The Innovative Integration of Chinese and Western Medicine Is of Great Significance

The renowned contemporary TCM master Shi Jinmo once firmly sent his senior disciple—who was also his son-in-law, Mr. Zhu Chenyu—to Kanazawa Medical University in Japan to study Western medicine. This school was the alma mater of the famous modern Japanese Kampo physician Tsumoto Kyushin.

In 1901, Mr. Tsumoto Kyushin graduated from Kanazawa Medical School, having studied Western medicine. Later his daughter died of enteric (intestinal) fever; when she fell ill, Mr. Tsumoto used Western medicine to rescue her, but despite doing his utmost he could not save her life.

This was a tremendous blow to Tsumoto Kyushin. For this reason he switched to study Kampo medicine—that is, the Chinese medicine that had been transmitted to Japan—and eventually became the most famous Kampo physician of his time. His work, Ko-kan Igaku (“Imperial Han Medicine”), exerted a huge influence on the Chinese-medicine communities of both China and Japan.

The great Chinese scholar of the Republican era, Zhang Shizhao, once said that if Zhang Zhongjing of the Han Dynasty had seen Ko-kan Igaku, he might have cried out, “Our way has gone east!” lamenting that the essence of Chinese medicine had already reached Japan. The renowned contemporary masters of the Jingfang (classic-formula) school, Professors Hu Xishu and Liu Shaowu, were both deeply influenced by Tsumoto Kyushin.

Professor Hu Xishu evaluated Tsumoto's Ko-kan Igaku as follows: “Having read so many books, I had instead become confused and bewildered. Later I obtained Ko-kan Igaku; as for Mr. Tsumoto's arguments, I greatly admired them and felt it a pity that we had not met sooner. I then studied it morning and night, and suddenly my understanding opened up, and my clinical results improved greatly from then on.”

Professor Hu Xishu has become one of the landmark masters of contemporary TCM; many TCM practitioners read his works and study his thought. Many people also came to know Tsumoto Kyushin and his Ko-kan Igaku through Professor Hu, so among today's TCM students there are still quite a few readers of the book.

Among the many TCM works, the reason Ko-kan Igaku stands apart has much to do with Tsumoto Kyushin's mastery of both Chinese and Western medicine. He attempted to integrate the two, using the frameworks of modern medicine to interpret traditional Chinese medicine.

In the preface to Ko-kan Igaku, Tsumoto Kyushin introduced his own experience of studying medicine and writing as follows:

“When I was young, at my parents' bidding I studied medicine at the Kanazawa Medical Special School, graduating in the 34th year of Meiji (1901). I then took a position at a hospital, and later set up my own clinic to practice diagnosis and treatment.

“In the 43rd year of Meiji, my eldest daughter died of epidemic dysentery. Grieving that medicine had no way to save her, I was cast down and, as the months passed, my spirit nearly broke. By chance I read The Iron Hammer of the Medical World by my late teacher Wada Keijuro, and only then did I resolve to study Chinese medicine. For eighteen years, though I wandered from place to place and endured extreme poverty, I never in the least changed my resolve.

“After long effort, I gradually began to grasp its meaning. I realized that although this learning is old, if one can uncover its profundities and apply them flexibly, it is far superior to today's new methods. Yet the people of the world vie to boast of the new medicine of Europe and America; the transmission of Chinese medicine hangs by a thread. This is what I mourn and lament day and night.

“Now that I have come to understand this learning a little, I cannot bear to remain silent; I privately wish to rouse and revive it. So, not hesitating at my own shallowness, I have written this book, awaiting discerning scholars throughout the land.”

Ko-kan Igaku was published in 1927, by which time Tsumoto Kyushin had graduated from Kanazawa Medical School twenty-six years earlier. Of those twenty-six years, eighteen were spent wandering and in extreme poverty as he studied Chinese medicine; yet even in such hardship he never in the least changed his resolve.

If a person has a foundation in both Chinese and Western medicine and then reads Ko-kan Igaku, they will be deeply impressed by the book.

I do not know whether, when Mr. Zhu Chenyu studied in Japan and went to Kanazawa Medical School to study Western medicine, he was spiritually inspired by Tsumoto Kyushin. When he went to Kanazawa, he must have known of Tsumoto Kyushin and his Ko-kan Igaku.

Mr. Zhu Chenyu's life story was also distinctive. His mother had long been plagued by serious illness; his family took her everywhere seeking treatment, and in the end it was Mr. Shi Jinmo who eased her suffering, though he could not save her life. Because of this personal experience, at the age of 19 he became a disciple of Shi Jinmo and studied TCM under him.

Shi Jinmo was one of the four famous physicians of the capital; before the founding of the People's Republic he had treated Sun Yat-sen, Yuan Shikai, and others, and afterward he also treated national leaders such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. At the founding of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, when Premier Zhou Enlai asked Shi Jinmo to select outstanding TCM talent to establish higher education in Chinese medicine, the first person Shi recommended was his son-in-law and disciple Zhu Chenyu—a middle-aged man in his prime who had mastered both Chinese and Western medicine.

Mr. Zhu Chenyu was later transferred to Peking Union Medical College Hospital to head its TCM department, while also being responsible for founding China's higher education in Chinese medicine. His father-in-law, Shi Jinmo, was a broad-minded Confucian physician; in his early years Shi had even for a time thrown himself into the national-salvation revolutionary cause of the Republican era, and he had a deep sense of patriotism alongside great ambition. He deeply hoped that one day Chinese and Western medicine might learn from each other's strengths, make up for each other's shortcomings, and together take a great step forward for the health of countless millions of people.

Their spirit moved me. The first time I read Tsumoto's Ko-kan Igaku, my own mother was struggling on the boundary between life and death. When I read the preface Tsumoto had written, my eyes filled with tears. Such feelings can only be deeply understood by those who have personally experienced the pain of a life-and-death parting from a beloved closest kin. Both Shi Jinmo and Zhu Chenyu also resolved to study medicine because their mothers died of stubborn illness; in this respect, the three of us share something in common. I imagine that when the two of them read Tsumoto's blood-soaked preface, their hearts too must have been deeply stirred.

In the last years of her life, my late mother was tormented by gastric cancer and the after-effects of a cerebral hemorrhage, and my life changed course because of it. When I was young and impetuous, I was somewhat carried away by my own talents. Though in my early years I suffered a few setbacks because of my family's poverty, on the whole my path in life had been far smoother than most people's, so I gradually lost my awe for the goddess of fortune.

After my mother fell ill, we sought treatment everywhere, but there was no good way to ease her suffering. I gradually came to realize that, before the laws of nature, human beings are insignificant.

When I was in high school, I had intended to study medicine, but heaven did not favor my wishes: in that year's college entrance exam I missed the medical school I had put as my first choice and was reassigned to an engineering university to study mechanical engineering. Because it was a key university and my family was under heavy financial pressure at the time, my family would not support me in retaking the exam, and there was nothing I could do.

After my mother fell ill, my desire to study medicine was rekindled. But by then I had elderly parents and young children to support and could not devote myself wholly to medicine; I had to run a business to support the household. So I could only study medicine while running a business; at the time I asked for little—only to learn a bit of medical knowledge that might help my mother and ease her suffering.

At first I studied in a very amateur way, buying medical monographs on gastric cancer and stroke to read. Later, as I studied, I realized that to learn medicine well I had to start from the basics, step by step. And so, like Mr. Zhu Chenyu, I took a master and studied TCM. My first TCM teacher was a famous orthopedic-traumatology physician, introduced to me by a teacher who had been kind to me in high school.

Later, one after another in Beijing, I took several more TCM masters who achieved outstanding clinical results, and I also studied some Western medicine under two highly experienced Western-medicine chief physicians. It is poignant that, among these teachers, three were later diagnosed with cancer; out of trust in my medical skill, they in turn became my patients.

In 2023, after my son finished the college entrance exam, he was admitted to a fairly good school to study his favorite subject, mathematics, and my burden lightened at once. I gradually adjusted my work rhythm, preparing to return to school to study Chinese and Western medicine systematically. In 2025, in my home province of Hubei, I sat the unified college entrance exam and was admitted to the clinical medicine (Western medicine) program at the school I now attend, fulfilling this dream of mine.

I have now studied at school for nearly a year. Over the past year, nearing fifty, I have gradually adapted to campus life, carefully avoiding all the noise from outside that might disturb my studies. Life on campus is simple, quiet, and regular; the medical curriculum is packed, and here I learn new things every day and live a full life.

I have always been a person with a very active mind; I have studied TCM for nearly twenty years and, following my teachers, have done a great deal of clinical practice. Now, in order to integrate Chinese and Western medicine, I have come to school to study Western medicine, so I must be very different from the young people around me, who have just finished high school and come to university to study clinical medicine.

As I attend lectures, many sparks of thought constantly leap to mind; the blending of Chinese and Western medicine in my head has left me excited on many occasions. There are many questions worth researching in depth from both the Chinese and Western medical perspectives, and my documents record a great many of them. It is just that I lack the time and energy; at this stage I must keep up with the teaching and complete my studies, so I can only leave these questions to research after graduation.

Both Chinese and Western medicine have many remarkable strengths and many shortcomings, and there is in fact a great deal in which the two can be integrated. But to integrate them well, one must have the learning and perseverance of a man like Tsumoto Kyushin.

Tsumoto's Ko-kan Igaku was published 100 years ago; over the past century both Chinese and Western medicine have made great progress. Today's medical students should, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, go one step further and do a better job of the work of integrating Chinese and Western medicine. I am very willing, in this direction, to undertake some explorations that may benefit people.

What kind of discipline is medicine? Is it a science? Yes, and yet not entirely so. From my own experience, it is a discipline that uses love to save and perpetuate love. People seek medical help, of course, to lengthen their lives, but more importantly to sustain the love between human beings. To lose what one loves is the most painful thing in life; without love, anyone's life becomes a barren waste.

Physicians should exhaust every method and employ every means that can ease the suffering of patients and their families, to lessen their physical and psychological pain—without distinguishing Chinese from Western, or ancient from modern. A good physician should be versed in the natural sciences and yet also have a deep humanistic foundation; they should even have rich life experience, able to understand people's joys and sorrows in the face of birth, aging, illness, and death, and to soothe the pain in their hearts. Academician Wang Chen once said in an interview that, broadly speaking, medicine embraces all things and every branch of learning can be put to use by a physician to ease the suffering of patients and their families; this view is very much to the point.

Buddhism speaks of the eight sufferings of life: birth, aging, illness, death, parting from the beloved, meeting the hated, not getting what one seeks, and the raging of the five skandhas. Each of these sufferings is inextricably bound up with medicine. Like Buddhism, the highest aim of medicine is to help people leave suffering and attain joy; like Confucianism, the ultimate ideal of medicine is to strive for the utmost good.

All of this is a dream that humanity has ceaselessly pursued from ancient times to the present; the dream is beautiful but not easily realized. Even now, the diseases that human physicians can cure are only a small fraction of all diseases. The reality of medical care remains: “To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.”

At a time when the contrast between ideal and reality is so great, it is very necessary for Chinese and Western medicine to further integrate and innovate, exploring new paths for humanity's intractable diseases.