Internal Medicine

I've been in the internal medicine department for two weeks now. Internal medicine in China is only herbal prescriptions, there is no acupuncture or massage. Because Chinese medicine doctors in China can use both Western and Chinese medicine, these doctors use a lot of medical tests- blood tests, x-rays, CT-scans, MRI's, and anything else. One reason is to help them understand the disease, but also they are the PCP of these patients, so they need to know if the patient needs additional intervention.

It is just as busy as the acupuncture, seeing 20-30 patients per day, mostly coming in with GI, kidney, and respiratory diseases, but also a handful of stroke, endocrine, and random other problems. These disease range from ones we mostly read about in the USA, such as the acute one set of stroke, hepatitis B and gallbladder disease, as well as random infections diseases such as schistosomiasis, to others which we see daily in the USA such as back and neck pain, common cold, colitis, ulcers, and prostatitis.

My teacher, Wang Xiao Jun, is a seasoned internal medicine doctor. She loves to explain her diagnosis and formulas, as well as quiz my knowledge. Her formulas are quite elegant with a seamless flow between applying the diseases and symptoms to traditional theories as well as modern science. In short, her formulas are hen lihai (literally very fierce, but can be understood to be awesome, great, or rocking). She is a strong advocate of the theory that chronic diseases cause qi vacuity and blood stagnation, so she frequently ads yu jin or dan shen to formulas as well as dang shen and bai zhu, even when there is no obvious blood stasis signs nor signs of qi vacuity. Her prescriptions often contain a many combinations of treatment methods, aromatic herbs with cold draining herbs to help digestion, qi and blood tonifiers combined with moving herbs, and digestive herbs with blood movers.