孟麦竹看经方English

gugu

Welcome to Classic Formulas
Filed under Clinical practice, General interest


It is not uncommon in life that failure opens a gate that otherwise would not have appeared. I’d gone to Beijing in the fall of 2002 to study with a Shang Han Lun doctor I’d been introduced to, but my Chinese just was not yet up to the task. It took jaw grinding days to read a few paragraphs, and my listening ability was like trying to tune in a broken radio. I gave up.

About that time Craig Mitchell was in Beijing, and sympathetic to my situation he encouraged me by handing me a thin book titled The Ten Major Formula Families (十大類方 shí dà lèi fäng). Told me that this Chinese stuff takes time, keep at it, and in the meantime read this. It is kind of an Idiot’s Guide to the Shang Han Lun. It’s a fun read, and has some really interesting ideas.

It has taken a few more years for the black holes in my understanding of Chinese to generate light and understanding. He was right, it is a fun read, and there are some tremendously interesting ideas. But, it is not an quite an idiot’s guide. In fact, it is a concise, thoughtful and clinically useful text. In it, Dr Huang looks at the “jing fang” the classic formulas of the Shang Han Lun and Jin Gui Yao Lue, not from the perspective of illness patterns and disease progression, but from the point of view of herb confirmations and formula presentations. In essence, he has taken the way we usually consider practicing Chinese herbal medicine, and turned it on its ear.


As Dr Huang says:

“In my practice I look at the what. I look at what kind of person is sitting in front of me. What is the condition of their muscular, their skin, their manner and eyes. This is how I come up with what kind of constitution they have. I then look to see what kind of signs and symptoms with which they present. Instead of tying all these to some abstract concept like liver fire, spleen xu, or qi stagnation, I map them to the well known functions of herbs that have been used in China for thousands of years.”

There is a saying in Chinese that sums this up:
“By the presentation, prescribe the herbs”
(對證下藥 duì zhèng xià yào).
That is what is helpful!

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