huo xue and he xue

[Guest guest]

According to my understanding, huo xue (quicken blood)is somewhat

different from he xue (harmonizing blood). Medicinals that quicken

the blood are included in stasis-dispelling blood-quickening

medicinals. They are considered the mildest of these medicinals.

Some of them supplement as well as " move " blood. Harmonizing blood

is a vaguer concept. Harmonizing and harmonization have broader and

narrower meanings. In the broadest meaning,one could say that all

therapy is about harmonizing yin and yang. It also broadly means

using two or more strategies, for instance, supplementing blood as

well as moving blood. But many narrower meanings exist, one is a

method (he fa) that employs a quite limited number of standard

formulas for a few syndromes. Another is a strategy, using the

sweating method, for treating zhong feng. When applied to individual

herbs, it is often limited to danggui (number 1), or a few others

such as danshen, jixueteng, honghua, mudanpi (mudanpi simultaneously

moves and cools blood, two functions). Sionneau states the following

position: " Dang Gui, or rather quan or whole Dang Gui, harmonizes the

blood. Harmonizing the blood is a term which, in the Chinese

materica medica, is almost specific to Dang Gui. This is because

Dang Gui is one of the few medicinal substances which nourishes and

moves the blood simultaneously. This characteristic allows Dang Gui

to nourish the blood without causing blood stasis. Other medicinals,

such as Ji Xue Teng...Dan Shen...and Hong Hua...may pretend to

possess this same combination of functions. However,their

supplementing action on the blood is weak, particularly Hong Hua's

(which nourishes the blood if it is used in small quantity, but which

then loses its efficacy for dispelling stasis.)