Chapter 728: Stomping in Anger

Chapter 728: Chapter 728: Stomping in Anger

Director Liang was well-informed and naturally had high standards. Initially, he had somewhat suspected that the outside world’s evaluation of Li Xu might be hyped or exaggerated. But now, Director Liang completely realized that Li Xu’s skill level was not only stronger than that of his prized pupils, but it existed on an entirely different dimension.

Although the male student’s "stagnation of liver qi and dull pain in the ribs" from earlier was merely a simple, minor clinical issue, Li Xu was not only able to accurately diagnose the syndrome but could also list several treatment methods in one breath, such as medication, acupuncture, and Guiding. Furthermore, he ultimately chose the simplest "foot-stomping method of Guiding" to relieve the student’s pain on the spot, which was far from simple.

Many people knew that traditional Chinese medicine emphasized "one prescription for one person," as well as "treating the same disease with different methods, and treating different diseases with the same method." There were frequent jokes on the internet mocking traditional Chinese medicine, saying things like: "When Western doctors treat a patient, ten doctors looking at the same cold might prescribe the exact same medicine. But if it’s traditional Chinese medicine doctors, ten doctors could write ten completely different prescriptions, and they might even start arguing among themselves over whose prescription is more correct."

On the surface, this joke mocked the lack of standardization and uniformity in traditional Chinese medicine, but the phenomenon it reflected was not entirely unfounded. The methods of traditional Chinese medicine were indeed not rigidly confined to a single prescription or a single approach. The exact same symptom could have several, or even dozens, of different treatments. Just like the "soothing the liver and regulating qi" that Li Xu mentioned earlier—one could drink herbal tea, take decoctions, get acupuncture, or practice Guiding. The methods were vast and varied.

These methods of traditional Chinese medicine formed a massive arsenal, tailored specifically to each individual patient. The symptom might still be liver stagnation, but when facing a teenage girl who hated bitter medicine versus a male student who could freely move around in a seminar room, the treatments would be completely different. This was actually the most remarkable aspect of traditional Chinese medicine, the part that best reflected personalized and precise medical care.

For a simple symptom, Li Xu could effortlessly conjure up multiple methods and even creatively apply the art of Guiding to achieve immediate results. This fully proved that Li Xu’s theoretical foundation was profoundly deep and his clinical thinking was extremely broad and flexible. His skill level was absolutely top-tier. Ordinary doctors would, at best, blindly copy the textbook, rigidly applying a few common prescriptions whenever they encountered a symptom. Only a doctor who had truly mastered and integrated their knowledge, who could be infinitely adaptable and flexible according to the actual situation, could be called a true master.

"That was amazing." The male student who had stomped his feet and farted earlier no longer cared about his embarrassment. His face was filled with astonishment as he said, "Senior Li Xu, I’m completely convinced. This Guiding technique is simply divine."

"Incredible!" The other students in the audience were equally amazed and erupted into enthusiastic applause. It was their first time seeing with their own eyes that treating an illness didn’t necessarily require taking medicine or getting injections. Merely changing one’s movements and breathing could instantly alleviate pain.

"Actually, many people know this method, and many have even unknowingly used it in their daily lives," Li Xu said with a smile, pressing his hands down to quiet the room. "It’s just that people usually know how it happens but not why it happens, so they don’t pay much attention to it."

"We’ve used it?" Many students were a bit confused and looked at each other. Who would stomp their feet in place every day for no reason?

"Everyone must have heard a common folk saying describing someone who is extremely angry. How does it go?" Li Xu asked with a smile.

"So angry that you stomp your feet," a girl in the front row blurted out.

"Right, so angry that you stomp your feet." Many students echoed the phrase Li Xu had prompted.

Everyone naturally knew this phrase; it was an incredibly common everyday expression. In the eyes of many, it was just a hyperbolic figure of speech used to describe a person’s behavior when pushed to the absolute limit of anger. But for Li Xu to mention it now, combined with the male student’s real-life case of "stomping to cure rib pain," everyone couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.

"In fact, many seemingly ordinary idioms and life phenomena passed down from our ancestors often contain profoundly deep medical principles," Li Xu said slowly, taking two steps across the podium. "For instance, ’so angry my stomach hurts,’ ’so angry I could stomp my feet,’ or even the more extreme ’so angry my balls ache.’ These phrases were not casually fabricated hyperbolic rhetoric by scholars and poets; they were the ancients’ most authentic observations and summaries of the human body’s physiological responses."

Li Xu recalled the incident back in the emergency department of the Feng City Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He had encountered President Gao Tang, who had been so infuriated by Ding Kaifang that his testicles had retracted, causing him excruciating pain. It was a living, classic example of being "so angry your balls ache."

"You all study medicine, so you should all know a classic proposition from the ’Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor’: ’Anger makes qi rise,’" Li Xu explained deeply. "When a person is in a state of extreme anger, the qi mechanism within their body instantly becomes disordered. A massive amount of liver qi, mixed with qi and blood, will uncontrollably surge upwards.

"If this qi becomes blocked in the chest and ribs, it will trigger the kind of swelling and pain that this student just experienced.

"If this qi rushes up to the head and face, a person becomes red in the face with a bulging neck, like a balloon being forcibly pumped with air, liable to burst at any moment.

"This is also why many people with underlying high blood pressure have an extremely high risk of cerebral hemorrhage or stroke when they are intensely angry.

"Because the qi and blood all rush into the brain, bursting the blood vessels."

The students present naturally understood this principle. "Anger makes qi rise" was the most basic common knowledge in traditional Chinese medicine. If someone studying traditional Chinese medicine didn’t know this, their studies would truly have been in vain. However, being able to genuinely connect rigid textbook knowledge with life phenomena and flexibly apply it to clinical treatment was not as simple as just talking about it. It required an incredibly high level of comprehension.

"When angry qi surges upward, the yin and yang qi mechanism between the upper and lower parts of the human body will suffer a severe imbalance, resulting in excess in the upper body and deficiency in the lower body." Li Xu’s voice echoed in the seminar room, carrying a penetrating clarity that dispelled the clouds of confusion. "Following this imbalance, the body’s instinctive defense mechanism will activate, subconsciously initiating self-rescue.

"Therefore, when a person gets extremely mad, angry to a certain degree, they will uncontrollably and subconsciously stomp their feet forcefully. This is actually the body engaging in an instinctive ’self-regulation.’

"The younger a person is, the better their physical fitness and the more vigorous their qi and blood, the stronger this instinctual bodily self-rescue will be. When the qi mechanism wildly surges upward and potentially endangers the brain, viciously stomping the feet forcefully vibrates the meridians in the lower limbs. This generates a powerful downward pull, directing the surging qi mechanism back down the meridians. This achieves the goal of guiding qi back to its origin and calming the liver to suppress hyperactive yang, thus resolving the crisis in the upper body."