A Detailed Look at Xihuang Wan, the Famous Anti-Cancer Chinese Patent Medicine

The origin and composition of Xihuang Wan

Xihuang Wan is a very famous Chinese patent medicine for treating cancer. It is made from a secret ancestral formula of Wang Hongxu, the Qing-dynasty physician and founder of the Quansheng school of Chinese external medicine. According to Wang Hongxu's own records, Xihuang Wan works well against diseases corresponding to many of today's cancers; I myself have clinically verified Xihuang Wan's tumor-vanquishing effect.

Xihuang Wan consists of four herbs: bezoar (Niuhuang), musk (Shexiang), frankincense (Ruxiang), and myrrh (Moyao). The bezoar and musk are quite costly; natural bezoar and natural musk would work better, but their price is prohibitive. A box of Tong Ren Tang's Xihuang Wan costs several hundred yuan, and the price seems to keep rising. The quantity is small—boxes of 30g and boxes of 12g—which runs out in a few days. At the dose I prescribe, a 12g box lasts only one day.

Besides Tong Ren Tang's version using natural musk and natural bezoar, other manufacturers also produce Xihuang Wan at much lower prices, but many makers use artificial bezoar and artificial musk in place of the natural materials, so the clinical effect is greatly reduced.

Xihuang Wan's package insert says its main actions are to detoxify and scatter nodulations, reduce swelling, and stop pain. It chiefly treats various late-stage cancers presenting with fever, masses, or scrofulous nodules, a red tongue, and a slippery rapid pulse—patterns of fire depression forming masses or of heat-toxin, stasis, and phlegm. It is used in treating liver, lung, gastric, intestinal, and breast cancer, esophageal cancer, leukemia, malignant lymphoma, and osteosarcoma.

According to the Waike Zhengzhi Quansheng Ji, Xihuang Wan's most common uses were breast cancer, lung ding (resembling early-to-mid lung cancer), lung abscess (resembling mid-to-late lung cancer), small-intestine abscess (resembling intestinal cancer, appendicitis, and benign intestinal tumors), as well as scrofula, lymphangitis, syphilis, and malignant lymphoma. In treating a gastric-cancer patient, I once unexpectedly used Xihuang Wan to cure his years-long hemorrhoids. So Xihuang Wan's applications are very broad.

The Waike Zhengzhi Quansheng Ji also records that for diseases of the upper body (lungs, head and neck, etc.), Xihuang Wan should be taken before lying down at night with drunk-cover sweating; for lower-body conditions such as liver and intestinal cancer, it should be taken on an empty stomach, i.e., first thing in the morning. The common dose was three qian in the Kangxi-Qianlong era, once daily; at that time one qian equaled 3.75g today. This conversion follows the standards in Zhou Chaofan's Zhongyao Yinpian Yongliang Biaozhun.

My personal verification of Xihuang Wan's efficacy

Wang Hongxu, the contributor of this formula, looms large in Chinese medicine. Several of the patent medicines commonly used today against cancer come from Wang Hongxu—for example, Xiaojin Dan, Xihuang Wan, and Meihua Dianshe Dan. Wang Hongxu was a hereditary external-medicine specialist, treating all manner of nameless swellings and toxins. His case records contain quite a few remarkable things; the conditions he treated most with Xihuang Wan were "ruyan" (breast rock) and various "yin ding" (yin abscesses).

"Ruyan" corresponds to today's breast cancer. The disease names "yin ding" and "liuzhu" recorded by Wang Hongxu are closely related to today's lymphoma and to the lymphatic metastases seen in many cancers. According to Wang Hongxu's own case records, he did cure patients with "ruyan." In the ancient surgical literature, few physicians had the courage to say they could cure "ruyan"; most records held that ruyan was incurable and that one could only prolong survival.

So can Xihuang Wan actually treat cancers such as breast cancer and lymphoma? My own observations over the years tell me it is quite possible. Of course, "treat" here is not the same as "cure"; do not confuse the two. For cancer patients, if a treatment works and controls the cancer for a while, that is already very good.

I used Xihuang Wan on my mother's gastric cancer; during treatment it made one of her multiple metastatic tumors vanish and another shrink. After my mother died, I used Xihuang Wan on a breast-cancer patient from Shandong, with marked results—the tumor shrank and even disappeared very quickly. After that I treated a late-stage lymphoma patient, boldly increasing the Xihuang Wan dose and combining it with decoctions; the speed at which tumors vanished was staggering. I deeply regret that when my mother was alive, my Xihuang Wan dose was too conservative.

This lymphoma patient, Dr. Li, had been a medical expert at the Occupational Disease Research Institute of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital before retirement. I will later organize and publish her case of pure Chinese-medicine treatment after lymphoma, for the reference of patients and Chinese-medicine colleagues. Dr. Li once taught me Western medicine; she could be called my Western-medicine teacher, and at the same time she was my patient treated with Chinese medicine.

Dr. Li's husband had cancer before she did—lung cancer—and after three months of combined Chinese-Western treatment at a Beijing hospital, he passed away. Dr. Li herself had spent her whole career on detoxification, clinically managing many cases severely poisoned by Western chemotherapy. Moreover, at work she had once encountered a late-stage pancreatic-cancer patient whom a Chinese physician had treated to a remarkable recovery. These observations led my Western-medicine teacher, a graduate of the old Peking University Medical School, after she herself developed lymphoma, resolutely to abandon Western treatment and take up pure Chinese-medicine therapy.

At first she consulted an old Chinese physician at Tong Ren Tang named Wei Yupu (this name can only be a transliteration from Dr. Li's spoken account, because Old Wei's calligraphy is truly hard to read—I could never make out his name on the prescriptions he wrote for her). She was treated safely for five or six years; then Old Wei retired and no longer sat the hall. Dr. Li shifted to two other famous old Beijing Chinese physicians, one a renowned doctor at Beijing Gulou Chinese Medicine Hospital and the other a senior disciple of Kong Bohua.

Not long after my mother died, I went to pray at Yonghe Temple and chanced upon Dr. Li at the bus stop. Seeing the Buddhist sutra in my hand, she struck up a conversation; we exchanged some views on Buddhist thought and happened to board the same bus. As we talked further about life, we got to know each other. Learning that I had taught myself Chinese anti-cancer medicine after my mother's cancer, she was very interested, and after a period of contact Dr. Li decided to let me prescribe treatment for her lymphoma and see how it went.

I boldly used modified Yanghe Tang and pushed Xihuang Wan to three to four times the usual dose. Dr. Li's surface lymphomas shrank noticeably every day after starting the medicine; after a week or more they had almost completely vanished. Of course, her tumors later recurred, but retreatment still worked.

Afterward I used Xihuang Wan on several other patients, all helped to varying degrees. Another self-taught Chinese-medicine practitioner used Xihuang Wan on a female osteosarcoma patient, with initially obvious results. These firsthand experiences and observations established my confidence in Xihuang Wan for treating cancer, and also my confidence in Wang Hongxu's writings. I later studied the works of the Quansheng school of Chinese external medicine carefully and found more case records of physicians treating disease.

In the widely circulated case records of the old Chinese physician Yan Rongguang on the internet, most of the cancer patients he treated had taken Xihuang Wan.

The usage and dosage of Xihuang Wan

Xihuang Wan is costly, and its musk and bezoar are not mild in nature, so contemporary Chinese physicians generally prescribe it once or twice a day, 3g each time—some prescribe 1.5g. I generally have patients start at 3g and gradually increase to 6g, 9g, and finally 12g per dose.

When Wang Hongxu had patients take Xihuang Wan, he often required them to wash it down with yellow rice wine and cover up drunk to induce a faint sweat. But today's clinicians completely ignore this in practice. Most doctors use Xihuang Wan yet never read Wang Hongxu's original work in their whole lives, so they know nothing of this instruction. Yellow rice wine disperses the medicine's force, and drunk-cover sweating opens the couli. This accords with Wang Hongxu's family tradition of treating yin abscesses by emphasizing the opening of the couli. Of course, one must not be rigid: for patients with liver disease who cannot drink alcohol, ginger decoction may substitute for the yellow rice wine.

Alongside Xihuang Wan, Wang Hongxu also paired Yanghe Tang, and he used Yanghe Tang differently from how we prescribe decoctions today: he required patients to alternate Yanghe Tang and Xihuang Wan morning and evening—Yanghe Tang in the morning, Xihuang Wan at night. This method of administration is also neglected today.

Today, many doctors pair Xihuang Wan with herbal decoctions that run directly counter to the Quansheng school's idea of opening the couli and expelling toxins outward: on one hand they use Xihuang Wan, on the other they give large doses of yin-nourishing, sweat-astringing herbs. This treatment is far from the intent of Xihuang Wan's creator and almost opposite in therapeutic method. When I use Xihuang Wan, I decided to try Wang Hongxu's original approach; medicine being a practical clinical discipline, it is very important to follow verified experience.

The base Yanghe Tang I use is as follows:

Shudi (Prepared rehmannia) 40g, Lujiaojiao (Deer antler gelatin) 10g, Baijiezi (White mustard seed) 8g, Rougui (Cinnamon bark) 3–8g, Mahuang (Ephedra) 2g, Paojiang (Prepared ginger) 2–6g, Sheng Gancao (Raw licorice) 2g.

Of course, based on the patient's actual condition I add some herbs to this prescription to make it more targeted.

That osteosarcoma patient's Chinese physician, treating her osteosarcoma, also used the combined approach of Yanghe Tang and Xihuang Wan. The effect was quite swift; before long her osteosarcoma was gone. But her osteosarcoma kept recurring—vanishing and regrowing, regrowing and vanishing—for many years.

When I first used these doses, I worried the patients could not tolerate them, so I was extremely cautious, calling almost every day to ask how these patients were reacting after the medicine, carefully edging the dose up. Practice showed my worries were groundless. When I treated Dr. Li she was nearly eighty; after taking the herbs I prescribed for a while she recovered quite well, and even excitedly signed up for a seniors' tour group and traveled to Taiwan. By the way, this elderly lady, though she had had cancer for nearly ten years and was eighty, still lived alone, taking care of herself, buying her own groceries and cooking her own meals, in excellent form.

Side effects of Xihuang Wan and how to handle them

Pharmacologically speaking, Xihuang Wan's side effects are mainly some gastrointestinal reactions.

In Wang Hongxu's works, Xihuang Wan was taken for one week and then rested for one week. In clinical practice I also have patients take it for a week, stop for a week, then continue.

But pairing Xihuang Wan with Yanghe Tang requires caution. Wang Hongxu's family external-medicine tradition had this feature: he did not follow the so-called six-meridian or eight-principle pattern differentiation, but divided tumors only into yang patterns and yin patterns. Xihuang Wan paired with Yanghe Tang suits only yin-pattern patients. There is a saying in Chinese external medicine that a yang-pattern patient who takes Yanghe Tang drops dead the moment it touches his lips. This saying is, of course, somewhat exaggerated, but yang-pattern patients are indeed not suited to Yanghe Tang.

Wang Hongxu judged a patient to have a yin pattern by the skin color of the mass: if the skin color was normal, not red or swollen, and the patient showed a yang-vacuity picture, he boldly used Yanghe Tang and Xihuang Wan. I once followed up on a hereditary "external-medicine specialist" back in my hometown who was quite famous in our area for treating all manner of nameless swellings (though he did not treat malignant tumors). His classification of nameless swellings was also only into yin toxins and yang toxins.

In fact, many of today's cancers, even if classifiable as yin patterns under Chinese differentiation, do not necessarily respond to Xihuang Wan and Yanghe Tang; among my own patients, some showed no effect at all with these approaches. Generally, if there is no effect within a month, I have the patient abandon the Yanghe Tang plus Xihuang Wan approach and look elsewhere. Do not linger over this approach, because based on my own practical experience, if it is the right approach, there must be very obvious results within twenty days.