My Medical Philosophy: What Is the TCM Large-Formula Multi-Target Special Therapy? (1)

Before introducing the large-formula multi-target special therapy I developed, I want to recount two past events.

The first is a math problem I solved in the second year of high school, a permutation-and-combination problem. It went like this: there are five balls numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to be placed into five boxes numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, with the requirement that no ball goes into the box bearing the same number (e.g., ball 1 cannot go into box 1). How many ways are there to place the balls?

This problem looks easy but is tricky to solve. Many students today might solve it quickly; back when I was in high school, even the math teachers found it formidable.

I tried several approaches and eventually solved it with a composite method combining enumeration, formula, and elimination. My reasoning was: first compute all the ways to place five balls into five boxes, then subtract all the arrangements that violate the condition. Because computing the result for five balls was too tricky, I started with two balls and three balls, worked out the corresponding pattern, and then generalized.

Not only did I solve it, I derived my own formulas for similar problems. If the five balls and five boxes were replaced by 100 balls and 100 boxes, the same formulas could solve it effortlessly. But with the passage of years, I no longer remember those formulas.

My math teacher, after seeing my solution and the formulas I derived, was both surprised and delighted. He sent my reasoning to a math journal hoping to publish it. The editor replied that the student had merely rediscovered the inclusion–exclusion principle, not made a new mathematical discovery, so publication was of little value. Even so, for a 16-year-old rural boy to work out the inclusion–exclusion principle of advanced mathematics on his own was no small achievement.

In solving that problem, I used a way of thinking I call "exhaust every possibility." Consider all possible cases, using elimination, enumeration, induction and deduction, and formulas; in the end one can solve not just one problem but a whole class of them.

My math teacher admired me greatly at the time. Now, at 47, I gradually understand why. If I were a teacher and my student could solve complex problems and also derive patterns and formulas of his own, applying them by analogy to solve a series of complex problems, I too would admire him. Because the ability to learn autonomously and the spirit of innovation are truly precious.

The second event came after my mother fell ill and I took her around seeking doctors. In her last years, my mother was tormented by two diseases: cancer and stroke sequelae. These made her final years very hard.

At the time I was running a full-time business with a decent income, and I was willing to spare no expense to find a good doctor to cure her. But regrettably, despite our family's efforts, visiting many hospitals and many doctors, we still could not solve her problem.

I therefore resolved to study medicine myself, learning TCM, psychiatry, and Western medicine thoroughly. The reason I now focus on cancer and stroke sequelae is simply that she suffered from them.

In our search for care, we did in fact exhaust every possible treatment. But that is a conclusion reached only in retrospect. While my mother was actually being treated, each doctor's methods were quite limited. That is understandable: doctors' thinking is bounded by the medical knowledge they have received, and they can only operate within their own cognitive framework.

I often wonder: if any one of the doctors who saw my mother had used this "exhaust every possibility" mindset, applying a comprehensive rather than a single approach to her problem, would the outcome have been different?

Regrettably, there are not many doctors able, willing, and bold enough to try. Because it requires both daring and a very broad knowledge base, as well as strong thinking skills and a spirit of innovation.

In the final days of my mother's life, when hospitals and doctors had given up on her, I did try this approach on her. But at the time my own knowledge and experience were insufficient, and she was already in the terminal stage; I did not achieve much, though I did improve her quality of life.

Since then I have been groping step by step in this direction, gradually forming a new medical approach. After more than a decade of exploration, this approach has matured and, in clinical practice, has solved many complex problems that other doctors could not. I named it "TCM large-formula multi-target special therapy" because the name captures its main features.

The core idea is this: when facing diseases as intricate in cause and pathology as cancer, stroke sequelae, and Alzheimer's disease, we abandon simple approaches and choose an exhaustive, comprehensive plan—assembling a targeted, oversized prescription that covers all the pathological reactions of such a disease to solve the patient's problem.

Logically, this is reasonable. But commanding such a large prescription is highly demanding. How is it composed? How do we ensure its safety and efficacy? There are no textbooks to teach us, and few other medical colleagues are exploring this.

Most doctors would not even dare think this way; they only dare prescribe according to medical guidelines. But a few doctors dare to be the first to try. Dr. David Ho, the Chinese-American physician who created the AIDS cocktail therapy, is one.

Dr. Ho used a combined rather than a single-drug regimen against AIDS. His cocktail therapy dramatically reduced AIDS mortality. He was accordingly named Time magazine's Person of the Year and elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.

The TCM large-formula multi-target special therapy I advocate is essentially the same as Dr. Ho's cocktail therapy: a multi-pronged medical approach that does not follow routine formula-composition rules. It only looks more radical on the surface, because I routinely use over a hundred Chinese herbs, whereas Dr. Ho's cocktail uses far fewer drugs.

In the TCM world, another senior figure advocated this therapeutic philosophy: the National Medical Master Qiu Peiran. He proposed a special therapy for difficult, critical, and severe cases, naming it "large-formula repeated treatment method" (dafang fuzhi fa), also using oversized prescriptions for stubborn diseases. Master Qiu pointed out that when dealing with complex and changing disease mechanisms, one may consider gathering cold and heat, warming and cooling, qi and blood, and attacking and supplementation properties into one formula—drawing on many methods, combining cold and heat, simultaneous attack and supplementation, and addressing multiple organs at once, to accomplish the whole task in one campaign.

Regrettably, although Master Qiu used this method in practice and achieved good results, he wrote little on the subject, never developing a dedicated line of research, and failed to summarize a systematic theory or concrete operating methods. Later generations have found it hard to study and develop his approach in depth.

In my own practice I have sporadically encountered doctors using this method, but they lacked the ability to summarize and write, and their personal influence was too small, so they published nothing on the subject. Although they achieved some results in treating patients, their methods were so unusual that they were often unrecognized, leaving many regrets.

For example, I once met a lung cancer patient who, under the care of a TCM physician in Chengdu, had remained stable for over three years: the tumor neither shrank nor grew, and his quality of life was excellent. But the physician's prescription contained over 200 herbs—so startling that onlookers gossiped and eroded the family's confidence.

Adding to this, the patient's son had a classmate working at a leading top-tier hospital in Beijing. That doctor's credentials were dazzling: a graduate of a top national medical university with further training at an elite American medical school. He disapproved of the Chengdu physician's prescription, recommending instead advanced PD-1 immunotherapy and claiming that under his regimen the patient might be cured completely.

The family was swayed and followed this acquaintance's advice. Within three months, the patient's disease progressed rapidly and he developed a severe immune storm with persistent high fever. Shortly before he died, his family asked me to help bring down the fever; I was helpless at the time, and he passed away soon after.

When I visited the patient, the family was deeply regretful and told me the whole story. Whenever I recall this, I wonder: if this TCM large-formula multi-target special therapy—akin to the cocktail therapy—were recognized, promoted, and popularized, might such tragedies be avoided?

I have a deeper hope: I wish to use modern medical methods and tools to advance the TCM large-formula multi-target special therapy toward a more scientific and more effective direction.

We can use animal experiments to screen out better drug combinations and then apply them clinically in humans. This would ensure safety and efficacy while also speeding up the iteration of this technique.

So during my lifetime I will not only focus on this research direction but will also do my utmost to advance the laboratory research of this therapeutic method.