Concerning personality types: herbs and H2

[Guest guest]

John

 

In my experience of working with Huang on his book, it seems to me that the

" personalities " come from his reading of Shang Han Lun, commentators of the

Shang Han Lun (especially those who paid particular attention to formula

presentations and expanded on them), and his own clinical experience.

 

I have found in my own clinical work that there are indeed certain types.

Cinnamon twig people look and often behave differently from Rhubarb or

Astragalus types. Furthermore, it has helped me to understand why certain

formulas that seem like they should work, don't. For example, I have a patient

with endometriosis and you can feel lumps in her lower abdomen. Seemed like a

case for gui zhi fu ling wan. But, she reacted badly to it and did much better

with xue fu zhu yu tang. She is not a gui zhi constitution, but more of a chai

hu type. I should have caught it earlier but I was thinking more formulaically

(sometimes happens when I'm tired or not paying attention).

 

There are a number of titles out in Chinese these days on the " classic

formulas " , it is getting a lot of play in China recently and there is some good

stuff on formula presentation. I'm quite interested in the work of 胡希æ•

（hu2 xi1 shu4) as he has a clear method for deciding at which level an illness

is lodged. It provides a nice counterpoint to Huang's work.

 

Regards

Michael

 

 

On Jan 3, 2010, at 7:10 AM, wrote:

 

> In " 50 Medicinals " , Huang Huang references everything back to a quote from

> Zhang Zhong Jing. His only interpretation as far as I can see is saying

> that if all of these Gui zhi ingredient formulas are used by ZZJ for these

> indications, then there must be some clinical purpose and character of the

> herb. He also lists commentary by historical commentators.

> Can somebody who has studied with him discuss how the 10 personality types

> of the herbs were formulated?