Chinese Medicine

Professor Huang Huang is a famous doctor of Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He studies theories of different schools, especially specialized at classical formulas. He is fruitful academically. His books of “The 10 Key Formula Families”, “Zhang Zhongjing 50 Herbs Evidence”, “Medical Records to help reading” and other publications, which are very popular overseas, have an extensive influence in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Now I would like to make a summary on his main academic viewpoints to share with the readers.

1. On medical practitioner – “To be an efficient therapist, instead of a theorist”

Professor Huang believes that doctor is a noble profession, who should treat relieving the suffering of patients as his own responsibility. Therefore, a person should make up his mind to be a famous doctor rather than a quack if he chooses medicine, or just quit from the very beginning. To be famous doctors, they need not only lofty medical ethics, but also excellence in medicine, and relentless pursuit. In addition to absorb essence of traditional Chinese medicine, famous doctors should study modern medical knowledge too.

His teacher of Mr. Ye Bingren once said “Science Without Borders, medical treatment require efficacy,” based on this he advocates that clinical practice should follow ” Modern diagnosis, natural medicine, community services, and the whole concept.” Professor Huang also divided Chinese medicine practitioners into four main categories: politician type, quack type, merchant type and scholar type.

He praises scholar type, and calls for more people to be scholar’s type. At the same time, he has an implacable hatred for quacks. He thinks it is these quacks have made traditional Chinese medicine a real mess. False advertising of “secret recipe handed down from generations” confuse people and seriously damage the image of traditional Chinese medicine in the minds of majority of the people.

Dr.Huang-huang

Zhongjing theory pioneered the syndrome differentiation of the first of its kind, which is the model of closely integrated of theory, rule, formulas and herbs. The formulas from Zhang Zhong Jing are known as the ancestor of later generation’s formulas. Professor Huang immersed himself in Zhongjing theory for many years, and after the painstaking research he concludes that Zhongjing theory is the essence of Chinese medicine, while the principle of treating by matching formulas to the patient’s presentation is the core of this theory.

He advocates matching formulas to the patient’s presentation. Although there are many dialectic methods of Chinese medicine, no matter categorical identification in terms of the six meridians; Wei, Qi, Ying and Blood System; Three Jiaos; or later prevailing Zang viscerae meridians, ultimately the prescription is the final steps. As a clinician, what he gives out finally is the prescription to his patient. The formulas and presentation are closely integrated and inseparable. So the research tasks of categorical identification between formulas and presentation is to study the necessary organic intrinsic connection between them.

He compared Gui Zhi Tang as the arrows, and the syndrome of Gui Zhi Tang as the target. It is a wrong diagnosis if the syndrome of Gui Zhi Tang did not use Gui Zhi Tang as the treatment; while it is a shot at random that if using Gui Zhi Tang under the condition without syndrome of Gui Zhi Tang. Only arrows of a combination of both will err not from their aim.

He believes that the clinical use of formulas will have to look for the necessary presentation, the treatment have to use the necessary formula, necessary presentation + necessary formula = efficiency. Syndrome differentiation in terms of formula and presentation was founded by Zhongjing and it is not difficult to find that it would be an almost instant cure if the formula matches with the presentation.

The classical formula master Mr.Hu Xishu ever said, “The match of formula and presentation is the outermost end of Syndrome differentiation.” Professor Huang admires his view. Deviating from syndrome differentiation in terms of formula and presentation, it will easily lead academic study of Zhongjing to the errors, which is the direction of where it is.

3. On constitution differentiation – “focus on the person, not the person’s disease”

Clinically Professor pays great attention to constitution differentiation. His research between the patient’s constitution and the herbs found that there is obvious connection between them, which shows that certain herbs would be used more frequently in certain constitution than others.

On this basis, in order to facilitate understanding and research, he proposed the “Bupleurum constitution”, “Astragalus constitution”, ” Cinnamon twig constitution” and so on. In addition, for certain specific relations of medicine and constitution clinically, he also proposed such as “Bupleurum Band”, “rhubarb tongue”, “monkshood pulse” and “Peony foot”, etc., as an important supplement to constitution differentiation. The contents were mostly reflected in his book of “The 10 Key Formula Families “.

Through the comparison of Chinese and Western medicine, Professor Huang comes to his point of view that “West medicine cures the disease of person, while the Chinese medicine cures the person of disease”.

He believes that Chinese medicine emphasizes the whole concept, focuses on people, that is, first of all to treat the patient as a person, and then to understand from the perspective of the disease. It is unadvisable that only focusing on the name of disease and the local disease position. The approaches to the problem are subjective and one-sided. Since we focus on the specific person, then apart from clinical symptoms, the patient’s mental status, skin color, tongue, pulse and abdominal diagnosis are also very important clinical data, which sometimes even more important than the value of the symptoms.

He stressed that “Do not look for foliage by the disease name, to search for the evidences from patients themselves as real basis to select the appropriate formulas.”

To be continued.