Using Medicine Is Like Deploying Troops: TCM Cancer Treatment Should "Wait for the Moment to Attack, and Withdraw Gradually"
It is beyond doubt that a cancer patient's body contains a pathogenic evil, and once cancer has formed it is very hard to reverse. Relying solely on supporting upright qi without any pathogen-expelling measure cannot guarantee long-term survival. The most fundamental aim of cancer treatment should be pursuing a longer survival time and a higher quality of life for the patient; therefore campaigning against the pathogenic evil is unavoidable.
The two main directions of TCM cancer treatment are none other than expelling the pathogen and supporting upright qi. When to expel the pathogen, when to support upright qi, and how to judge the intensity of each - all require careful weighing. Pathogen-expelling treatment also needs an exit mechanism; one must not keep expelling the pathogen blindly regardless of whether the patient can bear it.
The ancients said that using medicine is like deploying troops: when medicine is applied rightly, its effect is divine. In treating cancer one should "wait for the moment to attack, and withdraw gradually." Waiting for the moment to attack means seizing the moment when the patient can bear pathogen-expelling treatment, and launching an attack on the cancer evil. Withdrawing gradually means that pathogen-expelling treatment must have a limit: at a certain point one must stop expelling the pathogen and let the patient's body rest and recuperate.
The moment for attacking must be chosen while the patient can still endure it, and the force of the attack must take full account of the patient's strength. The intensity of pathogen-expelling medication should be increased step by step; once signs appear that the body can no longer endure it, one should stop while one is ahead.
If the medication is not strong enough, it has little power to shake the patient's tumour and cannot stop the cancer from progressing, so the dosage must be brought to where it should be. Ancient TCM had a long-standing method of increasing the dose day by day, but today only a handful of physicians still use it. Mostly, a single prescription is written out and the patient takes it unchanged from beginning to end.
Ancient TCM also passed down the admonition that for great accumulations and great gatherings, one should "stop once the illness is reduced by more than half"; this stopping is itself a withdrawal mechanism for medication. Treating a grave illness cannot be resolved in a single day. But this withdrawal, too, should be gradual rather than an abrupt stop. Cancer patients essentially need to persist for years, even more than a decade, on medication; the dosage and intensity must be tapered. The further treatment proceeds, the lighter the medication should become, until finally no medicine is used at all.