In rural China during the Qing Dynasty, a poor scholar named Fan Jin yearned to pass the imperial examination and become an official. After years of perseverance, he finally saw his name on the official list, achieving the rank of a county magistrate. Overwhelmed by the news, he fainted. Revived by rice soup, Fan Jin exclaimed, “I did it! I did it!” He began laughing uncontrollably, running down the street until he fell into a roadside pond, covering himself in mud. His euphoria had turned into madness. Concerned, his family didn’t know how to help him.
A government official suggested a solution: He explained that Fan Jin’s exultant joy had caused a buildup of phlegm, leading to mania. He suggested that if someone Fan Jin feared confronted him and declared that he had failed the exam, the shock would make him expel the phlegm and recover. Fan Jin’s father-in-law, a pig butcher who often belittled him, approached and shouted, “You failed the exam!” Slapped hard across the face, Fan Jin momentarily fainted, then slowly regained consciousness, asking, “Why am I here?”
This story illustrates a traditional Chinese medicine method for treating emotional disorders. According to traditional Chinese medicine, emotions such as happiness, anger, worry, sadness, and fear are governed by the five internal organs: the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. For example, the heart governs joy, but excessive joy can harm it, causing mania (as in Fan Jin’s case). The kidneys govern fear, and fear can counteract excessive joy. Thus, inducing fear (through the father-in-law’s confrontation) helped subdue Fan Jin’s manic state. The liver governs anger, the spleen governs worry, and the lungs govern sadness. In addition to acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, emotional disorders were sometimes treated with simple, practical therapies like the one in Fan Jin’s story.
Although we cannot use these crude methods to help patients today, according to the theory of mutual generation and mutual restraint of the five elements in traditional Chinese medicine, patients with diseases of excessive heart fire, such as irritability, insomnia, or manic syndrome, can use acupuncture points with the function of nourishing kidney water, such as KD 3, KD 1, etc.; or Chinese medicines such as Cornus officinalis, Rehmannia glutinosa, Anemarrhena asphodeloides, which apply the theory of the five elements that kidney water can extinguish heart fire to correct the deviation of excessive fire. Deviations in the functions of other organs can also be corrected using the method of the five elements, which have been widely used.
Another example is a patient whose mother died during the epidemic. She was very sad and soon contracted COVID-19. She coughed day and night, did not recover for two months, and had a poor appetite. I used the method of clearing the lungs and relieving coughs, nourishing the spleen and stomach, increasing appetite, supplementing nutrition, and controlling coughs. At the same time, I chatted with her and learned that she had just become a grandmother, so I suggested that she visit her grandson every day, allowing her to immerse herself in the joy of being a grandmother and dilute her sadness of losing her mother. She recovered in two weeks.
Chinese medicine believes that the sadness of losing one’s mother hurts the lungs, weakening the lung qi, and allowing the new coronavirus to invade. With insufficient positive energy, it is difficult to resist the disease, and recovery is prolonged.
In the theory of the five elements, the lungs belong to metal. The lungs represent the respiratory system, including the trachea, throat, and nasal cavity. The sound that comes out of the throat is dominated by the function of the lungs, just like metal can make a sound. The spleen and stomach belong to earth because the food absorbed and digested by the spleen and stomach comes from the soil, providing nutrition for the human body, just like the land nourishes all things in the world. Earth produces metal because metal minerals come from the earth and mountains, so the earth produces metals. This is why tonifying the spleen can treat lung deficiency cough. Emotionally, the heart governs joy, the heart is fire, and fire can overcome metals (fire can melt metal), so the joy of the heart can dissolve the sadness of the lungs. Since the sadness hurts the lungs, we can use the spleen earth of the nurse, and the heart fire (joy) that overcomes sadness, to correct the damage to the lungs: cough and sadness.
Specifically, I used Buzhong Yiqi Decoction and ST36, CV12, CV6, and other acupoints for tonifying the spleen, as well as Chuanbei loquat paste and BL12, BL13, LU6, and other acupoints for clearing the lungs and relieving cough. The patient received acupuncture treatment once a week and took Chinese medicine daily. She was cured after two weeks.
