Chapter 327 - Traditional Chinese Medicine

Liu San found Dong Weiwei and presented her with the medicines he had prepared—simple formulations made from locally available herbs, processed into powders and pills for ease of use.

"These are basic herbal remedies I've compounded." He transferred several paper packets and wooden boxes from his basket to her outstretched hands. "You have some TCM knowledge, don't you?"

"A little." Dong Weiwei's cheeks colored with embarrassment. "Honestly, I only picked up some acupuncture, cupping, and Tui Na massage techniques—for athletic conditioning, mostly."

"Can you read a pulse?"

"Just the basics."

"Then you should start with this." Liu San handed her a well-worn manual. "The Barefoot Doctor's Manual covers diagnostic and treatment methods for common ailments. Observation, auscultation, inquiry, palpation—proper diagnosis doesn't always require pulse-reading. Rural communities see the same afflictions again and again. And here—" he produced a second volume, "—is Diagnosis and Treatment of Common Diseases in Hainan, compiled by Minister Shi. Study both."

"Excellent. Medical skills will prove invaluable for community work."

"This is the medical alcohol, absorbent cotton, and swabs you requisitioned..." Liu San consulted a list. "Here are my compounded medicines and their indications: antipyretics, diaphoretics, dampness-dispelling preparations, purgatives, heat-clearing agents, sedatives. Unfortunately, the local pharmacopoeia is woefully incomplete—some formulations simply can't be prepared. Where the herbs are readily available, I've included the raw prescriptions instead."

Finally, he withdrew a small wooden box with a conspiratorial wink. "A gift from the Ministry of Health—your medical kit. There are some experimental products inside."

Dong Weiwei lifted the lid with evident curiosity. Alongside the expected supplies, she found gauze masks—rough but functional, of recent manufacture—and a case containing simple surgical instruments, gleaming and new.

"This equipment is precious. Isn't it wasted on an amateur like me?" She knew the value of proper surgical tools.

"These are Lingao-made!" Liu San's satisfaction was palpable. "Examine them closely."

"Is this... copper?"

"Bronze," he confirmed. "Frankly, I'm astonished the pharmaceutical equipment workshop could produce such work. Jiang Ye at the machinery factory collaborated with jewelers recruited from Guangzhou, I'm told."

"Remarkable!" Dong Weiwei's eyes shone as she surveyed the wealth of supplies. "The Ministry of Health has outdone itself. This will be an enormous help."

"I'll be conducting epidemiological research here over the coming days, so I can teach you some fundamental medical techniques while I'm at it." Liu San had trained in pharmacy, though the hospital had given him a crash course in basic surgical procedures.

Thus began Liu San's medical practice in the Thirteen Villages region. He saw patients both at the church and on rounds through the countryside, accompanying Dong Weiwei on her inspection tours. Their reputation spread rapidly. Liu San documented every observation meticulously—he bore responsibility for the basic sanitary survey as well.

Through his rounds, Liu San confronted the brutal reality of what "shortage of doctors and medicine" truly meant. The villagers knew doctors existed in the world, that such men could heal the sick, but precious few had ever been examined by one. Even itinerant medicine-sellers rarely ventured here. When illness struck, people simply waited for recovery or death; sometimes they resorted to folk remedies of dubious efficacy. Infectious diseases ran rampant. Chronic conditions went untreated. Parasitic infections were endemic. Infant mortality was appalling, maternal deaths grimly common, and gynecological ailments nearly universal. Dong Weiwei, as a woman, felt this suffering keenly and suggested repeatedly that they station professional nurses in the area.

Liu San remained unmoved by such proposals. His own staff at Bairen was stretched thin, medicines scarce—how could he spare personnel? Besides, practicing medicine wasn't his primary mission. What consumed his attention was the collection of folk remedies. Useful or not, whenever he encountered a traditional cure, he transcribed it carefully and verified each ingredient. He dismissed none, however outlandish, and managed to accumulate a respectable pharmacopoeia.

One morning, he sat in the ancestral hall seeing patients. The morning had been busy; for those whose ailments matched his medicines, he dispensed a few doses; for the others, he could only offer licorice root—a pure placebo. The villagers asked little. To have a doctor at all was blessing enough, let alone one who charged nothing. He had just unwrapped a rice ball for his midday meal when a commotion erupted outside.

"Make way! Make way! Is the doctor here?"

The urgency in that voice meant a critical case. Liu San swallowed his bite and called out: "Here! Bring them in!"

Several men burst through the doorway, carrying a patient between them.

"Put him on the board. Let me see." Liu San strode forward.

The patient was a boy of eleven or twelve, his facial muscles twitching in violent spasms, jaw locked in a rictus grin—the classic risus sardonicus. His breathing came in labored, strangled gasps. Liu San's stomach dropped. These were the unmistakable signs of tetanus.

"Where is the wound?"

The bearers pointed to the boy's foot, wrapped in a filthy rag. Liu San tore it away. A deep puncture wound gaped at him. Upon questioning, he learned a rake had inflicted it. The diagnosis was certain.

"Tetanus." Liu San's expression turned grim. The toxins were already taking hold. Even in a modern hospital, once symptoms manifested, survival was doubtful. Here he was empty-handed—no hydrogen peroxide to cleanse the wound, no antitoxin to neutralize the poison.

"Doctor, please save my child." The middle-aged man who had carried him in dropped to his knees, voice breaking. Several women, old and young, knelt beside him—the boy's family, all weeping.

"Stay calm." Liu San forced his thoughts into order, rifling through his mental catalogue of TCM treatments for tetanus. He seized a brush and scrawled a prescription. "Get this filled immediately! There may still be time!"

The man who took the paper looked stricken. Liu San had been here long enough to understand—these people were destitute. Filling a prescription was fantasy for most of them. Quickly, he stamped the paper with his personal seal.

"Take this to the raw medicine shop in the county seat. Give them the prescription directly." The shopkeeper dealt regularly with Liu San; extending credit for a few doses would pose no difficulty.

The father tried to prostrate himself in gratitude. "Go!" Liu San ordered. "Delay costs lives!" Then he turned on the crowd pressing close. "Out! Everyone out! What good is this gawking?" Tetanus patients required absolute stillness, free from any stimulation. He considered his options. The wound needed immediate disinfection. Without hydrogen peroxide, potassium permanganate would have to serve—precious stuff now, and his kit held little of it. As he deliberated, Dong Weiwei appeared in the doorway.

"Doctor Liu, come eat. I made fried rice noodles—" She froze at the sight of the convulsing child on the makeshift stretcher.

"Tetanus," Liu San said tersely. "I need your help."

"Of course." Dong Weiwei hastily donned the blue cloth gown hanging on the wall. She had no proper white coat, but since Liu San's arrival, she followed his protocol—gown, mask, and cap whenever treating patients.

"We need to move him somewhere quiet. Any stimulation will worsen the spasms." The ancestral hall, optimized for receiving patients, had windows and doors thrown wide. Light streamed in from every direction.

"The east wing of the church. It's unoccupied." Dong Weiwei immediately summoned two soldiers to transport the boy. Liu San ordered paper pasted over the windows, dimming the room as much as possible.

"Prepare a one-to-one-thousand potassium permanganate solution. Quickly." He examined the wound more closely. Filth clogged the puncture—soil, rust, organic debris. Iron implements, agricultural tools, farm fields. The combination was almost designed to breed tetanus.

Dong Weiwei retrieved the permanganate bottle from the medical kit, found an enamel basin and clean water. Then she stopped. "Damn—no measuring cup, no scale!"

"Start with a single crystal, then dilute gradually. Watch the color. Light red is correct; purple means too concentrated."

Solution prepared, Liu San first debrided the wound, then flushed it continuously with the antiseptic wash. The child twitched intermittently on the door board. Dong Weiwei moved to hold him steady.

"It's manageable. Check his tongue—is the coating yellow and rough?"

She pried open his clenched teeth with difficulty using a tongue depressor.

"No!"

"Body temperature? Fever?"

"Yes." She touched his forehead. "Do we need the thermometer?"

"Is he sweating?"

"Sweating, but not profusely."

Liu San studied the boy's complexion. No cyanosis yet—no ominous blue-purple discoloration marked the progression to what TCM termed "wind toxin entering the interior." They remained in the early phase. The probability of successful treatment with traditional methods was still reasonable. He allowed himself a fraction of relief.

"No need for the thermometer. In TCM terms, we're still at 'wind toxin in the exterior'—initial stage. Feel his pulse. What do you find?"

Dong Weiwei understood he was using the crisis as a teaching moment. She pressed her fingers to the boy's wrist, concentrating. "I'm not confident, but... it feels wiry and rapid."

"That confirms the severity of his condition." Much depended on how quickly the medicine arrived. "A round trip takes about half a day at best. If he can hold on, this child might survive."

Dong Weiwei gazed at the small figure—thin, ragged, barely more than bones wrapped in skin. Compassion welled in her chest. "Doesn't Bairen General Hospital have antitoxin serum? One dose, one injection—wouldn't that settle it?"

Liu San gave a harsh laugh. "Our tetanus antitoxin supply is finite. A fair amount has been used since D-Day. We must reserve what remains for our own."

"Surely one dose wouldn't matter?" She knew the serum's value perfectly well.

"One dose could also save a life. Whose life do you choose?"

Dong Weiwei fell silent. The question was brutal, and brutally real.

"This is precisely why I must seize every opportunity to test TCM therapies." Liu San finished flushing the wound but left it open, neither bandaged nor sutured. "The serum will run out eventually. When it does, herbal medicine is all we'll have."

Under his guidance, Dong Weiwei then performed acupuncture on the patient to control the spasms.

Late that night, the medicine finally arrived. Liu San ground the herbs to fine powder himself, sifted and blended them, then administered the mixture with heated wine and applied powder directly to the wound.

"This is a refinement of a traditional patent prescription—Yuzhen Powder, or 'Jade True Powder.'" He handed the formula to Dong Weiwei. "Study it. Tetanus is common here. Master these techniques and you'll be equipped to handle cases on your own."

Days passed with regular doses and applications. Liu San also ordered regular administration of saline water. Gradually, the spasms subsided; the rigidity faded; the boy began to mend. Liu San felt a surge of validation. He had known, theoretically, that TCM could treat tetanus—but he had never witnessed an actual case. The evidence before him doubled his confidence. At least one disease threatening the Transmigration Group's future health had a viable treatment. He documented the entire course meticulously: pulse records, prescriptions, medications, every procedure and measure employed. Someday, this case would serve as a model for training future physicians.

Watching the boy improve day by day, Liu San felt an attachment quite different from that of a normal doctor-patient relationship. He had pulled this life back from the edge. He found himself visiting the ward often, sitting and talking with the child. To navigate the county, collect herbs, and treat patients, Liu San had acquired passable Lingao dialect, so conversation posed no difficulty.

Through their talks, he learned the boy's surname was Fu—one of the great family names in Lingao, shared by rich and poor alike. As for a given name, there was none. Not even something crude like "Leftover" or "Stone." He ranked fourth among his siblings. Hence: Fu Sinan—"Fu Fourth Male."

Despite his name, Fu Sinan was actually the second surviving child in the family. He was eleven or twelve. Of the three elder brothers born before him, two had died before reaching fifteen. Three younger siblings still lived. The family's circumstances mirrored those of most villagers—abject poverty. Their home was bamboo and thatch, their diet sweet potatoes and taro for half the year, with frequent hunger even then. A standard specimen of peasant life under the old regime.

Over several days of conversation, Liu San discovered that this child possessed genuine aptitude for gardening—he tended the family vegetable plot. More remarkably, he was willing to talk, to engage openly with a stranger. In Liu San's experience, common folk of this era were usually sullen gourds, answering only when questioned directly, or simply staring in silence.

Finding such an expressive, communicative child lifted Liu San's spirits. He recalled the Executive Committee's call for everyone to "take apprentices," and reflected that a boy skilled in cultivation would be invaluable for growing medicinal herbs. He asked:

"Can you read?"

"No." Fu Sinan shook his head.

"Would you like to learn?"

"There's no money for learning..."

"What if you became my apprentice instead? You could be a doctor someday too."