The Importance of TCM's Principle of "Stopping Once the Illness Is Reduced by More Than Half" in Treating Serious Disease
In treating serious disease, TCM has always passed down the admonition to "stop once the illness has been reduced by more than half." For a patient with a grave illness, strength is already depleted; taking medicine to drive out the pathogen injures the original qi. If one keeps on expelling the pathogen all the way through, it is inevitable that the disease will not be cured while the patient perishes first. Therefore in treatment one should consider keeping the person alive in order to treat the illness. After a period of pathogen-expelling treatment, one should stop at the right point, let the patient supplement nutrition, rest and recover strength, and only then begin the next round of expelling the pathogen.