Preface to the Compendium of TCM Anti-Cancer Materials

I compiled this book because, over many years of reading and medical practice, I have accumulated a body of materials on TCM anti-cancer treatment. I hope to combine them with my own clinical therapeutic experience and compile them into a volume for the reference of other doctors and patients.

I do not wish to become embroiled in any contest between Chinese and Western medicine, nor in sectarian disputes within TCM. The main task of this book is simply to collect and compile materials. One fact we cannot deny is that, whether in traditional medicine or modern medicine, and among whatever school of traditional medicine, the therapeutic effect on cancer has been far from satisfactory. Yet both traditional and modern medicine do have some effect on cancer. Medicine should take as its foundation respecting facts and relieving the patient's suffering; all other theoretical disputes are secondary.

The history of TCM anti-cancer treatment is long. As early as the Zhou Dynasty, there were specialized yiyang (surgeon-knife physicians) who treated various external ailments. The medical administration of the Zhou Dynasty divided physicians into "food physicians," "disease physicians," "surgeon-physicians," and "veterinarians." The yiyang were surgeons, whose duty was: "to manage the medicated application and cauterant preparations for swelling sores, ulcerated sores, metal wounds, and fractured sores." The diseases treated by the yiyang included what are today called various benign and malignant tumors, trauma, bone injuries, skin diseases, and the like.

The yiyang can be counted among the earliest specialists. The ancient yiyang not only had to treat external sores with medicines but also had to be versed in the "art of the scalpel." The so-called "art of the scalpel" was in fact what modern medicine calls surgery. Only within the modern medical system has the ancient "art of the scalpel" become relatively backward, and so it has gradually been phased out. Among today's TCM surgeons, it is already hard to find doctors who can still use a scalpel to treat patients.

As a branch of ancient TCM, the yiyang specialty developed over more than two thousand years and accumulated very rich experience. At first the yiyang treated disease mainly with external therapy; later they gradually came to realize that a radical cure of external disease required, besides external surgical methods, the cooperation of internal-medicine treatment. Therefore, from the Song Dynasty onward, the medical skills a yiyang had to master grew ever richer.

As Chen Shigong, the renowned Ming-Dynasty yiyang physician and author of Waike ZhengZong (Orthodox External Medicine), said: "Medicine is divided into internal and external; treating the external is harder than treating the internal. Why? Internal ailments may not reach the exterior, but external ailments must take their root within. If one cannot obtain the right prescription for this, even a skin-and-acupoint ailment becomes beyond rescue."

But by modern times, the yiyang in the traditional sense have all but vanished. Not only is the art of the scalpel no longer mastered, but the other external therapies of TCM external medicine—such as moxibustion, the divine-lamp illumination method, the surrounding-paste method, the one-stroke-elimination method, and various other treatments—are also known by few. Few know the classic internal formulas of TCM external medicine, and the classic masterpieces of TCM external medicine are read by all too few. As for the rich array of ancient TCM external-medicine pills, powders, and plasters, gradually even the manufacturers no longer exist; and for physicians to prepare them themselves and sell them to patients is deemed illegal. Under the modern medical management system, a number of highly effective TCM formulas have gradually faded out of the TCM practice system. The role that TCM external-surgery (yangke) can play is now less than one in ten of what it once was—a matter for regret.

I have been engaged in TCM anti-cancer research for ten years; my accumulation is still short. Originally I would have needed at least another twenty years of accumulation before compiling this book, but the appeals from patients have been loud, and some TCM colleagues have also hoped that I would take the time to organize my reading and clinical insights. So, presuming to venture beyond my abilities, I began this compilation work, hoping that over the next ten years I could compile while treating patients and revising as I go, and finally put together a relatively valuable Compendium of TCM Anti-Cancer Materials for the reference of future doctors and patients.

Ancient and modern TCM external-medicine materials bearing on anti-cancer treatment are enormous in volume. This compendium draws on some two to three thousand references. For the convenience of modern readers, I have also consulted the research of scholars in converting ancient weights and measures into modern grams, and in translating ancient disease names into modern ones, so that readers can apply them more easily.

Because my knowledge is limited and my reading range limited, this compiled volume inevitably omits much. Moreover, ancient and modern disease names, weights and measures, and drug names differ, and I cannot guarantee that every point of my textual research is correct. I hope learned experts will not stint their criticisms on my shortcomings.