"How’s the clinic doing these days?"
At the dining table, Liu i started chatting.
"It’s okay, at least it’s not completely neglected," Lu Jiu replied.
"Your dad had dinner with the director of Jianghan Hospital of Traditional Chinese dicine yesterday. I heard their Traditional Chinese dicine departnt is undergoing reform. They’re urgently hiring students majoring in Traditional Chinese dicine, and if you have a practicing physician’s certificate, you can be specially hired, and they’ll help with your employnt status," Liu i said.
Lu Jiu couldn’t help but laugh, "Mom, haven’t we already discussed this? Why do you still want to go to the hospital?"
"I’m not saying you have to go now, just leaving you an option. Your dad and I discussed it; since you don’t want to work in a big city’s hospital, you should at least have a proper job in Jianghan, preferably with employnt status. The clinic is free, but it’s not very secure," Liu i explained.
Lu Jiu helplessly said, "Don’t you believe I can earn two hundred thousand in a year?"
Liu i explained, "Confidence is good, but with the fee standards set by your grandpa, how many patients would you need to earn that amount? Plus, what if the economy slumps and rent goes up? Then all the money you earn will go to the landlord."
"You know how your dad’s business has been these past few years—just breaking even is already lucky. We don’t expect you to make big money, but it’s better to play it safe. Besides, treating patients in a hospital allows you to help more people. Isn’t that good for you?"
Lu Jiu shook his head, unwilling to argue with Liu i on this issue.
Yes, there are more patients in a hospital where his abilities can be put to greater use.
But Lu Jiu doesn’t like it.
He doesn’t like the hospital atmosphere!
It’s not just about competition; the rules there make him feel very uncomfortable.
Take, for example, routine inpatient checks.
It’s one thing for Western dicine to do these, but Traditional Chinese dicine also has to prescribe them.
Why?
Hospital regulations!
No matter who you are, if you’re hospitalized, you must undergo routine checks, even if it’s just a sprained ankle—you still have to do a blood test and so on.
The intention of these checks is good, to screen for other diseases so that one can intervene and treat early, preventing mild diseases from turning severe.
However, from a Traditional Chinese dicine perspective, this screening is basically aningless.
Because Traditional Chinese dicine emphasizes diagnosing external symptoms to understand internal conditions, any symptoms of the Five Viscera would manifest externally.
Just like modern dicine’s concept of palmar erythema—even non-Chinese dicine practitioners know it indicates a liver problem. But why is it a liver issue? Western dicine can’t explain it and must conduct tests like blood tests and CT scans to conclude.
In Traditional Chinese dicine, a so-called palmar erythema actually ans the liver is not storing blood.
Blood is red. If the liver isn’t storing blood, the excess goes into the palms, making them particularly red.
Why is the liver not storing blood?
There’s a buildup!
There’s sothing accumulating in the liver, occupying the space ant for blood, hence the excess blood shows externally.
This is also a problem with the liver’s dispersing function.
But sotis, the issue with the liver’s dispersing function doesn’t lie with the liver itself.
Because the liver has two dispersal channels: one is the gallbladder, which receives bile secreted by the liver, and the other is the large intestine.
So, when treating the liver in Traditional Chinese dicine, sotis it’s not about treating the liver entity itself but restoring its dispersal function by opening its two problematic channels.
When the path is clear, traffic flows, the liver’s impurities have sowhere to go, and naturally, the blood returns to its original place.
But Western dicine doesn’t know this. If the liver has a problem, they treat the liver.
So, what’s the significance of this check?
Lu Jiu, having seen too many such cases, didn’t want to stay after obtaining his practicing physician’s certificate after two years.
Many people say modern dicine is progressive; it’s neither Western nor Chinese. Both belong to archaic dicine and should be eliminated.
Lu Jiu has heard this rhetoric countless tis, as if branding both Traditional Chinese and Western dicine as ancient and outdated can erase Traditional Chinese dicine’s efficacy.
In fact, ancient Western dicine couldn’t even be called dicine; its thods were crude, its theories backward, nowhere near the surgical precision of Traditional Chinese dicine. Yes, you heard that right, Traditional Chinese dicine has surgery. Or rather, Western dicine’s predecessor was actually Traditional Chinese dicine’s surgery.
Many dical artifacts unearthed today have already confird that Traditional Chinese dicine’s surgical technology was quite mature as early as the Ming Dynasty.
Due to so historical reasons, these dical knowledge traveled abroad and returned as ’foreign children,’ with others wielding new theories like anatomy, bacteriology, virology, etc., declaring "I’m the parent" to your face.
With technological advances, Western dicine hitched this ride, rapidly becoming the world’s mainstream dicine!
It’s what many people an by modern dicine, which upholds anatomy and other doctrines as classics!
It could be said, modern dicine is a product of Western dicine technological evolution, while Traditional Chinese dicine always remained separate.
All hospitals now, essentially, are Western dicine-dominant with Traditional Chinese dicine as a supplent, even Traditional Chinese dicine hospitals are like this, except for a few pure Traditional Chinese dicine hospitals, which are pitifully scarce on a nationwide scale. All rules are set based on evidence-based dicine.
What is evidence-based dicine?
It’s basically needing evidence, data. When patients co in, you need reports. Even if a disease isn’t cured, there’s sothing to prove it’s not my fault. Even if so people want to sue the hospital, this can prevent legal disputes.
Yes, this greatly protects doctors so that failing to treat a patient doesn’t ruin their entire career; otherwise, no one would want to study dicine.
Therefore, routine inpatient checks are mandatory, and you must pay the cost even if you don’t want to.
But does preemptively setting patients as adversaries have room for improvent?
For instance, could mandatory checks be changed to optional ones?
Indeed, dical disputes are not uncommon now, and doctors’ groups often have grievances they can’t voice. They don’t receive the testing money; they’re working-class earning basic wages. But if you didn’t perform the checks, and the patient later causes trouble, who bears the responsibility?
But in regions unreported by dia, families impoverished by illness outnumber dical disputes. This group has beco too widespread to be newsworthy unless they’re sensational enough.
There was once a news story about a university student who accidentally hit soone with a bike. He voluntarily covered the dical expenses, but at the hospital, the doctor ordered over a thousand in tests for the victim. The student, enraged, took a knife and held the doctor accountable, demanding an explanation from the director why such excessive tests were needed for a bicycle accident. This incident even alard the local police.
What about Traditional Chinese dicine?
Many aspects can’t be evidenced.
For example, why does Chinese dicine say the liver stores blood when many organs have blood upon dissection? Why insist the liver stores blood rather than the heart?
Or what about "left liver, right lung," when anatomically, the liver is clearly in the upper right abdon?
If Traditional Chinese dicine can’t even determine basic locations, how can it talk about dicine?
This is like using tennis rules to question table tennis. Both are ball gas, but in table tennis, you’re told hitting the ball off the table is a foul!
The Traditional Chinese dicine concept of left liver, right lung isn’t about physical organs but their qi.
The liver belongs to wood, on the left, symbolizing east, governing rise. The lung belongs to tal, on the right, symbolizing west, governing descent.
Left liver, right lung actually refers to rising on the left and descending on the right, describing the functional characteristics of the two organs.
Just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the body’s qi mirrors nature.
The underlying logic of Traditional Chinese dicine, essentially the "Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor," was derived from ancient observations of heaven and earth and then combined with human characteristics, summarizing a user’s manual for the human body. It discusses how a healthy person falls ill.
Western dicine fundantally studies in laboratories, focusing narrowly and from a micro perspective.
Using micro-world rules to constrain ideas derived from the macro-world seems sowhat inappropriate.
That’s why, working in many formal hospitals, if you sincerely care about patients, Chinese dicine often feels awkward.
Perhaps, over ti, one might adapt.
But Lu Jiu cannot!
The Chinese dicine he loves isn’t a cold, unfeeling science.
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