a drumbeat: just gather one or two herbs from the fields, pound them at home, mix with cooked glutinous rice and chicken white into a plaster, and apply to the affected area; usually within one to three days the swelling subsides and pain stops, no matter how severe the patient's illness.

I used to look down on this family folk-herb lore of ours, because my father learned it from a grand-uncle of the family and some folk single-herb healers. I knew this grand-uncle: he was an out-and-out illiterate farmer who sold tofu in the off-season; all the neighbors around knew he understood green-herb medicine and was skilled at treating baodu, 'lump toxin', and people often sought him out; he was famous near and far. I used to despise this grand-uncle's skill; he had never read the TCM classics like the Huangdi Neijing, Shanghan Lun, or Jinkui Yaolue. The deeper I studied TCM, the more disdainful I became of their way of treating disease; I felt this folk green-herb healing was utterly unstructured, baseless, and backward. But after personally practicing the ancestral green-herb therapy, I deeply realized that the green-herb doctors' effect in treating certain diseases can be described as unrivaled—neither TCM nor Western medicine is a match for them.

For 'throat moth' and 'throat bi,' both Western and TCM textbooks note that the disease is extremely dangerous, hard to treat, and high in mortality. Western antibiotics usually need to be continued for a week to half a month, and the many formulas of TCM throat medicine also require roughly the same course. According to Professor Geng's throat monograph, the Geng family ancestor's medical fame soared after treating a local old monk's 'throat bi,' and he gradually became a local famous physician. But that case, in my father's view, was far too complicated. My father never lost a case of acute throat moth or throat bi in his life. Without any pattern differentiation, whenever he saw a patient with throat moth or throat bi—even if critically ill at death's door—he used only one herb, squeezed the juice, and dropped 3–5 ml into the nose to cure. My father put it conservatively: he thought it usually cured within one to three days, but among the many cases he treated, not one failed to resolve by the next morning after evening dosing.

I believe the root of TCM lies in the folk green-herb doctors; it was the rich clinical practical experience of folk green-herb healers that gave TCM predecessors the basis for summarizing TCM thought, and that produced the TCM classics including the Huangdi Neijing, Shanghan Lun, and Jinkui Yaolue. But since these medical works are theoretical crystallizations extracted from practical experience, they inevitably contain the authors' own conjectures; so TCM basic theory, although not lacking in brilliance, is by no means flawless. Some things should be falsified in practice. Yet the Chinese tradition, from ancient times to today, has valued authority and dared not question it, so that after thousands of years of 'passing on the error,' some wrong things are even taken as dogma—something contrary to the practical spirit of medicine.

Having studied medicine a long time and treated many patients, I sometimes cannot help feeling deeply disappointed in TCM's efficacy. Some parts of TCM theory are quite hard to learn, and they are hard because some theories detach from common sense and logic; the ancients used simple analogies (what TCM theorists call 'taking images by category') to draw conclusions that are not persuasive, which makes them hard to accept. Medicine is a science emphasizing the practical spirit; neither TCM nor Western medicine is an exception. When the actual efficacy is poor, no matter how eloquent the theory, it is not convincing. As long as one can safely and effectively cure the patient's illness, what does it matter whether there is any theoretical basis? I used to look down on my family's folk green-herb medicine; this prejudice was precisely the poison of orthodox TCM thought, which valued theory and despised evidence.

I believe that China's earliest medical specialists must have been people who traveled about gathering this kind of folk green-herb treatment experience, bit by bit. Before the Han and Tang dynasties, TCM decoctions were also extremely simple single-herb prescriptions or small formulas of only a few herbs, all strongly folk in character. Unfortunately, this tradition of learning medicine from evidence gradually declined. In its development, TCM gradually shared the fate of Chinese Confucianism: it was over-interpreted by people who theorized for theory's sake, finally developing into a discipline far detached from reality, and its efficacy naturally became hard to guarantee.

These years I have focused on TCM research into cancer treatment. From my own experience, some cancer patients treated by green-herb doctors have done even more clearly better than with Western surgery, radiotherapy/chemotherapy, and TCM pattern treatment. A cousin on my great-aunt's side, when I saw him two or three years ago, was already like a dying candle in the wind from gastric cancer, and his family was destitute; with no other choice, he gathered herbs according to some ancestral folk prescriptions and treated himself, and now he is surprisingly alive and vigorous, even out working for others. This was beyond my expectation. And the biological brother of a breast-cancer patient I treated, after being told by the hospital he had only months to live from gastric cancer, went home, gathered fresh herbs and took them himself, and persisted for six years; although he eventually died of cancer, that survival time is already quite long among patients with widely metastasized gastric cancer.

After my mother developed gastric cancer, my father once suggested treating her with the family's folk green-herb method, but I refused; at the time I thought it irresponsible toward my mother (deep down I did not believe in green-herb medicine, and I felt that if I would not spend money to treat her major illness but leave her fate to a few unknown herbs from the fields, I would have a guilty conscience—so I chose Western medicine and orthodox TCM). Now I feel much regret. Especially after personally comparing the efficacy of Western medicine, traditional TCM, and folk green-herb medicine for certain diseases, I feel I may have missed something.

If I were not so stubbornly studying medicine now, the green-herb tradition in my family would have died out with my father's generation. Last week, returning home for my father-in-law's 35-day memorial, I specially followed my father into the ravines and fields to learn to recognize the green herbs he commonly uses. My father has not treated anyone beyond relatives for many years. He told me that IV infusions in rural clinics are now so widespread that, for throat moth, throat bi, and nameless swellings, as soon as symptoms appear, patients go to the hospital for infusions. The green-herb doctors are unasked and close to extinction. And I, long living in the concrete jungle of the city, now have almost no chance to contact green-herb medicine.

From ancient times to today, green-herb medicine could not develop like TCM clinics or Western hospitals, partly for economic reasons. Although my grand-uncle was a green-herb expert, he could not support his family by it. My father once treated people using the green-herb skill passed down from his grand-uncle, but no seeker ever felt he should pay a consultation fee to such a green-herb doctor; at most he received some meat, noodles, or eggs as thanks. So green-herb medicine has never been able to leave the fields.

When I treat disease now, beyond traditional TCM, I seek the collaboration of green-herb medicine, bringing some ancestral green herbs into my formulas for patients. The method of use also follows the tradition—raw, external, or as decoction—to improve efficacy. But like my ancestors, neither TCM nor green-herb medicine can support me, so whether the TCM I studied on my own, what I inherited from my father, or the more green-herb skill I may seek out from teachers in future, all can only be a hobby, used occasionally after making a living.

In reality, the transmission of green-herb medicine can mostly only be as faint as mine; such a weak force can hardly compete with the well-resourced power of modern medicine. The extinction of the green-herb doctors is truly not far off.