Library

Observe the patient's qi (vital energy), inspect their diet, inquire about urination and defecation, examine the tongue coating, and verify the pulse and symptoms; thus, the differentiation between deficiency-type and excess-type fever can be determined. In cases occurring after childbirth, it is necessary to promote the discharge of blood stasis. Once the stasis flows freely and abdominal pain ceases, tonification should be administered. For those with constitutional weakness and unsmoothed stasis, it is especially important to simultaneously tonify qi and blood to facilitate movement; when qi moves, blood moves, and stasis is also resolved. This principle is very clear and easily understood by people, yet physicians often fail to grasp it, which is truly strange! Is it not because patients' families are overly suspicious and apprehensive, leading to such hesitant behavior? Otherwise, it indicates an inability to distinguish the deficiency or excess nature of the disease.

In the initial one or two days of a Shanghan (Cold Damage) disease, when the pathogen is in the Taiyang (Greater Yang) channel, Ephedra Decoction (Mahuang Tang) is used to induce sweating if there is no sweat. If there is sweat, it is termed Wind Strike (Zhongfeng); Cinnamon Twig (Guizhi) is used to release the muscle layer rather than Ephedra for inducing sweat, combined with the sour astringency of White Peony Root (Shaoyao) and the sweet neutrality of Licorice Root (Gancao) to harmonize, which is the method of Zhang Zhongjing. Nowadays, when treating Fengwen (Wind-Warmth) or Shiwen (Damp-Warmth) presenting with spontaneous sweating, physicians still use diaphoretic methods; what method is this? Moreover, using warm dispersants instead of cool dispersants, or adding cloying substances like Rehmannia Root (Shengdi) and Dendrobium Stem (Shihu), which contradict the pathology, what method is this? If sweating persists, dampness and heat stagnate and steam internally, causing the tongue coating to turn gray. If it is gray and dry, preserving body fluids to rescue yin is indeed appropriate. If the pathogen is in the channels, Baihu Decoction (White Tiger Decoction) is indicated; if in the fu organs, Chengqi Decoctions are indicated. Relying solely on Glehnia Root (Shashen), Rehmannia Root, and Dendrobium Stem is insufficient to address the responsibility. If the coating is gray and moist, aromatic-drying herbs to resolve dampness and bitter-cold herbs to drain heat are precisely suitable. To mistakenly identify this as dry gray coating and treat it accordingly, claiming it is to prevent the depletion of fluids, ignores the reality that severe internal dampness will soon lead to internal closure; there is not even time to use aromatic-drying herbs, let alone the logic that fluids would be depleted before the dampness is transformed! If one recklessly prescribes Glehnia Root, Ophiopogon Tuber (Maifeng), Rehmannia Root, and Dendrobium Stem together with Fermented Soybean (Douzhi) and Sprouted Soybean (Doujuan) in the same formula, and