The Anticancer, Swelling-Reducing, and Pain-Relieving Effects of the Patent Medicine Pianzaihuang

Pianzaihuang is a precious Chinese patent medicine that can address many problems of tumor patients, but it is expensive. For ordinary families, the price of Pianzaihuang is a threshold that is hard to cross.
At current prices, one pill of Pianzaihuang costs 500–600 yuan (and, like Xi Huang pills, its price rises year by year), and one pill lasts an adult patient only a little over a day. Moreover, in most places this drug is not covered by medical insurance, so patients bear the cost with difficulty, often spending over ten thousand yuan a month on medicine.
But Pianzaihuang does have a definite efficacy in treating cancer, and its clinical efficacy has been validated by large-sample clinical data. Pianzaihuang not only has anti-inflammatory, analgesic, liver-protecting, and tumor-suppressing effects, but also a good immunomodulatory effect.
The main ingredients of Pianzaihuang include musk, cow-bezoar, snake gall, and notoginseng, and both the musk and cow-bezoar are natural musk and natural bezoar, so the raw-material cost of Pianzaihuang is very high. At present, high-quality natural musk costs over ten times the price of gold, and natural cow-bezoar also costs several times the price of gold, which makes Pianzaihuang one of the most precious Chinese patent medicines available today.
Pianzaihuang clears heat and resolves toxin, activates blood and unblocks the collaterals, reduces swelling and stops pain. It can dispel various pathogens such as damp-heat, heat-toxin, damp-toxin, and blood stasis. It is generally believed to work well on digestive-tract tumors such as liver cancer, gastric cancer, and intestinal cancer, and is especially effective for primary and secondary tumors of the liver.
But in clinical practice I have actually used Pianzaihuang on various tumor patients of the heat-toxin and damp-toxin types, with some efficacy in each. Its main effects lie in stopping pain, reducing swelling, and lowering fever, but because it is too expensive, I cannot prescribe it often.
Besides often using Pianzaihuang for liver cancer patients, I have previously also used it on patients with many types of cancer—gastric cancer, intestinal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, and pediatric solid tumors—with some effect. I have used Pianzaihuang to lower tumor markers in cancer patients, relieve their cancer pain and cancer fever, and even shrink the tumors of some patients.
Pianzaihuang also clears the lung and resolves phlegm, clears heat and resolves toxin, clears the liver and improves vision, and promotes gallbladder function. So it can also be used to treat lung-heat cough, red and swollen painful eyes, throat impediment, jaundice, dysentery, and sores with swelling and toxin. Pianzaihuang also has some efficacy against hepatitis, so clinically it is also used as a common medicine for treating hepatitis.