Strengthen Your Confidence, Build a Solid Foundation, Learn from Results, and Read and Memorize More

The history of Chinese medicine is extraordinarily long, and to this day it remains flourishing within the former Confucian cultural sphere, even spreading to the whole world and winning the welcome of many patients. The reason is simple: it has definite clinical efficacy. As a student of Chinese medicine, one must first witness and believe in its clinical efficacy through practice, and thereby strengthen one's own confidence. Only when we have confidence in Chinese medicine can we have the enthusiasm and perseverance to study it.

I am very grateful to a number of senior physicians, for through contact with them I have seen clinical results that have greatly heartened me. Over the years I have followed and studied the clinical experience of more than thirty senior TCM physicians. Some were famous, renowned masters; some were ordinary, little-known TCM doctors recommended to me by patients who had personal experience of them; and some were barefoot practitioners walking along the edge of the law.

What impressed me most was their efficacy. There is an old doctor in my hometown who is now over eighty. My shimu (my teacher's wife) has asthma and once sought his treatment, with mediocre results; my father suffered from constipation and also once sought him out, again with mediocre results. Later my shimu and my father were both gradually put into stable condition by my own slow conditioning, sometimes combined with Western medical treatment.

But this old doctor had been my teacher's colleague for decades, and I knew his craft was genuinely distinctive. He had cured quite a number of patients with myasthenia gravis—what TCM calls "wei zheng" (flaccidity syndrome), a condition hard to treat, some cases of which are accompanied by thymoma. That alone commanded my respect, and I was glad to learn his medicine.

The results of several senior TCM physicians I met in Beijing also made me look at them anew. Once a very young patient came, led by his mother, to seek my treatment for an alveolar soft-part sarcoma of the maxillary sinus. This problem could not be solved at any of the major cancer hospitals in Beijing. After I treated him for a time without success, I referred him to Professor Pei Yongqing of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. Under Professor Pei's care the patient improved rapidly; after a few months of treatment, his tumor had essentially disappeared.

I often meet patients from all over the country who show me reports, from checks done after seeing some local TCM doctor, that their tumors have shrunk. They come to me only hoping to switch doctors in pursuit of faster results. I usually advise them not to change doctors if they are already getting results. At the same time, I am deeply impressed by the clinical efficacy of the TCM doctors who treated them, for most of these patients' tumors are ones for which modern medicine has little to offer.

These colleagues strengthened my own confidence in studying Chinese medicine. My own clinical practice has also produced results; a fair number of tumor patients have achieved complete or partial remission under my treatment, and all this has made my confidence in Chinese medicine grow ever stronger. Confidence is not water without a source; it comes from practice, and only confidence born of practice is rock-solid. TCM practitioners must get onto the clinical floor as early as possible. As the saying goes, "Reading Wang Shuhe thoroughly is not as good as attending many bedside cases." With more practice, we will develop confidence and enthusiasm for Chinese medicine.

Whenever I meet a TCM physician who is truly effective, I never miss the chance to learn from them. The method of learning, of course, varies by person. I usually observe silently how they treat. With more open-minded, less conservative doctors, I approach them as a disciple and ask questions. With more conservative TCM doctors, I contact the patients they have treated and learn their medication habits from those patients. I myself am an open-style TCM doctor; I write detailed articles about my own treatment experience and publish them openly. But many TCM physicians keep their treatment experience secret, which is an important reason why some extraordinarily effective TCM remedies are hard to popularize.

Learning Chinese medicine has a threshold, and that threshold is the foundational knowledge of Chinese medicine. Only after we have firmly mastered the basics can we quickly absorb the experience of other TCM physicians when we study with them. For example, Professor Pei Yongqing likes to treat tumors by combining Sanren Tang with Shengjiang San, sometimes also adding Xia Yuxue Tang; this is a common approach of the warm-disease school. If one has no TCM foundation at all, one can only see the names of some herbs in Professor Pei's prescription without grasping his therapeutic strategy. By carefully studying the prescriptions Professor Pei used for many cancer patients—most of whom I myself referred to him—I learned his common approach to treating cancer.

Earlier I used the same method to learn from Kong Sibo, son of Kong Bohua; from the veteran physician Li Ke of Shanxi; and from the veteran physician Wang Taiyuan of Guizhou. Over the long term, I followed and understood the cancer-treatment strategies of some twenty or thirty open-minded TCM physicians (some of the veterans have since passed away) through similar methods. To this day, whenever I encounter a TCM physician with excellent clinical results, I quickly establish this kind of contact. It is my own distinctive way of learning, and it is very efficient: I can follow many TCM physicians in clinical practice at once, without necessarily sitting beside them copying prescriptions every day.

One who studies medicine must have a humble, eager-to-learn spirit; do not be arrogant. Hold respect for colleagues who have real results, and do not look down on them because in some respects they are not as good as we are. Everyone has his own strengths; we should learn others' strengths to make up for our own weaknesses.

Even now I review the foundational knowledge of Chinese medicine every day. Many veteran physicians have written about the lifelong practice of repeatedly restudying the TCM basics. One student's parent told me that when he once went to Tongrentang for care, an old doctor there was still reading introductory TCM books such as the Tangtou Ge Song (rhymed formula songs) and Yaoxing Fu (rhymed properties of herbs). Hearing that, I felt deep respect; that old doctor is also a role model for me.

There is so much to memorize in Chinese medicine; if the basics are not reviewed often, they are easily forgotten. I set aside two hours every day specifically for reviewing the foundational knowledge of Chinese medicine. Only when the basics are at our fingertips can our foundation be firm, and only then can we see through other TCM doctors' therapeutic strategies at a glance.

The famous Qing-dynasty physician Xu Lingtai said that when, lying in bed, he happened to think of a question, he would get up in the middle of the night, put on his clothes, and read by lamplight. This indefatigable spirit is exactly the basic quality a TCM practitioner should have. The TCM doctor who almost never reads has only a limited ceiling to his craft. By the requirements of Sun Simiao's "Great Physician's Studies," there is an enormous breadth of things a TCM physician must learn; to reach an ideal level there is no way but daily diligent study and practice.

Many TCM theories are hotly disputed, but clinical efficacy is the best evidence for extinguishing dispute. A doctor's calling is to resolve patients' bodily and mental afflictions; if a method achieves this safely and effectively, it is worth emulating. However fine-sounding a theory may be, if it cannot solve real problems it is not to be believed. So in studying Chinese medicine, let us argue less and witness more; practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.