Hubei Folk Experience in Using Tiankui (Muskroot) for Anticancer Purposes

The day before yesterday, a fellow townsman from Hubei sent me some photos of herbs and asked me to help identify them. After careful identification, I believe the photos she sent are of Tiankui (Semiaquilegia adoxoides). (After this article was published, a reader pointed out that the plant in the photo was not Tiankui but rather Corydalis bulbifera, and was also suspected to be the medicinal herb Xia Tianwu.)

According to this fellow townsman, she learned, on the guidance of a local villager, that this herb is used in folk practice to treat cancer. Her father has malignant melanoma; an elderly local person whose own family also had a cancer patient took her to dig Tiankui. The old person's spouse had once had cancer; after abandoning Western chemotherapy, they went home, and on the guidance of a folk herbalist, dug the tubers of Purple-Backed Tiankui (Zibei Tiankui), boiled them in water to drink, and survived long-term.

Over the years I have often encountered similar cases of successful cancer treatment with folk remedies, though the efficacy of these successful cases is hard to replicate in other patients. Early on I also personally followed up patients who used these folk remedies for cancer and their families, and some cases are genuine. The medication experience patients learn from folk practice often differs from TCM textbooks; occasionally when I encounter such a followable case, I am glad to introduce their medication experience for interested people to study.

The three photos in this article were all taken by the patient's family members while gathering the herbs themselves; because they lacked TCM knowledge, they consulted me. According to the family member who provided this information, locals drink 40 Tiankui seeds boiled in water every day. The Dictionary of Chinese Traditional Medicine recommends a dose of 3–9 g of the dried material, far less than the folk dose.

Tiankui, also called Zibei Tiankui, is known in eastern Hubei as "thousand-year mouse droppings"; it is the tuberous root of Semiaquilegia adoxoides (DC.) Makino, a buttercup-family plant. I have dug it in the wild with my father, so I can identify it. Both the Dictionary of Chinese Traditional Medicine and the Chinese Materia Medica (Zhonghua Bencao) have entries for "Tiankui"; the earliest materia medica work to record Tiankui was the Illustrated Classic of Materia Medica (Bencao Tujing), compiled by Su Song of the Song Dynasty.

TCM holds that Tiankui is sweet in taste and cold in nature, entering the liver, kidney, and bladder meridians; it clears heat and resolves toxin, reduces swelling and dissipates nodules, and promotes diuresis and relieves strangury. It is indicated for abscesses, boils, breast abscess, scrofula, itchy skin sores, red swollen painful eyes, sore throat, snake and insect bites, heat strangury and sand strangury; it also treats infantile heat convulsions, epilepsy, and various cancers.

Many TCM physicians treating tumors use Tiankui, because Tiankui is one of the herbs in a famous TCM formula for clearing heat, resolving toxin, reducing swelling, and dissipating nodules—Five-Ingredient Detoxification Drink (Wuwei Xiaodu Yin) (I previously wrote an article introducing this formula A Famous TCM Formula: Five-Ingredient Detoxification Drink Shows Some Efficacy in Treating Heat-Toxin-Type Cancers—see the link for details). Five-Ingredient Detoxification Drink is a formula many doctors commonly use when treating cancer.

Five-Ingredient Detoxification Drink comes from the Golden Mirror of Medicine (Yizong Jinjian), used to treat all types of boils. The original formula is: Honeysuckle (Jinyinhua) 3 qian, Wild Chrysanthemum (Yejuhua), Dandelion (Pugongying), Viola (Zihu Diding), and Purple-Backed Tiankui (Zibei Tiankui), each 1.2 qian. Decoction method: two cupfuls of water, decoct to eight-tenths; add half a cup of lime-free wine, boil two or three more rolls, and take warm. Decoct the dregs again the same way and take it, covering oneself to induce sweating. Lime-free wine is an ancient wine brewed without adding lime or plant ash during brewing.

One qian two fen in the Qing Dynasty is about 5 g today, so this dose is also very small. When I prescribe Five-Ingredient Detoxification Drink myself, the dose of Tiankui is at most 15 g, nowhere near 40 pieces.

The Gujin Yijian also records a formula using Tiankui to treat scrofula (thyroid enlargement or cervical lymph node enlargement): Purple-Backed Tiankui 1.5 liang, Seaweed (Haizao), Kelp (Haidaidai), Ecklonia (Kunbu), and Platycodon (Jiegeng), each 1 liang, cuttlebone (Haipiaoxiao) 5 qian. Grind all into fine powder, make pills with wine paste, the size of a parasol seed; take 70 pills each time with warm wine after meals. The Anticancer Materia Medica also records a medicinal-wine formula of Tiankui for nasopharyngeal and esophageal cancer: 500 g Tiankui ground into powder, steeped in 5,000 g sorghum wine or millet wine for 7 days; take 50 ml of Tiankui wine three times daily. It may also be taken with sal ammoniac (Naosha) preparations. The Jiusheng Ku Hai also uses Tiankui boiled in wine and drunk to induce sweating, treating scrofula.

In addition, the Zhejiang Folk Herbs records a folk remedy of Tiankui for "scrofula" and "breast cancer": 1.5 g of Purple-Backed Tiankui tuber, plus 6–9 g of Zhejiang Fritillaria (Xiangbei, i.e., the Zhejiang fritillary produced in Xiangshan), 9–12 g of calcined oyster shell (Duan Muli), and 3 g of licorice, decocted together and taken several times.

Folk practice also uses Tiankui as dietary therapy for intestinal adhesions: take 15 g Tiankui and 60 g lean pork, stew until tender, eat the meat and drink the soup. Intestinal adhesions are one of the common late-stage complications in many pelvic and abdominal tumor patients.

It can be seen that Tiankui is a commonly used herb in TCM external medicine; it may also be the herb most often prescribed by TCM oncologists, and most herbal pharmacies nationwide sell Tiankui. Reports of Tiankui poisoning are rare, so it is a very safe medicinal.

Chinese researchers in the 1970s once used Tiankui injection to treat upper respiratory tract infections in children: of 96 cases treated, 84 recovered completely, 5 improved, and 7 showed no effect. Records also indicate Tiankui can be used to treat pediatric asthma. The Miao people also use Tiankui to treat paronychia (nail ulceration), applying the fresh Tiankui directly, crushed, as a poultice.

Over the years I have used Tiankui for many patients, but I have never used a daily dose of 40 pieces. I will continue to follow up this malignant melanoma patient in my province and his neighbors to see what the efficacy of high-dose Tiankui actually is, and observe whether there are any toxic side effects.