Why Do Some Folk Single-Herb Remedies Work Better than Prescriptions from Famous TCM Doctors?

There is a famous saying in TCM: "A folk prescription from the seaside can put a famous physician to shame." It is not at all rare for a small single-herb remedy to cure a disease that a learned famous doctor cannot. Not only in TCM—famous Western doctors also often lose to small folk remedies. Small folk remedies are natural therapies, precious experience accumulated by human ancestors in their struggle with nature, found widely across the globe, not only in China. When Steve Jobs of the United States fought cancer, he tried natural therapy; when one is desperate to survive, trying something is always better than waiting to die.

Single-herb remedies treating major diseases—indeed, major diseases like cancer being handled by a small folk remedy—really do happen. I myself have encountered several cases. A gastric cancer patient in Penglai, Shandong, was opened up by surgeons, only to find the stomach completely filled with tumor and severely adherent; tumor resection was simply impossible, so the hospital sewed the wound up and sent the patient home.

Unwilling to wait passively for death, the patient dug up a local herb called "Huailidun" (phonetic; according to the patient's niece, who told me, a local TCM doctor told her it was Sophorae root (Kushen), though this is doubtful; Shengdi Mei Ya, a well-known Sina blogger, suspected from the herb's photo during discussion with me that it was Sophorae tonkinensis (Shan Dougen)). Thereafter the patient with gastric cancer survived for nearly five years on a decoction of this single herb alone; near the end, the gastric tumor was found to have disappeared, though the liver was filled with metastatic tumors.

But the patient's younger sister later developed breast cancer and tried this same folk remedy, with no effect. This breast cancer patient once came to me for consultation, so I saw slices of the herb with my own eyes, but could not distinguish whether it was Kushen, Shan Dougen, or something else. Interested readers may later go to Penglai, Shandong, to inquire about a local herb called Huailidun.

My own great-uncle, after developing gastric cancer in 2012, also used a kind of tree root—I suspect most likely yangtao gen (Actinidia/Kiwi root, or tengligen)—boiled into a decoction, and to this day he is doing well. Unfortunately, my great-uncle is rather conservative and has always refused to tell anyone which herb he used.

Yesterday I also introduced a folk remedy told to me by a Hubei farmer that cured his mother and a suspected cervical-cancer woman from the same village; see the article "An Anti-Cancer Folk Remedy Introduced by a Hubei Farmer." This remedy used only two herbs, both common in TCM pharmacies: one was tengligen (Actinidia root) and the other was Pyrrosia (Shiwei), in large doses. Both gynecological tumor patients improved after taking this remedy. The farmer's own mother developed cancer in middle age and, relying on this single remedy alone, lived to over eighty before passing away.

TCM single-herb remedies really are effective. Two ancestral green-herb empirical formulas in my own family—by what I have seen in the past—never miss. One treats acute throat diseases: whether tonsillitis or epiglottitis, as long as it is an acute throat emergency, no pattern differentiation is needed. Juice the herb, drip it into the nose, and let it be swallowed down the nasal passage; overnight the patient can recover completely. Its scientific name is said to be Sedum lineare (Fojia cao), though I have not been able to confirm this. The other is used for external application on various acute swellings (such as cellulitis); it also needs only one night to heal. Its scientific name is said to be Solidago (Yizhihuanghua). I have seen my father treat people with rapid results ever since I was small. Later, once when my son had an acute throat emergency that did not respond to treatment at the Air Force General Hospital in Beijing, becoming so severe he could not even drink water, I had someone pick some of the herb from my hometown and bring it to Beijing. We dripped it in that evening, and by the next morning he was as good as new.

Folk single-herb remedies are the source of TCM; one could say TCM originated from these small remedies in the fields. TCM is a discipline formed when the small remedies accumulated by ordinary people in their struggle against disease were systematized. The vitality of single remedies is extremely tenacious; passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, they have been preserved across vast rural areas. The Zhongyao Dacidian (Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica) records about ten thousand herbs with confirmed efficacy, yet we can buy only about three hundred of them in TCM pharmacies, and many green herbs used by folk herbalists have not yet been included in the dictionary.

Open-minded famous TCM doctors through the ages have embraced single remedies and been good at applying effective ones to their clinical work; over time, TCM has grown ever more developed. Contemporary Chinese biopharmaceutical companies also widely draw on folk single remedies to develop new drugs; after a new drug is given a lofty-sounding name, it becomes a famous Chinese patent medicine, though its source is actually a single remedy. We should diligently discover and boldly embrace this folk wisdom to serve people's health, rather than despising these remedies for their "unrefined" status.

TCM formulas have grown ever more complex as they evolve; the several herbs in many formulas are simply several different single remedies that used to treat the same disease, combined together to enhance efficacy. If we rigidly cling to convention and look down on small single remedies, TCM will find it hard to develop.