The Warm Doctor who loves Warming

The clinic is a busy place, patients are coming in and out, and although Chinese people seem to be accustomed to the lack of privacy, sometimes a private conversation is called for. Dr. Wang has a wonderful skill, of something like, " look over there," to distract the students and even the other patients from her questions.

Many female teenagers come in, accompanied by their parents. Although we all know these girls are all very good, sometime teenage boys can be pretty aggressive. Often as they are leaving, she calls them back and asks quietly "do you have a boyfriend? You know, not all boys are nice..."

Also, often we see people who have who have recently experienced some tragedy in their family- the loss of a spouce, son or daughter, or someone recently hospitalized. Just before she asks a personal question, Dr. Wang gives the students a little lecture on the particular disease- headache, stomach pain or bloating- sending them checking formula and internal medicine books, and causing my translator to give me a long speech. Then she can reassure the patient, without the eyes of the whole room, that their life will improve and better things are on their way.
Perhaps there is a connection to between her personality and her penchant for warming herbs. For most conditions of the digestions, which are the most common seen in her clinic, she uses warming and aromatic herb like hou po, pei lan, and zi su ye. Even conditions of extreme heat, aromatic herbs are used, just combined with very cold draining herbs like huang lian and da huang.

Two remarkable cases who benefited form the warming. One I mentioned earlier, the man with CHF who she used gui zhi to warm the yang. The next week he returned to the clinic, significantly improved. Less edema, he could walk better and his consciousness was more aroused. After the next few weeks of treatment, his treatment even began to focus on cervical vertebrae diseases, beyond the CHF he originally came in for. The second is a woman who has long time suffered from gall bladder disease, but she was coming in for symptoms from a common cold. When it was warm outside, she would come in with 4 or 5 layers of thick clothing, unable to get warm. Eventually Dr. Wang added fu zi, xi xin, and gan jiang to the formula- the next week she came in with only one layer of cloths, appropriate for the season.