Esoteric Herbology Book?

[Guest guest]

And I believed you when you said you slept under Elizabeth's piano. . . just

riffed on that. .

 

 

On Dec 26, 2009, at 12:58 PM, Thea Elijah wrote:

 

> Yes, I was literally camping out under Elisabeth's piano.... AND all

> the fractal imagery generated by Z'ev was also accurate adduced.

 

 

Chair, Department of Herbal Medicine

Pacific College of Oriental Medicine

San Diego, Ca. 92122

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

HI Thea,

 

I am still not very clear what the point or meaning is behind seeing a symptom

as a signifier rather than a parameter?

 

I have quite a few mentors, who are fluent in Chinese, have studied Chinese

medicine in Chinese, and who not only love to discuss Chinese medicine theory,

but also achieve stellar clinical results- backed up with good clinical case

studies, verified either on paper or from me watching their results. All of them

speak the same language in that when a patient presents with an identifiable

symptom, this is where we have to start. For it is this identifiable symptom

that we need to see change in our clinic, otherwise what are we doing?

 

So we start with a symptom, like vomiting blood, and then we add onto it all the

other symptoms manifesting in the body, put them all together (as much as

possible) and put together a pattern. Finally we treat the pattern. If we are

correct in our pattern recognition and the treatment applied matched the

pattern, then the main symptom, ie vomiting of blood, will have ceased. I mean

this is TCM 101.

 

I am confused as to what the need is to create more complicated and

philosophical ideologies within a system that, when properly applied, works

quite well. I guess I miss the point behind calling " Tu Xu " anything different

than what it is.

 

I will definitely agree that there can, and is, differences in information

gathering and treatment method techniques amongst practitioners, and the

patterns that they put together to treat the same symptom, or disease that is

manifesting, will vary. But if a hundred Doctors observed blood being ejected

from the same patients mouth, what purpose does it serve to write or communicate

that this phenomenon was anything different than what they actually saw?

 

So like I mentioned, what is the point of calling " Tu Xue " anything different

than blood ejection from the mouth?

 

If a patient comes to me who is vomiting blood, then I need to figure out why it

is happening and then make it stop. Plain and simple. There really is no mystery

here. I am not going to have time to philosophize anything different. I need to

constantly refine my knowledge base for the purpose of effecting the best

change, as quickly as possible.

 

In Unshuld's work on the history of pharmaceutics, he points out very clearly

that a major theme throughout the history of the Ben Cao scholarly tradition

was to figure out easier methods to organize the work. This was for the purpose

of having an easier and quicker reference to any herb or symptom in question,

within a clinical setting.

 

Basically it became very apparent as the Ben Cao grew in size that Doctors had

be able to access the information within it with as much ease as possible,

otherwise they risked the dubious task of spending hours researching a topic

that could otherwise be figured out within minutes. By Tu Xue meaning anything

different than what it is would lead to vast confusion amongst the busy Doctors

needing to write formulas on the fly, perhaps upwards of two hundred of them a

day!. So again, clearly defined terminology meaning something other than the

obvious really does not make any practical sense.

 

Anyways, Happy holidays everybody! I am enjoying the discussions here.... in

between family outings, dinners, and an actual break from clinical life :-)

 

Trevor

[Guest guest]

, " trevor_erikson " <trevor_erikson

wrote:

>

 

I think we are looking at it the other way around here. Are there things which

are not " blood ejection " that we can call Tu Xue? (Now notice that some books

will define tu xue as any bleeding from the upper orifices.)

 

> So like I mentioned, what is the point of calling " Tu Xue " anything different

than blood ejection from the mouth?

 

 

Doug

>

[Guest guest]

Thea,

you wrote,

" Elisabeth launched into a long explanation, the gist of which ran

something like this: " When the Chinese say 'ze voMITing of blood', we

have ze voMITing, which means ze StoMACH, ze upward movement of ze

StoMACH, of ze voMITing; and ze blood, zis means we are talking about

ze LiVER; we have ze violent action of ze LiVER on the StoMACH--

somesing like zis. "

 

This thread of the discussion began with LI 16 (Ju Gu)...

Interestingly, other than shoulder pain (Qi and Blood stasis),

LI 16 is indicated for scrofula, blood stasis in the chest and vomiting of

blood. (Deadman, pg. 117 1st ed)...

I'm assuming with pattern recognition that LI 16 is a very useful point for

TB,

where you look at all of these signs together. Vomiting of blood

(hematemesis) is not very common in most diseases,

but is prevalent with TB of the lung patients... as scrofula is a TB

infection of the lymph nodes of the neck.

 

I'm not a sinologist, but I've noticed that if the Chinese go out of their

way to say " vomiting of blood " , they mean

" vomiting of blood " , which is very specific. If they meant LV attacking the

ST as Qi reflux, they would just write, " vomiting " (as an open-ended

generalization). Then we could infer that the vomiting could mean dry

vomiting or vomiting of various fluids.

Just as a comparison, ST 19 (Bu rong) and ST 20 (Cheng man) have as their

indications both " vomiting " and " vomiting of blood " . These are listed

side-by-side in Deadman's book. ST 19 and ST 20 both have dual functions

of descending rebellious Lung and ST Qi.

On the other hand, ST 21 (Liang men), which is lower than the other two,

only has " vomiting " listed, without " vomiting of blood " and functions only

with ST Qi, not Lung Qi.

My point is that the medical Chinese is very specific, an empirical and

logical science.

The point location, point names, functions and indications all match with

each other.

LI 16, even though it is on the LI channel is located on top of the

shoulder, above the lungs. It's needle trajectory is downwards.

It makes sense that it would be used for " vomiting of blood " , but not

necessarily vomiting of bile for instance.

 

I think that fractal thinking is very useful for understanding the " big

picture " of consciousness, but for medicine, we need a scalpel type of

diamond mind for these details. If not, we are not respecting our

ancestors who spent generations finding out that a point on the shoulder was

useful for scrofula and vomiting of blood, not for every-and-any type of

vomiting.

We can go from big picture to details or from details to big picture.

Either way, we can 't lose sight of the trees inside of the forest or we'll

bump our heads on a branch. Or if we only focus on the trees, we'll forget

the unity within the multiplicity. Isn't this what integral thinking is

about?

 

So, how do we strike a balance between the plain-hard-facts of evidence

based medicine (what we already do) and the poetic nature of the

naturalistic philosophy that is the golden thread of our medicine? I think

that science is the bed-rock of our medicine and poetic interpretation came

second. If we cut off one from the other, we are doing a huge injustice to

ourselves.

 

K

 

 

 

 

 

 

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