Rebirth 1977 Great Era

Chapter 273 "Li Shizhen is a bit unreliable!" Misleading Chinese medicine for four hundred years (3K)

Hearing Fang Yan's words, Zhu Lin showed a surprised expression and asked:

"What kind of myth is this?"

The dialect said:

"You may not believe it, but the book categorizes this story as a medical story related to traditional Chinese medicine."

Zhu Lin's curiosity was piqued, and she urged Fang Yan:
"Then tell me quickly, what exactly is it like?"

While frying pine nuts over low heat, Fangyan told the story of this medicinal herb:

"The story was recorded by Li Shizhen in the Compendium of Materia Medica, but it was also a reprint of the story in the Baopuzi written by Ge Hong in the Jin Dynasty."

Zhu Lin nodded. She had heard of Compendium of Materia Medica and Li Shizhen, but she didn't know Ge Hong and Baopuzi.

There was no other way; she had learned all that knowledge of Western medicine by relying on her memory.

She spent the first ten years of her life dancing, and most of her knowledge about Chinese medicine came from hearing it in dialect.

Fangyan continued:

"Legend has it that during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, there was a road in Mount Zhongnan that was the only way for merchants and horse caravans to travel. One year, someone said that he saw a long-haired black monster in the mountains."

"This hairy monster is very powerful. It is like a clever monkey in the mountains near Zhongnan Mountain. It walks between treetops and cliffs as if it were walking on flat ground. More than one person has seen it, so the merchants and horse caravans that need to pass by here are panicked."

"After a while, not many people dared to pass through here. Even if they wanted to pass by, they would only cross the mountain in groups. This news spread to the ears of the local county magistrate."

"The county magistrate suspected that someone was deliberately playing tricks, so he summoned a number of local hunters to go into the mountains and hunt down the black-haired monster."

"They then spent several days using a trap to catch the black-haired monster in a forest, and they found out it was actually a middle-aged woman."

"According to this woman, she was originally a maid of the King of Qin. After the fall of Qin, she fled from the palace to Mount Zhongnan. At that time, she was starving and cold and had nothing to eat. One day, she met a white-haired old man, who taught her to eat cypress seeds when hungry and drink cypress juice when thirsty. She had no other choice but to listen to the old man."

"At first, she found it bitter and hard to swallow. She had to eat it to fill her stomach. But she got used to the taste over time. She even felt sweetness in her mouth and her tongue was salivating. After eating more, she found that she would not feel hungry for a long time. She even felt her body was lighter. She did not feel the cold in summer or winter, and she did not age. It was as if she had become an immortal. She lived in the mountains for more than 200 years."

"What happened next? What does the book say?" Zhu Lin asked.

The dialect said:

"Later, the news spread, and everyone rushed to eat pine nuts in the hope of living a longer life."

"What then?" Zhu Lin asked with a raised eyebrow.

"That's all." Fangyan smiled, turned off the fire, and began to pour the fried pine nuts into the plate.

Then prepare to continue frying the next ingredient, Cyperus rotundus.

Zhu Lin looked at the steaming cypress seeds and didn't think they could make people live longer. She said:

"Is this obviously a myth? This Li Shizhen is a bit unreliable..."

When Fangyan heard the last sentence "Li Shizhen is a little unreliable", he couldn't help laughing:
"Hahaha, your point of view is very critical, but I also think that Li Shizhen is indeed unreliable in some places."

There is nothing nonsense about dialects. Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" is highly respected.

However, the book contains the conclusion that "one liang in ancient times can be replaced by one qian today." This is also the most criticized point in the traditional Chinese medicine community in later generations.

In fact, his point of view was questioned by traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in the Qing Dynasty.

Qian Tianlai, a Qing Dynasty researcher on cold medicine, said in his book Cold Medicine Origin Collection: "Li Shizhen's saying that ancient and modern systems are different, that one liang in ancient times can be used as one qian now, is not a statement derived from research, but a statement based on conjecture. If it is used according to this, it would be too little."

The dosage of Coptis chinensis in Wuxiexin Decoction and Xiaoxianxiong Decoction was used as an example to refute this.

This shows that in the Qing Dynasty, some doctors had already thought about and questioned Li Shizhen's view on the conversion of measurement units.

However, despite the doubts, most people still believe him.

It was not until 1981 that the Eastern Han Dynasty's measuring instrument, the Da Si Nong Bronze Weight, was unearthed. After comparison, it was discovered that one liang of the Eastern Han Dynasty was equal to 15.625 grams today.

Li Shizhen's clinical application standard of only taking one-tenth of the original dosage of the classic prescriptions is obviously wrong.

This discovery also solved the mystery of ancient prescription measurement that had misled Li Shizhen for four hundred years.

Li Ke, who developed the Poge Jiuxin Decoction, once said publicly that before the 1960s, he used a small dose of Sini plus ginseng decoction according to Li Shizhen's standards to rescue six patients with severe heart failure. As a result, only one person survived and the other five died.

The cause of death is all because of the failure of the central Qi, the inability of the earth to suppress the fire, and the dissipation of the Yang leading to death.

The only person who was saved survived because of an accidental use of medication without following the doctor's advice.

The patient was his friend's mother. She had suffered from cor pulmonale for twenty years and was hospitalized in critical condition. The hospital then sent her home to prepare for her funeral.

When Dr. Li examined the patient, he found that his whole body was cold, with only a slight warmth in his chest. He was unconscious and gasping for breath, but his heart was still beating. His six pulses seemed to be absent, his blood pressure could not be measured, and he was incontinent. He only had pulses in the three points of his feet, Fuyang, Taixi and Taichong.

At that time, he prescribed three prescriptions. Because five people had died before, he felt something was wrong, so he increased the amount of processed aconite from three grams to one and a half liang.

At that time, the patient was dying, and my friend's family was in a mess. The daughter-in-law had to sew funeral clothes. In the chaos, she boiled all three medicines into one dose, and added very little water, using high heat, so the soup was only half a pound.

At midnight that night, the daughter-in-law fed the patient a spoonful of medicine every ten minutes or so, and it took forty minutes to feed the patient half a pound of medicine. Originally, I thought I would send the patient away after he finished drinking it, but the patient actually got better gradually. He even asked his daughter-in-law for lotus root powder biscuits, and he was able to get out of bed and walk the next day.

At that time, Mr. Li realized that there was something wrong with the quantity Li Shizhen mentioned.

So he personally prepared the prescription and experimented with it himself and his disciples, starting with a small amount and increasing to a large amount. He and several disciples drank it for a day and a night, and felt the feeling at different times.

As a result, only one of the disciples, named Zhang Han, had a mild poisoning reaction, and the others were fine.

The excavation of the bronze weight of the Minister of Agriculture in 1981 proved that Li Ke was right and that it was Li Shizhen who made a mistake four hundred years ago. His mistake is terrifying if you really think about it.

For four hundred years, serious illnesses could not be cured because the basic effective doses in Zhongjing's theory could not be reached, so Chinese medicine practitioners were accustomed to using light doses. This was certainly safe and risk-free, but it castrated a major feature of Zhongjing's theory.

It is like taking the sword away from a general's hand. In the competition between the two major medical systems in modern times, it is because of this situation that traditional Chinese medicine lost its position in emergency medicine and retreated to a subordinate position.

So when Zhu Lin said that Li Shizhen was unreliable, he was not wrong at all.

It is also worth mentioning that the mother of the friend who was rescued lived for another 19 years and died at the age of 78.

……

Next, Fangyan chatted with his wife while he was busy.

After working for a while, I finally finished preparing all the medicinal materials.

At this time, he already regretted not picking up a few more prescriptions.

If my wife doesn't get the right dose of medicine after taking it, and I prescribe another one for her, wouldn't I have to be busy at home again?

Then Fangyan started to decoct the medicine. By the time he finished, Zhu Lin had already started yawning.

Then she spoke into the dialect:

"After talking to you for a while, I feel better."

Fang Yan heard this and asked curiously:
"Are you not anxious now? Are you not panicking anymore?"

Zhu Lin nodded:
"Well, I'm not anxious at all, and I feel much better."

Fang Yan reached out to her and patted his thigh, motioning her to put it up:

"I'll take your pulse."

“Here.” Zhu Lin put it up.

Fangyan started to take his wife's pulse.

As expected, he found that his pulse had calmed down a lot. He was surprised and said:

"It's true."

At this moment, I couldn't even tell the dialect. Was it the effect of my conversation or the effect of the two Changbai Mountain ginsengs I had at dinner?

Zhu Lin pointed to the pine nut soup that Fang Yan had prepared and asked:

"Do you still want to take the medicine?"

Fangyan thought for a moment and said:
"Let's see tomorrow morning. If everything is normal tomorrow morning, then I won't drink it."

Zhu Lin felt a little sorry. She had spent so much time with Fang Yan making medicine today. They had to soak it in wine, stir-fry it in a casserole, and then steam it... It felt more troublesome than cooking. It took them a long time to make such a small amount of medicine. She said:

"But you worked so hard for so long."

Fangyan knew his wife's mood, and he said:
"I took so long to cure you. Now that you are well, there is no need to drink it. Medicine is poisonous. Don't drink it if you are not sick."

Zhu Lin said:

"But the story says that eating pine nuts can prolong life."

Fangyan laughed and said:

"You've already said that Li Shizhen is unreliable and the mythological stories he reposted are not credible."

Hearing this, Zhu Lin was also amused:
"Hahaha……"

Seeing his wife laughing so hard that her body was shaking, Fang Yan felt that the medicine he took tonight was not in vain. At least he had given his wife a speech to ease her anxiety.

I accidentally became a psychologist.

"Okay, then I'll put the medicine in the refrigerator first. It's about time." Fang Yan said.

Zhu Lin asked:

"Did you go watch TV or wash up?"

Fang Yan glanced at his watch. The TV program was almost over. He was too lazy to watch it, so he said:
"No need to watch it, let's wash up and go back to sleep."

Zhu Lin blushed, looked around, and after making sure no one was around, she said shyly:

"There's hot water in the kettle. I'll go get some water for you to wash your face."

While Fangyan was putting the medicine into the refrigerator, Zhu Lin had already poured hot water into the basin.

Just at this moment, the refrigerator compressor made a sound, reminding the people outside that the medicine was a little hot.

This habit was taught to him by his dialect teacher in his previous life, who said that putting things in the refrigerator when they are hot will not consume much more electricity. Instead, waiting until things are cool before putting them in will give bacteria room to grow.

When Fang Yan heard the sound of the compressor, he remembered that the refrigerator compressors in the country were not working at that time. However, he had no intention of selling it. For the sake of the Fang family's descendants, he would just make do with the refrigerator compressor for now.

I'm going to the bedroom with my wife right away. We can't wait for the medicine to cool down first, right?
Which young man who just got married can have such great determination?
PS: The 6000-word basic chapter is finished, and there will be more chapters later...

(End of this chapter)