Chapter 41: An Incurable Illness That Was Not So Hard to Treat

Although Zuo Shaoyang had identified the illness as wind stroke, its cause and underlying mechanism were still unclear. He needed to investigate further.

“What was your mother’s health usually like?” he asked the man.

“She used to be quite well. Then two years ago, my father… Well, his business failed, and we lost everything. Her health went downhill after that. She eats little, always complains of dizziness and blurred vision, and gets exhausted after walking a few steps. She used to be heavier than this, though even now you’d call her stout. Climbing up and down the mountain wore her out. She didn’t want to stay in Laohuai Village on the summit, so she came with us to the works to wash clothes for people. Who’d have thought this would happen? You miserable woman! If anything happens to my mother, you’ll pay with your life!”

His wife dropped to her knees under his furious stare.

“I didn’t mean it! I… I only said that one thing. I didn’t know Mother would be so angry. I deserve to die! I deserve it!”

She struck her own face as she spoke, hard slaps ringing through the room. Soon blood was running from her nose and mouth.

Huixiang rounded on the man. “If you want to discipline your wife, do it at home! This is a medicine shop. We treat patients here. What do you think you’re doing?”

He dared not offend her now. With an awkward smile, he glared at his wife, who was still slapping herself.

“Enough! I’ll deal with you when we get back. Get out of the way!”

Only then did she stop. She crawled aside and huddled in a corner, sobbing softly.

By now, Shaoyang had worked out what had happened. The old woman had once been comfortably stout; in traditional medicine, stout people were considered prone to phlegm. She was “ample without, deficient within”, with pre-existing spleen deficiency and an internal accumulation of phlegm-dampness. Anger had injured the liver, liver qi had transformed into wind, and emotional fire had burned within, thickening the fluids into phlegm. Phlegm-fire had clouded the heart internally and spread into the channels externally, bringing on the stroke.

Internal wind had surged upwards; deficient yang had risen unchecked. Qi and blood were in disorder, with phlegm and fire causing the trouble. Treatment needed to nourish yin and anchor yang, clear and descend, extinguish wind and dispel phlegm.

On reflection, this was a common, frequently occurring illness. Its pattern was not especially difficult to distinguish, and the patient was not on the brink of death. Why had Huimin Hall and the other clinics all claimed they could not treat her?

He looked back at the men. They were covered in dirt, their clothes in rags, their faces and hair so unkempt that they looked barely presentable. The old woman wore a coarse cloth skirt and jacket. She did not even have an iron hairpin, only a roughly twisted bun wrapped in an old scrap of cloth. Their poverty could hardly have been more obvious.

Treating wind stroke took time. The acute phase alone generally lasted half a month; when the organs were involved, it could last a month. Recovery might take six months, and treatment of the after-effects one or two years, or longer. There would be no consultation fees to earn, only medicine to supply at their own expense. With prolonged treatment, that expense could be considerable.

Shaoyang had never run a clinic of his own and had little real understanding of what it meant to make a living through medicine. Even knowing that they would probably receive nothing and lose money on the drugs, even with his own family desperate for cash, he could not bring himself to turn the patient away. Once he began thinking about how to cure her, everything else slipped from his mind.

He weighed the merits of several prescriptions and settled on a course of treatment.

“Your mother’s condition is serious,” he told the man. “The sooner she takes medicine, the better. Shall I give her some first?”

The man did not even ask what medicine he proposed.

“Let’s wait until your father comes back and examines her, young brother.” He hurried to the doorway and peered out. “Why isn’t he here yet?”

Shaoyang was taken aback. He had put so much thought into the treatment, and the man would not so much as ask about it.

Winning a patient’s trust was no easy matter for a young physician. Insisting that he was capable would do no good and might make things worse. Under these circumstances, he could neither administer medicine openly nor risk doing it in secret. A well-meant act could easily go wrong.

Besides, he had never treated this illness himself. He had a theory and a prescription in mind, but no certainty that his diagnosis was right or the medicine would work. He dared not act on his own.

It seemed he would have to use the old method: let his father examine the patient, then quietly substitute the treatment.

A little later, hurried footsteps sounded on the stone pavement outside. A grey-bearded old man rushed in—Zuo Gui—with Miao Peilan behind him, pushing the handcart loaded with the table, chairs and other things.

“My father’s back!” Shaoyang went to meet him.

The patient’s son brightened at once and hurried forward with clasped hands.

“Physician Zuo, please save her!”

“No need for formalities.” Zuo Gui waved a hand. “What happened?”

The man briefly repeated the account. After asking a few questions, Zuo Gui looked over the group and frowned. Stroking his grey beard, he slowly shook his head.

“When the pathogenic influence is in the connecting vessels, the flesh becomes numb. In the channels, the limbs grow too heavy to lift. When it enters the fu organs, the patient fails to recognise people; when it enters the zang organs, the tongue cannot speak and saliva spills from the mouth. Wind stroke has caused this. But… I fear I, too, can do nothing.”

Every sentence had seemed to match his mother’s symptoms, and the man had begun to hope. The last words crushed that hope. He dropped to his knees and knocked his forehead against the floor.

“Please, Physician Zuo! Everyone says you have a good heart. Save my mother!”

The others knelt with him.

Huixiang secretly breathed a sigh of relief at her father’s decision. She winked at him and, keeping her hand out of the visitors’ sight, signalled that he should refuse the case.

“I’m very sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile, “but as my father has explained, we really cannot cure this illness…”

They stared at her, stunned, their last hope sinking away. By the door, Peilan’s face darkened too. She looked towards Shaoyang.

Ever since he had met her, he had seen her smiling—sometimes brightly, sometimes shyly. He had never seen that look on her face. Something tightened painfully in his chest.

“Father, please try to treat her.”

“Treat her with what?” Huixiang caught his arm and leaned close to his ear. “Brother, once we take this on, it won’t be over in eight or ten days, and a handful of medicine won’t do it! Do you think Doctor Ni and the others really can’t treat her? They’re avoiding the expense. We can’t even keep a roof over our own heads, and you want to build someone else a mansion? Think of us first!”

Shaoyang lost his temper as well.

“We’re physicians!” he said loudly. “Are we supposed to stand by and let someone die?”

Tears seemed to glisten in Peilan’s eyes.

Zuo Gui’s thin body gave a slight tremor. His hand stopped in his beard, then slowly fell to his side.

Huixiang flushed and flung out a hand. “Fine! You’re so capable—save her yourself!”

“I would! But they don’t trust me, so what the hell can I do?” Shaoyang said bitterly.

The man looked embarrassed and was about to explain when Zuo Gui spoke.

“Zhong is right. Very well. I will prescribe something and try. But I must make this clear beforehand: your mother is gravely ill. I cannot say whether my prescription will help. If it does not, forgive me, but there will be nothing more I can do. You will have to seek someone more skilled.”

The man looked sorrowfully at his mother on the bed and nodded heavily.

In the corner, his wife lay bowed to the floor, fighting to control herself. At last her hurt and misery broke through in muffled sobs. Afraid her husband would scold her again, she bit her lip to suppress them, making the sound more painful still.

Zuo Gui walked slowly to the table and took up his brush. Cinnamon twig invariably headed his prescriptions, though this time he made a slight alteration and used cinnamon heart instead.

Cinnamon heart, cinnamon twig and cinnamon bark all came from the same tree. The twig was the dried young branch. Removing the rough outer surface from the bark produced cinnamon bark; stripping away its outer and inner layers left the central portion known as cinnamon heart. Their medicinal uses differed: cinnamon twig released the exterior, cinnamon heart supplemented yang and invigorated blood, while cinnamon bark warmed the interior.

His brush moved swiftly. When the prescription was finished, he held it up, examined it and sighed.

“Dispense it…” He passed the paper to Shaoyang, his face downcast. “Ah…”

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