Classics of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Acupuncture CEU Course | Dr. Daoshing Ni

Welcome. Today we are going to talk about an overview of TCM classics and doctrines. This is a new course that I'd like to share with you. To tell you the truth, I am a history buff. I like history. I like to study how people ahead of us do things, and especially in traditional Chinese medicine, how they have passed down their experiences, their life, their challenges, and their difficulties. Because I can tell you, I have shares of that challenges and difficulties every day in my own clinical practice. So a lot of time I like to learn from them. I like to learn from people who already have a lot of experience, the masters, the classics, and a lot of these people who have wonderfully passed down their knowledge and theories and practical information for us to become a better healer. So in some ways, this is a wonderful course that I have studied and would like to share with you. So today, our lecture today, it's on the overview and laying the foundation of this whole course of TCM classics and doctrines. Our purpose of this course is to present to you an introduction to the major TCM doctrines and school of thoughts, including Daoist healing arts, and focusing on significant TCM classic work, texts, as well as the stories of the physicians and how they overcome difficulties and being able to treat difficult cases and diseases. And by understanding these concepts and doctrines, we hope to gain a deeper knowledge of understanding of the formation of these theories and practices of TCM. And in our learning objective, we will learn the historical timeline and development of these major TCM doctrines and how these doctrines influence the evolution and development of TCM, and not at least today, to the integrative medicine mode today. And this also help us for us to acquire some of the basic familiarity with key concepts of major TCM doctrines and school of thoughts, and including a survey of important physicians and their underlying work, their publications that really help to proliferate such doctrine. And not at least to understand and be able to apply and differentiate these concepts into our clinical practice. So if you look at traditional Chinese medicine, TCM is a convergence. It's a distillation. It's a collection of many, many different ideas, concepts, doctrines, clinical experience, and theories and practices. And we are not even talking about outside of China. I mean, outside of China, you will see Korean medicine on its own. Amazingly, many different practices, Korean medicine, Japanese medicine, Vietnamese medicine, all these medicine has taken some of the foundation of TCM and really developed and flourished to its own concept, its own doctrine, its own practice. So in so many ways, what we are able to do in this course is to look at some of the developments that create this whole system of TCM today. And so that's what we're going to look at. And when you look at any kind of development of a medical system, really, it starts with some sort of clinical experience. And with some sort of clinical experience, what our mind is trying to work is trying to create a systemic understanding why such clinical experience works and if there is a consistency of how it works. And once there's a consistency of how things work, we tend to be able to create some kind of theory and principles so that the practice can be universal and can be applied into similar disease and similar conditions. So clinical experience don't follow theory. It's actually the opposite around. A lot of times in our current TCM understanding, we actually learn the theories first and then we go to a clinical practice. That's not how it always works in the historical guideline. A lot of times, you're learning a lot of clinical experience first and you're trying to come up with some theories that kind of underline and give the foundation of why these things work. So clinical experience, theories, these two really help the development, the TCM development. And not the least, the physicians that work in these fields, they have, every physician has different experience, different knowledge, and different understanding of even same disease. So from the village A to village B with the same disease, you might have a totally different treatment methodology for the same disease. So that practicing physician also bring a variety of understandings and experience that further give a lot of colors, a lot of flavors to a school of thought. And not the least is their publications. A lot of times, in fact, some are very, very famous physicians. They're so busy, so busy of a clinician. Sometimes they are not able to write down their understanding and their effective methods to pass down, which it's unfortunate. But there are people who has done that. So their publication is very important and helped to lay a good foundation for the future school of thought. So clinical experience, theories, physicians, and publications with historical guidelines give us this TCM doctrine and school of thought. And so let's take a look at some of the definition. Let's look at a definition of classic. Classic, if you define it in the dictionary, there's a many way of looking at it. One is a work of art that recognize and establish a certain value. Like for example, this book have become a classic. Or it's a model, it's a epitome, it's a paradigm, it's a exemplar work. It's classic. Or a garment of a simple, elegant, and long lasting style that just doesn't really fade away. Or a thing that is memorable, or very good example of its kind. For example, you know, he's hoping that tomorrow's game will be a classic, for example. Or it could be a school subject that involves the study of ancient Greek and Latin literature, philosophy and history, or the works of ancient Greek and Latin writers and philosophers. This we call the classics. So you can see there's many different definition of what classic can be. In the TCM, understanding a TCM classic, it's an exemplary work in TCM that is long lasting, and continues to have great impact on the development of TCM, and continue to have a great impact in our clinical practice today. And if we look at according to the holdings in about 113 libraries in China today, there are currently about 12,124 counts of TCM documents or publications, which does not include long lost ones. This is only the ones that we know in existence that are considered to be great impact in the practice of TCM. So you can see classical literature in TCM is quite profound and robust. Now, some of these are much more contemporary, or newer writings, and some are compilations of different authors. Some are government sanctioned compilations, where a scholar of a governmental dynasty kind of collect different works of the previous generation practitioners, and put it together. And some commentaries, for example, there are many, many commentaries on Xiang Han Run, for example, Jing Gui Yao Yue. These are wonderful work that kind of elaborates and help us to have even more clear or sometimes just different perspective on some of the classics that we look. So that's classic. Now let's define doctrine. Well, doctrine is a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group. For example, the doctrine of predestination, or the doctrine of free will, for example. So sometimes the synonym for doctrine could be creed, credo, dogma, belief, teaching, ideology. Or this could be a government related policy, a state of principle of government policy, mainly in foreign or military affairs, for example, the Monroe Doctrine, the McCarthy Doctrine, for example. So it could be a military kind of definition. Now in TCM, when we talk about DCM doctrine, and sometimes I use doctrine and school of thought interchangeably, is that a teaching is a teaching or a school of thought in TCM. That had a great impact on the development of TCM. Doctrines tend to be clinically relevant with established theories and elaboration from a group of doctors and well published documentations. And in the doctrine formation process, number one, first of all, there is some sorts of prior knowledge and clinical experience. And that leans into why do we have such thing is because we have actually a primary or what we call initiating doctor, initiating physician that really came up with this experience, this set of knowledge. And a lot of times there's some publication, this primary initiating doctor have some publication to support his understanding of this clinical practice as well theory. And with that, then there are a lot of people who become the disciple of this initiator, and they will be what we call supporting physicians that further elaborates and support on the principle and theory of the initiating physician. So then you have supporting doctors, then you have supporting publications that help to support this initial documentations and publications. And with that, and sometimes there's an exponential growth. With that growth, it creates a system of thinking, a systems of school of doctrine, a school of thinking that we call this doctrine, for example, Earth School. Earth School is a wonderful school that basically initiated by Li Dongyuan in the Jin Yuan time, where that it's all about really nourishing the earth element of our body, which is very important after heaven nourishment and pillar for our health. So without a nourishment and good functioning of our digestive and absorption system, we will not have a good life. So in that school of thought, almost in any kind of disease encountering, you always take the earth element into consideration. Even if the disease itself is not in the stomach or spleen region, you still look at, hey, you know, hey, maybe somebody is having a cold. Well, if somebody has a cold, let's treat a cold, but that's never neglect the earth element, never neglect the digestion. Because if you have a good digestion, good digestion, you're going to have good nutrient, good nutrient absorption. Good nutrient absorption means you're going to have energy to fight with whatever disease that you might have. So I'll give you an example of Earth School of thought. So that's a theory. And that theory and a lot of the clinical practice surrounds that theory is very much give us a very nice doctrine. And later on, we can talk some of those doctrines. Now, many of these doctrines have already integrated into our regular modern educational framework. So when we go to Chinese medicine school, acupuncture school, frequently it's already weave into the foundations, fundamentals that we study. And they usually, and our modern core structure, usually it's what I call the more Western style. You go to class, and it's a little different than the disciple where you actually study a classics from the head to toe, from the beginning to the end. You basically are taking, study different information from different texts and put it together. So sometimes that actually is a very efficient way of studying, but sometimes it takes things out of context. So by studying the classics, it provides another different avenue, a different perspective of understanding TCM. So a lot of time with this modern coursework, we usually are presented to us an overview and frequently without an in-depth understanding and exploration and with historical context. So we want to do that. Now to study TCM well, we need to have a deeper understanding of the theories and practices. So therefore, this can be accomplished by studying the classics and these doctrines. And a survey of these doctrines will lead us to a good overview about these physicians and their work. And this is basically going to the source. And there's a lot of many, very reputable, very famous physicians. So it's kind of nice to kind of hear their story, to hear their challenges, to hear their learning process and how they become so good in what they are doing, model after them. They become our mentors and then eternal mentors. For example, Sun Simiao, who is a Taoist physician who believe in the importance of longevity, believe in the importance of disease prevention. His major work, Qianjin Yaohuang, Qianjin Yihuang, are amazing, has given a lot of, shall we say, a lot of help to future physicians of his time learning from him. So it's very important to kind of learn their story and hear about what they have done for the development of TCM. So going to the source and also looking at the classics. Yes, some of these books, a lot of these books are not translated into English yet, but some already have. So it's important to look at some of these books that's already translated and see what we can learn from them. Now, the formation, therefore, the requirement formation of a TCM doctrine or School of Thought is that it needs to basically have three things. One, it must have a central concept or topic. For example, School of Thought of Earth, it's about the strength in the earth element that equal to good health. That's a central concept or topic. For example, the Minmin Fire Doctrine, they talk about the importance of having Minmin Fire. Without the Minmin Fire, the body will be unhealthy. Number two, it is formed by a central figure, a practicing physician mostly, and expanded upon by sufficient others. These might be followers, might be students, might be other physicians. So number one is a topic or central concept. Number two is the people behind it. Number three is actually supported by writing, the publications. Publications that are able to pass down, that create a substantial impact in the development of TCM and for the society. So we have the concept, we have the people, and then we have the books. These three are the requirement of formation of a good, a solid doctrine in School of Thought. Without one of those, it's not really a doctrine. We wouldn't consider that a doctrine. Now, by studying the classics, we will have a better grasp and a better understanding of fundamental principles. And at the same time, we will have a better understanding of historical, theoretical, and clinical development of that concept. For example, Earth School. How did it come about? I mean, why does anyone think digestion? I mean, we know today, nutrition and digestion is very important for health. But how, 1,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago that people start to understand that, how did it come about? Well, it came about at a time when there's famine, when people malnourished, when there are so many diseases that came out of that malnourishment. Therefore, it was very important to have proper nourishment and proper digestion. So that underpins that, that lays kind of like the brickwork, the foundation of that development of that, for example. So understand the historical background, give us some idea, oh, why am I looking at School of Thought of Earth? Why am I looking at Ming Men Fire situation? Those are all very important. And that also gives us more tools and better clinical effectiveness, because now we have so many more tools that we can use because we now understand so many different doctrines. And by knowing all the different doctrines, we can therefore, in our clinical repertoire, we have a lot more different tools that we can go to. So there are three ways to enhance learning in TCM Classics. One is really to understand and elaborate on the main concept. So when we talk about Earth School, then when we talk about Earth School, we no longer just talk about the digestion. We also talk about nutrition. We also talk about the quality of the food. We also talk about the ecology of planting, the agricultural process. We talk about herbs that is really helpful for digestion. We talk about all the other diseases that might affect digestion and nourishment, for example. So when we look at the main concept, we elaborate upon it. We look at how does all the other branches, all the other things that might affect the main concept. Number two, trying to familiarize with the characteristics and stories of the doctors. A lot of times the stories tell a lot of different things. And for example, one of the stories that I love very much was Ye Tiansi. He was treating a very difficult cough condition. And this was just the beginning of fall, autumn, and frost is just descending upon the land. So he was basically trying to think about a formula for cough. And all the different herbs has been used and hasn't been very effective. And he thought, you know, where my weakness is in this situation is really I don't have a right guiding herb. So as he pacing back and forth of his cornea, and all of a sudden there's some leaves that's falling. These are mulberry leaves that start to fall. And on this leaf, the fall is a yellow leaves. There's some frost on it. And he said, wow, my God, I need to respond to the climate. This person are having cough in the fall. Let me use the guiding herb of what exists in the season. Let me use the frosted mulberry tree leaves, because that's the guiding herb of the season. If I can put that in a formula, I can really help the cough condition. And he did. And it worked. It's a wonderful story. It's a story that teaches us to really be cognizant of our environment, to understand things that's not just within the system we have, but outside because it's not a closed system. Everything we do in treatment of medicine and health, it's an open system. Everything connects to it. So it teaches us to be open minded, to look at. So these stories are wonderful inspirations. Number three is the focus of clinical applicability. Another thing is understanding theory doesn't do much unless we actually apply it. So a lot of times when we learn a lot about theory, for example, the importance of nutrition, it doesn't mean anything until you apply it. So if you don't eat certain food or you eat too much of a certain food, you can start exhibiting certain symptoms. Now that is a direct reaction. So that's clinically applicable. And so that's something that we need to focus on. So don't just focus on the theory. Theory gives us a guiding principle, but most important is how do we apply that into the clinical setting. Okay. And I like it's not three ways, it's four ways. Okay. Focus on the original text reading. So a lot of times, you know, our CAM and our ordinary university textbook, given us basically what that book, it's basically does a very good job of condensing what a book is trying to tell us. But a lot of times when you go to the actual paraphrase, actual phrase and actual understanding of the original text, you will start to gain a totally different perspective frequently. So it's important sometimes when you don't understand clearly to go back to the original text to read on the original text. So those are the four things. One, elaborate on the concept, main concept. Two, understanding the story of the physicians behind them. Three, clinical applicability. And four, focus on the original text readings. So let's take a look at historical outline. If you are looking at a Chinese history, well, from the very beginning, we are talking about almost near 5,000 years of history. Now, traditional Chinese medicine, if we look at documentation, we don't necessarily have a 5,000-year-old history. If we go through some documents, we are looking at probably somewhere around, you know, 3,000 plus to 4,000 years of history. But we do know from some of the documentation of 5,000 years ago, herbal medicine and maybe even acupuncture has been practiced. But if you look at the original time, there is about 841 BC. That's where you start having Zhou dynasty and what we call the spring autumn period, as well as warring state period. These periods, there was a lot of war and a lot of fighting. Sometimes, if you look at a Chinese history and you add up all the conflict, all the wars that the Chinese have fought among themselves, it's ludicrous. It's like you add them up, it's more than anybody else in the world. So it just gives you some idea. Humans just love conflicts. So if you look at all these dynasties, all these paternal dynasties, when I say paternal dynasty, paternal dynasty means, you know, the king passes the throne to the son, the son passes throne to his son, etc. So if you look at all these paternal dynasties, you see it's basically who's in power. It's just that whoever is in power becomes the king, becomes the emperor. And each dynasty, it's very interesting. It's just like a person's life. There's always some kind of chaos at the beginning. There's a birth, and the birth creates a growth, and the growth creates a peak and flourishing. And after the peak and flourishing, there's always a withering. There's always a depletion. And after depletion, there's like war and chaos again. And then that chaos again creates another birth of a new dynasty. And that gives a growth and development. It got peak again to another dynasty. It's just on and on and so on. So when you study TCN classics, you need to understand that there is a lot of wars. There's a lot of chaos. It's amazing anything gets passed down. And it's true, there's a lot of loss of documents and loss of publication because, you know, war, it burns stuff. Things get lost. Okay, so unfortunately, some of that is very true. One thing that's very, very good is that Chinese culture was the first culture in the world that has printing press, that actually able to create paper and inventing the paper and inventing the printing was extraordinary. It was very helpful to preserve a lot of these classics. Otherwise, at the very beginning, a lot of these writings are on turtle shells, on bones, and on the bamboo shavings. Do you know how quick these things just disappear? Parasite eats them up. It's just there's no way that these way of ancient way of documentation is going to ever stay. That's the reason why we lost, you know, there's a documentation that shows around the spring autumn warring era. There's 11 classics we lost. The only thing that really passed down was the Huangdi Neijing. So we just call that the Bible of TCM. But the reality is that out of that 11 classics, there may be others that's even better, or more important than Huangdi Neijing. And that might be the Bible. So we don't know if Huangdi Neijing is really truly the Bible of TCM. We know today is a wonderful text. It gives tremendous amount of and encompasses embrace a lot of deep, deep breadth of TCM theories and understandings. But, you know, some of these classics is lost. So during that time, the Warring States era is about 475 BC to about 221 BC. A lot of that's a lot of war time. Then the Qing dynasty comes, and this is about 221 BC. And he was really, really scared of invasion of barbarians. So he decided to build a wall, we call the Great Wall. Okay. And you could see that that's, you know, fences around your own country. And obviously, it didn't work out that well at all, because he's basically dynasty lasted 14 years. So now we know Great Wall doesn't stop barbarians from invading China. Okay, so in some ways, but the Great Wall, you can see some of the remnants, even satellite, even if you go out to the moon, you look down on earth, you can see it's a huge, huge, big, thick, tall wall. So it's like a big castle wall. So whenever you get a chance to go China, you got to visit. It's an amazing historical relic, historical relic. It's amazing still standing today. That's the Qing dynasty. Then you have the Han dynasty. Han dynasty lasted for quite a while. This is a time where the Xianghan Wenbin was really documented around this time. And this is where a big flourishing of Chinese culture as well as TCM really took root. This is where things start to get documented much better. And again, there's no printing press yet. But these are rolled up bamboos and animal bones, but mostly it's bamboo sheet now. So you're carving on the bamboo. A lot of writing, a lot of writing. A lot of the philosophers in the Warring States era, all their writings are actually redone and re-added to the Han dynasty. At the end of Han dynasty, you have the Three Kingdom era, and this is Huatuo came in play. Huatuo was that very famous surgeon, TCM surgeon. This is probably the first anesthesia, the first surgery in the world. So Chinese medicine is not shy in actually exploring some of the foundations of anatomy and physiology is that the culture respects the human body, so even with a dead body. So it shunts on really studying the body internally in a dead body. So therefore, a lot of the anatomy and physiology is not as robust later on compared to Western anatomy and physiology. And I think that's some of the weakness of TCM in some areas. And as you move forward, when you go into the Song dynasty, this is where, I'm sorry, the Sui dynasty and Tang dynasty, Sui-Tang dynasty, this is where Buddhism came to China. And this has a lot of meaning. There's a lot of influx of Tibetan, a lot of influx of Indian Ayurvedic medicines that has come and really creates a nice conflict and like a little current that gives and massages the TCM theories even more. So this is where Zen Buddhism, meditation, and a lot of different concepts of classics and religion really take hold during that time. And later on, as you go into the Yuan dynasty, which is about 1279 AD, that's when Genghis Khan came to China and conquered China as well as European countries in the Middle East. This is where you start to see a tremendous interchange of culture, of arts, of ways of things from the East to the West, West to the East. So that has actually, whenever you have such an influx like that, it really created a ripe environment for creativity. So in that period, that's when we see the He Jian doctrine, that's when we see the detoxification doctrine, Gongxie doctrine, that's when we see the Danxi doctrine, and now at least the Yishui doctrine, which is part of the Earth School's Yishui doctrine. So we'll look at that. And then the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty comes afterwards. And these are the times where a lot of Western thoughts start to come into place, where you start to look at actually epidemics, viruses, you start looking at smallpox, looking at some very difficult disease that killed millions of people. Actually, I shouldn't say million because at that time, population is not that big. I would say hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. So the Chinese actually started figuring out how to treat smallpox. Their formula is written and was used widely during that time. Even the Japanese adopted some of the treatments for these viruses and epidemics. And now at least, this is also time, the beginning of the integrative medicine doctrine. And to this point, we are now in an era of integrative medicine, where how we can integrate TCM into the modern medicine setting and how the modern medicine setting integrate into Western medicine, integrate into the TCM setting. Having a good integration can really benefit our patients, can really benefit the people of the world. So this is where we are at today. So just give you a little historical background. It's kind of important, kind of nice to just think about the different dynasties and years, because they do provide a little historical context on how things were developed. So the formation of the TCM School of Thoughts really began at the spring, autumn, and the warring state era. Why? Well, this is a time where there is a what we call a social force of 100th School of Thoughts. This is time where there's like literally 100 little countries, okay? In the Zou dynasty, the emperor that started the Zou dynasty, it's known to have 100 wives, okay? I don't know how many wives. I mean, after a while, you lose count, okay? And he has 100 some sons. So he decided he had to be fair to all the sons. So he gave them a plot of land, a plot of little land all around the country. So in his kingdom, so later on, all these little plot of land becomes little kingdoms, little countries. So by the warring states, spring, autumn era, they just fight each other. You know, there's many generations later, they fight each other. So when you have so many wars, so many conflicts between so many different countries, this is where it creates the conflict and also creates a social force of 100th School of Thoughts. And the 100th School of Thoughts philosophy, this is the underpinning of the philosophy. And this is also a very strong time that sufficient and strong TCM fundamental formation occurred during this period of time. And during this time, there's a formation of two doctrines. One is the medical classics doctrine. During the spring, autumn, and the warring state era, this is where all the different classics, the ancient, the most ancient TCM classics are formed or written during this period of time. Unfortunately, there's only a few that passed down. Huangdi Neijing is one of them. Zhenjiu Jia Yijing. Okay. Huangdi Neijing, Zhenjiu Jia Yijing. Zhenjiu Jia Yijing is actually later, I'm sorry. Huangdi Neijing, Shanghan Lun. Okay, these are the two major, Shanghan Zabi Lun. These are the two major classics that passes down. So that's the first doctrine. The second doctrine is formulary doctrine. At this time, there are already a lot of the botanical and herbal formulations that has already have been known to be very effective. So a lot of good, a lot of doctors start to collect some of these good formulas for their clinical practice and start passing it down to the generations of healers. So that is the formation of those two. And the third doctrine, which initiated around this time, is actually the Taoist medicine doctrine, which really focuses on prevention and longevity, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Now, there are basically 11 main TCM school doctrines and thoughts. The first one is the Taoist medicine doctrine, which is at the very beginning, from the very beginning of time. Second is the medical classics doctrine, which focuses on the medical classics. We'll look through, we'll talk about these in brief in a moment. We have the formula, the series of formula doctrine. The fourth is cold injury doctrine, Shanghan doctrine. The five is the Hejian doctrine, which is the fire heat theory, the fire heat doctrine. And the sixth is Zanghu theory, this is a Zanghu doctrine, understanding the human body through Zanghu formations, understanding. Seven is evil attacking doctrine. There's a lot of time I just call it detoxification doctrine. And the eighth is the Yang excess in deficiency doctrine. And then the ninth is the warming tonification doctrine. And the 10th is the Wenbin doctrine, which is the wind injury or infectious disease doctrine. And the 11th is the integrative medicine doctrine. So these are the 11 main doctrines that we will study in this course. So let's go through each one of them. Today, I'm just going to give you a little overview on each one of them so you know what we are going toward. The Taoist medicine doctrine initiates and documented during the Zhou dynasty about 1028 BC. The central theme is longevity, disease prevention, and immortality. The representing physicians of this doctrine is Ge Hong, is Sun Simiao, is Wang Bin, is Zhang Jiebing, etc. The publications many such as Huangdi Neijing, such as Dao Zhang, the Taoist Canon, such as the Qianjin Yaofang, Qianjin Yifang, Neijing, Jinyuequanshu. A lot of these books describe and talk about the importance of how to do disease prevention, sanitation, longevity, and immortality medicine. So that's the Taoist medicine doctrine. And to this day, a lot of TCM doctors choose to really focus on this area, learning Tai Chi, practicing Qigong meditation, learning to do internal cultivation, reading Taoist philosophies, trying to understand different ways of treatment that takes disease prevention and nourishment into the context. The second is the medical classics doctrine. This doctrine started in the spring autumn era. The central theme is the study and elaboration of the Huangdi Neijing and its related TCM classics. We don't really know who wrote Huangdi Neijing, but we do know in the old days, if you put anything with a yellow emperor, it sells really well. So you could say it's a marketing ploy. But this book is really good. So it's not just a marketing ploy. It's actually quite, quite good. We don't really know who wrote it. There is a documentation that maybe this person named Qin Yueneng wrote it. Okay. And there are other doctors such as Hua Tuo, the first surgeon in China, Zhang Zhongqin, the father of Xianghan doctrine, and Wang Fuyi, who actually gave us acupuncture medicine. You know, some of the, you know, medical classics physicians. So to study their work is to really go back to a real source, really old source. So this is what we call the classical doctrine. And the publications on the Neijing, the Nanjing, the classics of difficulties, the Zhongcangjin, the Xianghan and the Jiayijin. Okay, some of these are basically some of the classics that you can study. The next, the third doctrine is the formulary doctrine. It's also started around spring and autumn era. And there's really two distinct central themes, two branches, we should say. One is the study of formulas from classical literature. Such as Xianghan Zabing Lun, which includes Xianghan Lun and Jinggui Yaoyue. And the other one is a study of all experiential formulas. They're all considered to be classical formulas. Okay, anything that's experiential, anything that works really well, then I'm going to study it. So that's another branch of study. The central theme of the classical formula doctrine is to study the formula of the Xianghan Zabing Lun and Huangding Neijing. And the doctor behind that is Zhang Zhongqin. He's the initiator of the Xianghan doctrine. And his book is Xianghan Zabing Lun. That's your publication. All right, so let's go to the Xianghan Xuepai, or Cold Injury Doctrine. Again, this also started in the spring, autumn era. This is the fourth doctrine. The central theme is the study and the elaboration of disease due to cold injury, or what we call cold pathogenesis. Zhang Zhongqin, the initiated physician, and the publication, the main publication is Xianghan Lun. And there are just too many supporting physicians and supporting documentation and publication that I can list here for you. There's just too many of them. So let's move on to the fifth doctrine, He Jian Doctrine. Now, this is much later now. This is a time around 1110 AD, around the Song and the Jin dynasties. There is the whole theory that six pathogens can all transform to fire. That means it doesn't matter if you got attacked by cold, or damp, or dryness. It doesn't matter what pathogen you start. All these pathogens can transform to fire. So a lot of time, you know, if you translate into the modern medicine, you can say infection in some is a form of fire, and inflammation is some form of fire. Okay, so this is why we call a fire heat pathogenesis. Totally opposite from the cold pathogenesis of Shanghai. And the initiating doctor is Liu Wansu. And his other name is Liu He Jian. He Jian is where he was born. So a lot of time, we just call this doctrine He Jian Doctrine as the location where the doctrine started. And the main publication, he wrote a wonderful book. It's called Su Wen Xuan Ji Yuan Bing Si. The sixth doctrine is the Yi Sui Xue Pai, or Yi Sui, or what we call the Zang Hu Doctrine. It started around 1151 AD. The central theme is Zang Hu differentiation and earth school. And the main doctors in this doctrine is Zhang Yuansu and Li Dongyuan. And the main publication is Zeng Zulan and Pi Weilun. And this is where the understanding of Zang Hu, the syndrome differentiation occurring in Zang Hu really flourished, really begins and mature later through centuries after a lot of doctors provide a lot of supporting document to this doctrine. So this is the initiating of Zang Hu Doctrine. 1156 AD, let's go to the, I think it's the sixth or the seventh doctrine now, is the Gong Xie Xue Pai, or sometimes we call that the evil or the pathogen attacking doctrine, or the detoxification doctrine. Again, started about 1156 AD around the Song and the Jin dynasty. The central theme is that all diseases originates from pathogens and toxins. So the treatment is not about supporting your body. A treatment is attack, attack, get rid of it, treat the toxin, treat the evil energy. Don't worry about the body. You get rid of it quickly, the body recovers. That is a evil, that's the pathogen attacking doctrine. And the main doctor is Zhang Chongzheng. His publication is Lu Men Si Qin. Danxi Doctrine is the next one. It initiated about 1281 AD around the Yuan dynasty. This is around the Mongolian dynasty in China. The central thing is that yang is frequently excessive, and yin is frequently deficient. This is also the development of the ministerial fire concept. Okay, if you look at around the world, we have a lot of fire. We have a lot of yang energy that is very existing. It's always excessive. And we don't really focus on yin. Our yin is always deficient in everything we do. So that's the concept of Zhu Danxi. So the main doctor, his name is Zhu Zhengheng. His other name is Zhu Danxi. So a lot of time we just call it Danxi Doctrine. His publication has quite a few. For example, Ji Huang, Hua Fei, as well as Ge Zhi Yu Lun. The next doctrine is Wen Bu Xue Pai, or what we call warming tonification doctrine. This is much later now. It started around 1486 AD. The central theme is warming and tonification of the Ming and Wen fire. We believe at this time that there is this fire besides our heart that keeps our body going. There's also this kidney system fire, we call the Ming and Wen fire. Later on, a lot of people equate that to our DNA, equate that to our stem cell, and equate that basically to our reproductive endocrinology, for example. The doctors in this doctrine is numerous. Xue Ji, Sun Yikui, Zhao Xianke, Zhang Jiebing, and Li Zhongzi, for example. There's numerous publications, Nei Ke Zai Yao, Si Shui Xuan Zhu, Yi Guan, Lei Jing, and Yi Zhong Bi Du, for example, and Jin Yue Quan Shu, some of the books that this publication exists to support this doctrine. Then the next doctrine is the Wen Bin doctrine, or what we call the Wen injury doctrine. This is a time where we start to see epidemics, a lot of epidemics of flu or plague. So the central thing is how do we treat Wen diseases, infectious disease and plague pathogenesis. That's where it focuses on. So some of the very famous physicians of this time, Wu Youxin, for example, who really created the very first formula for these plagues, and Dai Tianzhang, Yu Ling, Ye Gui or Ye Tiansi, Xue Xue, Wu Tang, as well as Wang Sishiong. There are many publications in this doctrine. Wen Yi Run, Guan Wen Yi Run, Yi Zhen Yi De. So if you look at some of these titles, it's just basically talking about how to treat epidemic, how to treat rashes, how to treat epidemic rashes, how to treat fever, Wen Le Run Zhi, Si Le Tiao Bian, how to differentiate damp heat conditions, Wen Le Tiao Bian, and Wen Le Jin Wei, for example. It's all about how to treat these Wen injury diseases. And not least, the last doctrine is the Hui Tong Xue Pai, or what we call the Integrative Medicine Doctrine, initiated around 1573. That's when a lot of Western cultural influence started coming to China. The central thing is how do we integrate TCM and Western medicine. So this doctrine has been going on for quite a while now. So it's not just a thing that we look at today. But in China, since 1573, the Chinese are already looking at, wow, what's this Western medicine, and how do we really integrate and give the best what a society needs? So there are many, many doctors in this doctrine. Wang An, Zhao Xue Ming, Wang Xue Qian, Wang Qing Neng, Chen Ding Tai, Wang Hong Han, Zhu Pei Wen, for example, and Tang Zhonghai, who wrote a wonderful book on the theories of blood syndromes. Zhang Xichun. Basically, these are some of the very famous physicians that really talk about very openly how we can integrate Western medicine and with TCM. And there are many publications, such as Ben Cao Bei Yao, talk about the material medica and how to use it in a modern way. And all the way to case studies that talk about how we need to use the Western medicine names and really have understanding of some of the Western medicine medical terminologies to combine with TCM in treatment of diseases. And to this day, where that reverts when you are in America, it's about how TCM and how acupuncture, how different modalities of Chinese medicine or Korean medicine or Kenpo, Japanese medicine, Vietnamese medicine, are somehow how that is integrated into a Western medicine or conventional medicine landscape. So it's like this reversed. In China, it is the other way around. Here, it is this way around. So in some ways, it does create a very interesting creative idea of how we can best support and provide our patients with the best natural, harmless practice that we can for our patients. So in summary, by exploring the richness of this medical tradition, we can then truly appreciate the depth and the breadth of this medicine. Every time when I pick up a classic and when I read about some concept and have a new, enlightening understanding and experience with what I read, I always say to myself, oh my god, this is amazing. What I'm studying, it's an amazing treasure. And I'm always appreciative of all these masters that are willing to share their experience and allow us, they come and allow the modern people to really have a good framework on understanding this medicine. So what we learn from the past really give us the foundation to move forward. The truth is history can replay itself and sometimes does not replay itself. The most important is to take that understanding and really apply it into a modern world. There's a saying, there's no more new things to learn. A lot of things is the rehash of the old idea into a new paradigm. I don't necessarily believe that, but in TCM, there's a lot of taking some of the old ideas. It is still so relevant today. So when we have a good understanding of these old concepts and school of thoughts and about these, each doctrine, the better we can become in our skills. Thank you very much.