The First Map
Around the year 200, the physician Zhang Zhongjing composed the work that would become the Shang Han Lun, the Treatise on Cold Damage.
For centuries, it was one of the books physicians reached for when acute illness arrived.
Its great map was the Six Stages: a way of following a cold-damage illness as its pattern changed and moved deeper into the body.
It remained indispensable. But some epidemics did not behave the way the old map predicted.
The Heretic of 1642
In the final years of the Ming dynasty, epidemics swept through China, and the old prescriptions were not always enough.
A doctor named Wu Youke watched it happen. In 1642 he wrote the Wen Yi Lun, the Treatise on Pestilence, and proposed something the textbooks had never proposed.
These illnesses were not cold. They were a pestilential Qi, and they were entering through the nose and the mouth.
His book was controversial. It was also generations ahead of its time.
It Attacks From Above
A century later, the physician Ye Tianshi gave Warm Disease medicine its mature form.
Warm pathogens, he taught, attack from above and first disturb the Lung.
In the Wen Bing picture, the early sore throat, the cough, the signs in the nose all belong to that surface Lung stage.
The Lung is where the outside world gets its first chance at us.
Four Levels In
Ye also gave the school its great map.
Illness, he taught, moves through four levels: Wei (the defensive level), Qi (the energy level), Ying (the nutritive level), and Xue (the blood level).
Wei is the most superficial, the defensive level, often showing itself through the Lung and the exterior. Xue is the deepest and most serious.
Each deeper level marks a more serious penetration of the illness. So the whole art becomes timing.
The Formula for the First Hours
In 1798, Wu Jutong completed the work that became the Wen Bing Tiao Bian, the Systematic Differentiation of Warm Diseases, and organized the school into a clinical text.
In it he recorded a formula for early wind-heat at the Wei level, and it became one of Chinese medicine's best-known prescriptions for that presentation.
Yin Qiao San, the Honeysuckle and Forsythia Powder. Acrid and cool. Written for the first prickle in the throat, the first flush of warmth, the hours before anything has settled in.
Not a tonic that builds us up over months. A responder for the moment something gets in.
That is the formula Immune Defense w/ Echinacea draws on.
Two Strategies
One enduring distinction in Chinese medicine is between two complementary strategies.
Fu Zheng, supporting the upright Qi (Zheng Qi): the strength that keeps the outer levels closed in the first place.
Qu Xie, expelling the pathogen (Xie Qi): clearing what has already crossed the line.
Most months, the Jing Insider lives in the first strategy. This September, the Herb of the Month is the second, and the lineup beneath it is the first.
Autumn in Chinese medicine belongs to the Lung. The air dries, the windows close, the season of the throat begins.
It's a good month to know both strategies.
The Lung's Season
Autumn in Chinese medicine belongs to the Lung. The air dries, the windows close, the season of the throat begins.
It's a good month to know both strategies.
September's Herb Of The Month
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Free When You Spend $75 or more:
Immune Defense w/ Echinacea The responder for the first level
Immune Defense w/ Echinacea pairs the classical Yin Qiao San architecture with Echinacea, a Western botanical widely used for immune support, in a single formula built for the moment something gets in. Lonicera flower and Forsythia fruit, the Yin and the Qiao of the original, lead the work of expelling pathogens, clearing heat, and resolving toxins.
Chinese mint, Schizonepeta, and Prepared Soybean vent and dispel what sits at the exterior, Platycodon root and Burdock seed ease the throat and clear the upper chest, and Bamboo leaf with Phragmites rhizome cool the system and protect the body's fluids while Chinese Licorice root harmonizes the whole.
90 Vegetarian Capsules 450 mg per capsule
Usage: Take 3 capsules two times per day or as directed by your primary health care professional.
Ideal for: Anyone seeking botanical immune support during cold and flu season.
TCM Functions: Acridly and coolly resolve the exterior, clear heat, resolve toxins.
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