Author: Jason Blalack

Lurking Pathogens (Qin Bo-Wei)

This essay on lurking pathogens (also referred to as lingering, hidden, deep-lying, or latent pathogens) is particularly relevant in today’s era, where we have students and practitioners using the term to describe all sorts of chronic disorders. Qin suggests that the utility of the term may be questionable. Although Qin emphasises the lurking pathogen theory that came out of the warm disease tradition, his historical analysis and questioning can be applied to the general use of the term today. It should first be pointed out that Qin is known as one of the greatest synthesisers of Chinese medicine. He was renowned for his deep classical study and his ability to take an immense amount information and extract the commonalities. Qin made great efforts to systematically integrate ideas of the past. These essays come from this perspective.

Qin Bo-Wei Warm Disease

Cold Damage vs. Warm Disease (QBW)

By Qin Bo-Wei (秦伯未)

This small essay in taken from Qin Bo-Wei’s larger Warm Disease thesis that was written in 1963. This essay was published in The Lantern Volume 8 No.2, May 2011, as part of a larger three-part essay entitled Some Issues in Warm Disease by Qin Bo-Wei.

Understanding Case Records Pt. 2

A Touch of Ling: Learning from ancient case records

QBW-Picture

This article originally appeared in The Lantern, Volume 7, No.3 September 2010.

by Jason Blalack

Studying Chinese medicine case records is an invaluable way to enhance one’s clinical skills beyond basic textbook knowledge.

Case Records

Understanding Case Records Pt. 1

Further thoughts on understanding Ye Tian-Shi’s case records.

By: Jason Blalack

Ye Tian-Shi is quite arguably one of the most important clinicians in Chinese medical history. His most important contribution, Case Records as a Guide to Clinical Practice (lin zheng zhi nan), is a compilation of case records by his students. It should be noted that, for a period of time in the Qing Dynasty that doctors/students would only study this book while ignoring the “classics.” Although criticized for this by their teachers, it definitely demonstrates the impact that Ye’s case records had on medicine.

Case Records

Herbs & the Eight Extraordinary Vessels

By: Charles Chace

The first systematic discussion of the extraordinary vessels in Chinese herbal medicine appears in Li Shizhen’s 李時珍Exposition on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (Qijing bamai Kao 奇經八脈考, circa, 1576).In our forthcoming translation and commentary on this text, Exposition on the Extraordinary Vessels, Acupuncture, Alchemy and Herbal Medicine, Eastland Press, 2009, my co-author Miki Shima and I describe Li’s approach to herbal prescribing as an overarching “meta-diagnosis” encompassing a wide range of possible zangfu presentations. For instance, Li Shizhen considers any disease characterized by masses or accumulations in the lower burner that presents in conjunction with an ascending counterflow to the upper burner to be a disorder of the chong vessel. This might present in the context of number of possible disease or zangfu patterns, but for Li the simultaneous presence of stagnation in the lower burner and counterflow extending to the upper burner define it as chong vessel problem. This is, I believe, the most pragmatic way to make use of the extraordinary vessels in herbal medicine

Eight extraordinary vessels