Professor Wang Pei's Six-Character Formula for Treating Cancer with TCM: Strengthen the Spleen, Tonify the Kidney, Fight Cancer
Professor Wang Pei studied clinically under Professor Fang Mingqian for twenty years and received Professor Fang's true transmission. Professor Fang Mingqian was a direct-line descendant of Zhou Shenzhai, a famous Ming-dynasty physician who treated internal damage. Zhou Shenzhai began studying medicine in middle age after his own health declined, and integrated the medical teachings of Li Dongyuan, Zhang Yuansu, Liu Hejian, and Xue Ji, becoming a great master of treating internal damage. He had a profound influence on later generations and played a key role in forming contemporary TCM anti-cancer academic thought.
From a broad perspective, TCM has only two methods of treating disease: supporting the righteous and expelling evil. Supporting the righteous means tonifying; expelling evil means attacking. Cancer is a disease presenting both deficiency and excess—it is, as Professor Yu Rencun put it, a disease of righteous deficiency and evil excess. One must both supplement deficiency and attack evil, and treatment usually requires a two-pronged approach to be effective. Moreover, a realistic problem facing contemporary TCM is that in treating cancer it must cooperate with Western medicine. Many patients come to TCM only after Western treatment. After surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, the patient's constitution has changed greatly—something ancient TCM never encountered. So contemporary TCM anti-cancer treatment can only walk its own path; the experience and thought of predecessors can be borrowed, but innovation is essential.
It is worth noting that diseases similar to today's cancer recorded in ancient TCM texts are mostly marked "dead, untreatable." Those who rely purely on ancient TCM reasoning to fight cancer while rejecting Western medicine have only individual successful cases, not large numbers of them. In evidence-based medicine, individual cases count only as level-five evidence. Personally, I believe that from a responsible standpoint, TCM practitioners should encourage patients to adopt integrated Chinese-Western treatment rather than pure TCM anti-cancer therapy, and patients should not reject Western treatment out of excessive blind faith in TCM.
Professor Wang Pei inherited Professor Fang Mingqian's academic thought and highly condensed the supporting-righteous and expelling-evil approaches of anti-cancer treatment into six characters: strengthen the spleen, tonify the kidney, fight cancer. This is highly operable. The spleen is the acquired root; the kidney is the congenital root. Only by securing the root and cultivating original qi can the patient's immunity and physical strength be raised, improving quality of life while creating conditions for attacking evil. Wang Qishi, a famous Qing-dynasty physician and author of Liyuan Yuanjian, proposed that patients with detriment and consumption suffer simultaneous deficiency of the lung, spleen, and kidney. The Republic-of-China-era physician Zhang Xichun, when treating detriment and consumption, often also supplemented the lung, using lung-tonifying herbs such as Huangjing (Solomon's seal), Maidong (Ophiopogon), and Tiandong (Asparagus) to assist kidney-tonifying and spleen-strengthening herbs; this better regulates the constitution of patients with detriment-and-consumption diseases such as cancer. This is an approach I myself now greatly favor: on the basis of simultaneously supplementing the lung, spleen, and kidney, address the patient's main symptoms while selecting several proven anti-cancer herbs to form a comprehensive formula; the efficacy is fairly reliable. After taking the medicine, patients often achieve unexpected results. Some patients had already become so weak that they needed wheelchairs to support themselves, yet could walk briskly on their own after less than a month of medication.
Common kidney-tonifying herbs include Aconite (Fuzi), Morinda (Bajitian), Epimedium (Yinyanghuo), prepared Rehmannia (Shudi), Polygonum multiflorum (Heshouwu), Astragalus complanatus (Shayuanzi), Cuscuta (Tusi), Eucommia (Duzhong), Dipsacus (Xuduan), and deer-horn glue (Lujiao jiao); they should be used according to the patient's specific condition. Spleen-strengthening herbs mainly include Ginseng (Renshen), Codonopsis (Dangshen), Atractylodes macrocephala (Baizhu), Atractylodes lancea (Cangzhu), Poria (Fuling), Polyporus (Zhuling), Licorice (Gancao), and Pinellia (Banxia); each has a different emphasis and should be chosen as appropriate. Lung-tonifying herbs include Huangjing (Solomon's seal), Maidong (Ophiopogon), Tiandong (Asparagus), and Glehnia (Shashen); for patients with lung qi deficiency and weakness of the heart-lung system, the intensity of lung tonification may be increased.
There are many kinds of anti-cancer herbs: some activate blood and resolve stasis, some reduce swelling and disperse nodules, and some clear heat and resolve toxin. These should be selected in moderation according to the patient's constitution, clinical symptoms, and tolerance. The choice of blood-activating stasis-resolving herbs requires more caution; patients with bleeding should not use them casually.
Another feature of Professor Wang Pei's anti-cancer approach is his fondness for using raw herbs—raw Pinellia (Sheng Banxia), raw Polygonum multiflorum (Sheng Shouwu), raw Cyperus (Sheng Xiangfu), and the like. Used raw, these are more potent than after processing and have a stronger anti-cancer effect, but they are also more toxic. However, from Professor Wang Pei's clinical experience, using these raw did not cause much damage to patients' liver or kidneys, though raw Pinellia must be first-decocted for about twenty minutes. Generally, as long as one pays attention to the dosage and duration of Aristolochiaceae plant herbs and certain heavy-metal mineral herbs, they will not cause much liver or kidney damage.
The six-character formula—strengthen the spleen, tonify the kidney, fight cancer—is easy to operate and has definite clinical efficacy. Experiments show that strengthening the spleen and tonifying the kidney can raise the patient's immunity. But raising immunity alone cannot cure cancer; one must also choose anti-cancer herbs with a strong effect to prolong the patient's survival as much as possible and control the growth of the tumor.