A Certain Ancestral Chinese Medical Secret Prescription That Cures Schizophrenia or Depression ©2019 Li Changzhen

Preface

It was not until 2016, when I was on vacation in the Philippines and happened to read a paper on schizophrenia, that I learned this illness is regarded by the global medical community as an incurable disease. This was far beyond my expectations! From as early as I can remember in childhood, there was an endless stream of people with mental illness coming to my home village to buy herbal pills prepared from an ancestral secret prescription from a local folk doctor. Most of them were cured within two weeks after taking the medicine — this includes one of my own close relatives!

Forty years have passed. In today’s era of highly advanced technology, how did this illness become “incurable”? Later, I came to understand that tens of millions of psychiatric patients around the world are suffering in torment, and their family and friends are utterly exhausted and deeply worried. Because the disease is deemed incurable, the medical costs borne by governments are also long-term and enormous. Still later, I came to know of a certain case whose tragic outcome further strengthened my resolve to write this book.

A friend of mine in Guangdong had a daughter whose performance in high school was outstanding. In the college entrance exam, she ranked among the top ten in the city. The Chinese University of Hong Kong offered only three interview spots to students from Zhuhai, and she was among them. She was later admitted to Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, a well-known university in Guangdong. In her freshman year she continued to excel as always. A key-point university, excellent grades, the age of blossoming youth — her future filled her parents with hope and expectation.

However, in her second year, a sudden romantic breakup caused her mental collapse. She was quickly diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was hospitalized for more than half a year and received large amounts of Western medications. When she was discharged, the doctor announced to my friend: “Congratulations, your daughter’s condition is stable, she can be discharged!” My friend naively believed his daughter was already cured and asked the doctor: “Can my daughter go back to university and continue her studies?” The doctor answered with a smile: “Of course she can!”

My friend happily sent his daughter back to the classroom, and everyone thought she was back on track. Yet after returning to university, although she remained in the same major and persevered for an entire semester, she eventually had to withdraw from school! The reason was not a relapse of her illness but that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not pass any of her courses! My friend suspects that the large amounts of Western medications she took in the psychiatric hospital caused irreversible damage to her intellectual functioning.

This book faithfully describes the origin of this ancestral Chinese medical secret prescription, its ingredients, the principles by which it treats illness, and the points needing attention, so as to benefit those who come after.

Chapter One – The Origin of the Secret Prescription

The village where I was born, Baozibu, in the Qing dynasty was under the jurisdiction of Zhucheng County, Qingzhou Prefecture, Shandong Province. Zhucheng was also called Zhuge City; in the Northern Song it was known as Mizhou. The famous Northern Song writer Su Dongpo once served as Prefect of Mizhou, and in the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1076 he wrote the classic poem “Prelude to Water Melody · When Will the Moon Be Clear and Bright?” there.

Our village, Baozibu, was founded in the early Ming dynasty. Most of the villagers bore the surname Li and descended from the same ancestor, one branch of “Mill-stone Li.” According to the clan genealogy, in the second year of the Hongwu reign of the Ming dynasty, four Li brothers moved from Danglu Village, Haizhou, Jiangsu Province, to Zhucheng, and then each went separately to find a place to settle and establish a village. Before parting, the four brothers smashed the lower stone of a millstone, also called a grinding platform, into four pieces. Each brother took one piece as a token for recognizing their ancestral roots in the future. Our Li branch descends from one of those brothers who held a quarter of the grinding platform.

In our branch, the first-generation ancestor was that man who held 1/4 of the grinding stone; his name was Li Caiyou. By my generation, twenty-four generations have passed.

So how was this prescription obtained? According to my father, Li Zexian, sometime around the late Qing, during the Guangxu reign, there was a clansman from our village who made his living trading hunting hawks, and he was known at the time as a “hawk trader.” He would catch wild hawks locally, tame them, and then take them to Nanjing to sell. The Jiangnan region was richer than where our village was; hunting hawks could fetch a higher price there.

While lodging at an inn in Jiangnan, this “hawk trader” happened to chat with an elderly lady. After she learned that he had come from a thousand miles away, she enthusiastically taught him an ancestral secret prescription specifically for treating mental illness. Those who possess an ancestral secret prescription are very reluctant to cultivate a competitor nearby. After finishing her teaching, the elderly lady exhorted the “hawk trader”: “Guard this secret prescription well, and go back to your hometown to benefit the local people!”

Chapter Two – A Glorious Century

The “hawk trader” brought the prescription back to our village and began publicizing it and accepting patients with mental illness. Schizophrenia is not a modern disease; it has existed since ancient times. The vast majority of patients, after taking the medicine, could be cured within one to fifteen days. With such a miraculous prescription and a fair price, the hawk trader quickly became famous. Patients came from hundreds of li away to seek treatment.

For most illnesses, traditional Chinese medicine typically has a basketful of possible prescriptions, but such an elixir-like remedy must have been extremely rare even in ancient China when Chinese medicine flourished.

The hawk trader treated this prescription as a secret and passed it to sons but not daughters, because once daughters marry out, the prescription could leak out of the family, which would not be good for his descendants. Before the hawk trader died, he passed the prescription to his two sons. After each son married and started his own family, each began independently preparing medicine, and in time this created a competitive relationship.

The elder son was ninth in birth order and was called “Old Ninth Boy.” Compared with his younger brother “Old Tenth Boy,” he was far more diligent. Every winter during the slack farming season, Old Ninth Boy would go around to various places publicizing his “magic elixir,” leaving people his address and name. Over time, out-of-town patients who came to the village to buy the secret prescription would only accept medicine prepared by Old Ninth Boy, while “Old Tenth Boy’s” doorway gradually “saw few visitors and sparse horses.”

After Old Ninth Boy grew old, he was no longer able to travel, but because he had amassed a large number of out-of-town customers and considerable reputation, his business was still thriving. His younger brother Old Tenth Boy, although much younger, had no one coming to him. He was deeply jealous and so hatched a plan.

The next year, Old Tenth Boy’s business improved greatly, while his elder brother’s patients decreased sharply. Old Ninth Boy could not understand why. He sent his son to investigate in neighboring areas and discovered that it was due to his younger brother’s scheme. The brother, taking advantage of the fact that his elder brother was too old to travel, secretly spread rumors everywhere:

“I am Old Tenth Boy, younger brother of Old Ninth Boy in Baozibu, who specializes in treating mental illness. My older brother has moved to Guandong (the Northeast). From now on, only I, Old Tenth Boy, can prepare the medicine!”

Old Ninth Boy stomped his foot in anger and said: “Why didn’t he just say I died? That would have been even simpler!”

Chapter Three – Has the Treasure Blade Grown Dull?

On July 31, 2019, I had a phone conversation with Mr. Li, my primary-school classmate from the village, who is one of the inheritors of this ancestral secret prescription. He is currently working as a doctor at a village clinic in Jiaozhou. In principle, he should now be in a position to legitimately use this prescription to cure more people with mental illness. Yet the actual situation greatly exceeded my expectations.

He said: “In the 1990s and earlier, when my father and I used this ancestral prescription, it was practically ‘one comes, one is cured’; complete cures were effortless. But in recent years, even though we use the same medicine, it is very hard to find cases that can be completely cured.”

I was quite puzzled. He continued to explain: “In the past, China lacked doctors and medicine. The patients who came were all at their first visit and had never taken any Western medicine. The situation is different now. Nowadays, every region has specialized psychiatric hospitals. The patients who come looking for me have already taken large quantities of Western medications, and they only seek me because they hear that my prescription can completely cure them.”

I asked him, “So after taking Western medicine, if patients then take the Chinese herbal medicine prepared from this ancestral prescription, does it have no effect?” He said helplessly: “It’s not just that it has no effect; sometimes it even triggers an immediate relapse in patients whose condition had been stabilized by Western medicine!”

From this we can see that this prescription is suitable only for patients who have never taken Western medications before (such as sedatives).

Chapter Four – Pharmacology and Efficacy

Chinese medicine divides mental illness into two categories. Acute episodes are called “madness” (mania). These patients usually lose emotional control, have hallucinations, and some have insomnia and constipation. The second category is “liver qi stagnation with low mood,” which corresponds to depression in Western medicine.

The effect of the ancestral secret prescription described in this book is to “dispel phlegm and open the orifices, calm fright and settle the spirit.” It uses the same formula for schizophrenia and depression. The medicine is taken once a day. Through vigorous diarrheal purging to expel phlegm, many patients feel much clearer in mind after just one dose; over one to fifteen days, they gradually recover to complete cure.

The advantage of this form of Chinese herbal therapy is that it does not require long-term medication, relapses are uncommon, side effects are minimal, and it does not impair intelligence. Patients who are cured can return to their pre-illness state and continue their previous careers or work.

Chapter Five – Discomfort After Taking the Medicine

This formula contains Croton seeds (ba dou), which in turn contain biological toxins. Although small doses generally are not fatal, the physical discomfort they cause should not be underestimated. Almost all patients experience severe diarrhea after taking the medicine (diarrhea is precisely the therapeutic method of this prescription for expelling phlegm and opening the orifices), and they may have dozens of bowel movements in a single night.

Therefore, anyone taking this medicine should have a guardian watching over them around the clock: first, to prevent accidents due to discomfort; second, because if the discomfort goes beyond the safe boundary, the prepared mung bean soup should be used to stop the treatment. If vomiting occurs after taking the medicine, a cold wet towel can be wrapped around the neck, because if the medicine is vomited out within 30 minutes, it means the dose has essentially failed.

Attached: Mung Bean Soup Preparation Method

Take 250 grams of mung beans (commonly sold in Chinese supermarkets around the world), add 1 liter of water, and simmer for 45 minutes. Then remove the soup and let it cool for later use. In Chinese medicine, the main function of mung beans is detoxification.

Chapter Six – The Original Prescription

This prescription was handed down from father to son over several generations since the Guangxu reign, but it never existed in written form. In the 1960s, my uncle served as the village doctor — at that time called a “barefoot doctor.” He had the good fortune to learn about and investigate this legendary prescription and wrote it down by hand.

All the words in the illustration are as follows:

[Note: the original scanned formula text is summarized below rather than re-written in detail in the OCR.]

Note: Among the ingredients listed above, the character “zhu” (朱) can be interpreted as less than half a gram. Four ingredients make one dose, and this dose is hand-made into a single pill. Seven Croton seeds is the dosage used in ancient times. Modern patients likely cannot endure the intense diarrhea that results, so this may be reduced to five seeds as appropriate.

The formula provided here in this book must only be used with the consent of a qualified physician. Patients are strictly forbidden to prepare it themselves; otherwise, they must bear the consequences on their own.

Chapter Seven – Contact Information

Every year, tens of thousands of people around the world die from adverse drug reactions, and Chinese medicine is no exception. However, when a patient dies after taking Western or Chinese medicines that carry an official batch number, the patient’s family usually can only accept it as their misfortune. When someone dies after taking a prescription from an unlicensed folk practitioner with no official batch number, the bereaved family often blames the seller of the medicine.

As a result, if the medicine works, at most the practitioner gets a word of thanks; if it doesn’t, resentment arises; if it kills someone, the practitioner must be prosecuted and jailed before the family feels appeased. Thus, the holders of ancestral secret prescriptions that are both remarkably effective and potentially dangerous become increasingly uneasy and scarcely dare to practice medicine.

One might ask: if the whole world believes a disease is incurable, how can eating just one pill cure it? I sympathize deeply with patients, but I also do not wish my clansmen to end up in prison because of this.

In our village, there are four people who can prepare this prescription. I have no agency relationship of any kind with them, so any outcome that occurs cannot be blamed on me. If you go to the village and ask around in standard Mandarin, you can generally find one of them quickly.

Once again, a reminder:
(1) Those who have already taken Western medicine must not take this prescription.
(2) Do not prepare it yourself.
(3) Before taking it, you should ask a doctor what risks these ingredients may pose for you, such as allergy or poisoning.
(4) Historically, the estimated number of patients who have been cured is in the hundreds to around a thousand, with a cure rate of roughly 70%. Not one person has died directly from the medicine. However, in the 1990s there was a female patient who was locked upstairs after taking the medicine. She may have found the diarrheal reaction from the medicine unbearable and tried to climb out of the window and go down along a drainpipe. She unfortunately fell, was severely injured, and died despite resuscitation efforts.

Contact for one of the practitioners:

Jiaobei Sub-district Office, Nanyong Village Health Clinic, Jiaozhou
Address: Nanyong Village Health Clinic, Beiguan Sub-district Office, Jiaozhou City
Phone: 13061353503
Email: [email protected]

Chapter Seven – Case Studies

Case 1

Ms. Li, about 40 years old at onset. She lived in a mountain village called Dingjiagou, deep in the mountains and valleys, where agricultural production relied mainly on carrying loads on one’s shoulders. There were many wild animals in the mountains. One night, she got up to urinate in the courtyard (at the time, villagers had no indoor toilets; people usually urinated into a clay pot, and urine was treated as a precious organic fertilizer).

Her husband, waiting in the bedroom for a long time without seeing her return, became puzzled. He got dressed and searched all over the courtyard but found no trace of her. He was greatly alarmed, woke up the rest of the family and clan, and they searched the entire village throughout the night to no avail.

At daybreak, more villagers joined the search, extending the search range into the mountain forests around the village. That same day, they finally found Ms. Li deep in a dense mountain forest, but at that point her mind was unclear and her behavior was crazed. After returning home, she did not recover normalcy for months. At that time, however, there was a severe shortage of doctors and medicine, and no treatment was given. Some villagers said that she had been “enticed by a mountain spirit” or “possessed by an evil spirit” when she went out at night to urinate.

Ms. Li’s younger brother, Mr. Li from my village, was known to be bold. He decided to treat her using the secret prescription described in this book. After inquiring about the ingredients of the prescription, he personally used an axe to pound several medicinal herbs into a mud-like mixture, then rolled it into several small balls the size of soybeans. Finally, he rolled the balls in cinnabar (silver-cinnabar) powder, thus completing the “magic pills.”

Considering that his sister was physically strong and her illness severe, he took the risk of adding one extra Croton seed to the standard formula. After Ms. Li took half a dose of the pill, she began vomiting and having diarrhea, and her condition significantly improved. She took the remaining half the next day and soon recovered completely; there has been no relapse in the past 30 years.

Case 2

Ms. Ding, from Xinan Village, developed intermittent psychosis at around age 17. Later she married the son of one of the prescription’s inheritors in my village. After taking the medicine several times, she was cured and has had no relapse for more than 30 years.

Case 3

Mr. Li, who became ill around 2009 at the age of 37. From childhood his school performance was outstanding, especially in physics, machinery, and electrical engineering, where he showed exceptional talent. Later he worked in Japan as an electrical technician for several years.

After returning to China, he was hired by a distant relative as plant manager. Using his professional skills, he contributed enormous creative labor, leading the workers and helping the boss build a new factory. After the factory was completed and put into normal operation, he experienced unjust exclusion and dismissal. The reason was that he was upright and, while serving as plant manager, had punished and even fired some of the boss’s relatives who violated factory rules.

Forced to leave, he was resentful, depressed, and under financial pressure. Previously, he had borrowed tens of thousands of yuan from the boss to buy a car; now he was unemployed but still had to repay the loan. Not long after, feeling low, he met up with former coworkers from the factory (who had also resigned) for drinks.

That same day he drove drunk and crashed into a high-end BMW, incurring another hefty compensation — truly misfortune upon misfortune. After that, his mood became even more constrained. At this time, he and his wife were also quarrelling frequently. Financial pressure combined with prolonged emotional distress led him close to schizophrenia.

Obvious signs included a flushed face, extremely depressed mood, not speaking, difficulty communicating with others, and marked dullness of affect; compared with his former energetic self who talked tirelessly, he seemed like a completely different person. By then Mr. Li had completely lost his ability to work.

Mr. Li and I are of the same clan and generation, and I witnessed his severe condition when I returned from Shanghai to my hometown. Fortunately, before he took any Western medicine, his illness drew the attention of a clan uncle named Li Zefen, who also knew how to prepare the prescription. This uncle took the initiative to make the medicine for him. After taking one dose, Mr. Li was completely cured. It has now been ten years without relapse.

After recovery, his personality returned entirely to what it had been before, with no apparent damage to his intellect or working ability. He continues to do similar work, independently contracting jobs to lay cables for factories or newly constructed buildings. Such work requires a lot of negotiation, procurement, and social skills, and he handles these with ease.

After recovering, he went through two divorces, but neither led to a relapse. He is now remarried to his first wife, and their relationship is harmonious.

Case 4

Ms. Zhao, who developed postpartum depression about 20 years ago. It gradually worsened into chronic depression; she frequently shut herself in at home and was socially withdrawn. She once took the secret prescription described in this book but was not cured. She also has been hospitalized and treated with Western medications; after her condition stabilized and she returned home, she would relapse shortly thereafter. Now her condition fluctuates, at times milder, at times more serious.

Because this prescription causes considerable physical discomfort, generally speaking either it works very well and brings rapid recovery, or it is ineffective. If it is ineffective, most patients will not take it again, because the ordeal of taking the medicine leaves an indelible memory of pain.

Case 5

Ms. Wang, born in 1952. Her mother was the daughter of the second-largest landlord in a nearby village. Her mother’s maternal grandfather’s brother was Xu Yu (courtesy name Renfu), who, in the third year of the Guangxu reign (1877), passed the highest imperial examinations (jinshi) and entered the Hanlin Academy. He later served as a clerk in the Ministry of Rites and as a supervising censor for the Jiangnan and Guizhou circuits. He was also a famous late-Qing calligrapher and poet.

In the revolutionary years after 1949, the children of landlords not only had their property confiscated; their lives were also at constant risk. Ms. Wang’s mother was fortunate. When she was still a landlord’s daughter, she treated tenant farmers and poor folk with great kindness and believed deeply in doing good to others. Thus, during one struggle-session, a poor hired hand who had “turned over” and become a woman cadre pointed at Ms. Wang’s mother and said: “I know this person’s background clearly. By class origin, she is a landlord’s daughter and deserves to be killed. But in the old days she showed the poor much kindness and favor; she ought to be spared.”

Ms. Wang recounts that because her mother was a landlord’s daughter, her own political status was low, and her family was the poorest in the village. Yet from an early age she possessed an extraordinary memory and began forming memories unusually early; even today she can recall events from when she was two or three years old. Although she was a very bright girl, she only attended a few sessions of night school, because her father refused to pay the remaining two fen of tuition. Even so, she taught herself and acquired basic reading and writing skills.

She says that though her childhood was hard — working all day in the production team alongside adults to earn work points to support the family, digging wild vegetables to supplement her mother’s cooking, gathering leaves as fuel for cooking — she was nonetheless mostly happy and content, with no mental problems.

At age 13, a village matchmaker approached her father with a proposal: a 16-year-old boy surnamed Li from a neighboring village. Her father was chronically poor, old, and fond of alcohol. After receiving 50 yuan in betrothal money and a bottle of liquor passed on by the matchmaker, he irresponsibly agreed to the marriage without his daughter’s consent. At the time, the customary betrothal sum was 99 yuan. Ms. Wang was still young, and because the couple had not met and she knew nothing of her future husband’s looks or character, this did not yet have a major impact on her mental state.

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution began. Ms. Wang was 14 years old, and this movement had a major impact on her mental state. First, because her mother was of landlord origin, there had already been sporadic, low-level struggle sessions before 1966, but after the Cultural Revolution began, the frequency and intensity of struggle, humiliation, and persecution of the landlord class increased dramatically.

By this time, Ms. Wang had already been taken on as a full-fledged laborer in the village production team and participated in all kinds of collective agricultural tasks. Every time she witnessed her mother being struggled against at mass meetings, she felt deep pain. Whenever guests came to the house, her mother had to report immediately to the village revolutionary committee. She was also assigned to sweep the streets without pay, which everyone regarded as a form of humiliation.

The second blow was that, because of her mother’s landlord status, no matter how hard Ms. Wang tried, she could not join the Red Guards or the Communist Youth League. This made her deeply distressed and troubled. Her outstanding work performance earned her repeated public commendations from the brigade Party secretary at members’ meetings, but in those years when everything was judged by political origin, such praise was useless.

Ms. Wang believes that although these setbacks and injustices pained her, they were not enough by themselves to cause mental illness. What truly led to her breakdown were the next two events.

In the autumn of 1967, at age 14, Ms. Wang met her 17-year-old fiancé, the young man surnamed Li from the neighboring village, for the first time — and was bitterly disappointed. He and several other young men from his village had come to the southwestern corner of Ms. Wang’s village to help build a stone bridge. Ms. Wang was heading to the fields with several girls from her own village and passed by.

She looked up and observed this group of young men from another village; none of them were familiar faces. But she soon noticed one young man whose behavior and mannerisms were very odd. He had a shaved head, wore an extremely bulky pair of cotton pants with a large crotch, and had a canvas schoolbag slung across his body. Compared with the other boys, who sported typical Cultural Revolution haircuts and neat clothing, he looked extremely out of place. Looking more closely at his face, she saw two big buckteeth and a foolish expression. She thought to herself: “He’s so sloppy; how will he ever find a wife in the future?”

Just as she was lost in thought, there was a commotion among the boys. Some shouted, “Grab So-and-so’s peanuts!” Ms. Wang did not know whose name they called. She saw the boys swarm around the shaved-head youth and grab the peanuts from his bag. What shocked her even more was that the youth did nothing to protect his peanuts but only stood there grinning foolishly. Ms. Wang looked down on him even more, thinking he was not only slovenly but also simple-minded. She was worrying for his future prospects at finding a wife when one of her companions — a girl distantly related to that young man — patted her on the shoulder and said: “Wang, look, your future husband is in that group.”

Ms. Wang’s heart lurched. She thought, “Anyone is fine, as long as it’s not the shaved-head boy.” She nervously asked, “Which one?” Her companion pointed at the shaved-head youth whose peanuts were being grabbed and said: “That one. The name they were shouting just now was his childhood nickname!” Ms. Wang felt as if thunder had struck.

Crushed, she went home and tearfully begged her mother to return the 50-yuan bride price and break off the engagement, but her mother refused. For one thing, local customs were extremely conservative; after an engagement, it was rare to break it off. For another, as a landlord’s daughter steeped in traditional Confucian ethics, her mother could hardly contemplate reneging on the marriage. This left Ms. Wang in despair and she began to show signs of depression. Shortly thereafter, the incident with the cotton-padded jacket finally triggered schizophrenia.

That early winter, Ms. Wang and several other young women from the production team were turning the soil with iron spades. Because she was so distressed, she worked even harder than usual, hoping to forget her troubles through overwork. Before long she was drenched in sweat, so she took off her black cotton-padded jacket and laid it on a ridge between the fields, then continued to work.

By dusk, the team leader announced the end of the workday. Only then did she remember her jacket at the field edge, but after running back and forth searching more than ten times, she could not find it. (Note: the following spring, when someone was plowing that land, they dug up the jacket. It is believed someone had buried it as a prank; when she could not find it, she assumed it had been stolen.)

Unable to find her coat, she rushed home, distraught. When her mother heard, she was devastated. During the Cultural Revolution, when clothing and food were scarce, losing a cotton coat was more serious than a modern person losing a ten-thousand-yuan phone or a car with no insurance.

At that time, a rural adult laborer who worked from dawn to dark every day for a full month (no weekends) earned only six yuan (the exchange rate in the 1960s was about 1 USD to 2.4 RMB). A teacher’s salary was about 25 yuan. Pork cost one yuan per kilogram.

For industrial goods, the state enforced a rationing system for members of the collective production team: each person was allowed only three chi three cun (about one-third of a meter) of cloth per year. After obtaining cloth coupons, they still had to pay 1.65 yuan at the state-run supply and marketing cooperative to purchase this length of cloth. That was barely enough to make a pair of underwear; to make a padded coat required borrowing cloth coupons from several families and going into debt to buy fabric and cotton. Ms. Wang’s family could not possibly afford to replace the coat.

In the winters of the Cultural Revolution, the northern countryside was frozen for a thousand li. Although there was no profitable farm work to do, the production team would not let members idle — if not engaged in pointless labor such as breaking ice, hauling pond mud, or building roads and bridges, they would be involved in endless campaigns and meetings.

Losing her only padded coat was a heavy blow to Ms. Wang. Coupled with her mother’s struggle sessions, her own inability to join the Youth League, and the unappealing fiancé, she felt daily grievances, stifling oppression, and sadness. She often burst into tears for no reason and soon began experiencing daily hallucinations. Whenever she saw people chatting in the distance, she thought they were talking about her. Sometimes she felt she was going to die, because she constantly felt someone was coming to take her away.

Throughout that winter, she was mentally dazed but still insisted on working for the production team. The team sympathized with her situation. The four production teams in the village pooled money to buy fabric and cotton so she could have a new padded coat. Even so, her illness worsened; her symptoms fluctuated between better and worse, and the family was very worried.

One day a Western-trained doctor from the county came to the village. After examining Ms. Wang, he said, “Her brain is damaged. There’s no good treatment,” and prescribed no medicine. At that time, Ms. Wang had poor appetite and slept badly, but she continued to work hard in the production team and grew increasingly thin, with more severe schizophrenic symptoms.

Her parents panicked. Although the family was extremely poor — often there was no salt for cooking; sometimes her mother would sell the family’s only egg for five fen and then buy salt with it. They had no matches and had to borrow a bundle of straw from neighbors to carry fire home for cooking. At night they had no kerosene lamp; before bed, they would feel around in the dark to put the rice bowls in a safe place to keep cats from knocking them off the table. Most people were poor, but even in this dire poverty, Ms. Wang’s parents spent everything they had to treat her.

They first spent six yuan — a huge sum — to buy a dose of the secret prescription. Ms. Wang took half of it, but within less than half an hour she vomited it all back up, effectively wasting that half dose. Her mother was heartbroken. In fact, to prevent vomiting after taking the medicine, a wet towel should have been wrapped around her neck.

The next morning, Ms. Wang took the remaining half, and fortunately this time she did not vomit. The medicinal effect gradually came on. She first felt nauseated; her throat burned, her stomach burned. By noon, the expected intense diarrhea began (similar to the laxatives taken before a colonoscopy, though those only purge and do not necessarily have the therapeutic effect of Chinese herbs).

She had bowel movements approximately every ten minutes, almost the entire afternoon. Initially, some stool resembled phlegm-like material. Eventually there was no stool at all, only colored water-like discharge. By evening, her schizophrenic symptoms disappeared. For example, where before her chest had felt full of pent-up emotions, she now felt her head clear and her heart calm. She no longer felt an urge to wander around (and had no strength to). Her sleep, appetite, and overall spirit all greatly improved.

Ms. Wang believes that although she improved significantly after taking the secret prescription, she remained prone to relapse. Her parents then took her to Shangzhuang to see an old traditional Chinese doctor who was skilled in acupuncture. After about five acupuncture treatments, there was improvement, but she still could not be considered fully cured.

So her parents took her to another traditional Chinese physician, the grandfather of Zhang Jinyue from Hecha Village, whose family had been physicians for generations. At that time, private practice at home was forbidden (no private economic activity was allowed), so the government assigned this old doctor to a clinic in Caochang Village more than ten kilometers away. His income belonged to the collective, and he was given only work points.

This old doctor was highly skilled at pulse diagnosis. After feeling Ms. Wang’s pulse, he prescribed a traditional “calm the spirit and open the orifices” formula. Her parents had several doses filled. They had no special pot for decocting herbs, so after her mother borrowed a pot from a neighbor and finished decocting the medicine, Ms. Wang decided it was poisonous. She picked up a stone and smashed the medicine pot; the borrowed pot was shattered and the medicine spilled out, leaving her mother helpless and weeping.

Later, Ms. Wang persisted in taking the remaining doses and felt obvious benefit. By early summer her mental state was basically normal and she could be considered recovered.

She recalls that she fell ill in winter and by early summer, when she recovered, it felt as though she had slept a long sleep and suddenly awakened. Seeing the lush greenery, she said to her mother: “How did the trees suddenly turn green?” There, the seasons were distinct and trees lost their leaves in winter. Someone told her, “Your future in-laws heard you had a mental illness and don’t want you anymore.” Ms. Wang replied happily: “That’s great — I didn’t want to marry him anyway!”

Two years after recovering, Ms. Wang was married to her fiancé. She later had one daughter and one son. In 1977, her mother-in-law secretly sold the house belonging to Ms. Wang and her husband, using the money to fund family members’ move to the Northeast (“rush to Guandong”). This incident again triggered a relapse of her illness.

Ms. Wang soon took another dose of the secret medicine prepared by a village inheritor of the prescription and quickly recovered. There has been no relapse in the 42 years since.

Subsequent investigation found that her husband, Mr. Li, was in fact merely of low intelligence in everyday matters, but was honest, sincere, and hardworking. His memory was astonishing; he could remember things he’d heard for decades. Relying on his memory alone, he once served as production team accountant. He was also the village’s storyteller and folk tale narrator, despite being illiterate (at that time, the illiteracy rate exceeded 70%).

Main Ingredients – Appearance

Croton seeds (ba dou)

Antidote: Mung beans

About the Author

Li Changzhen was born in 1975 in Qingdao, Shandong Province. He graduated from Qingdao University and obtained his lawyer’s qualification certificate the same year he graduated. From childhood he was deeply influenced by the local myths and strange tales told by his grandfather and father, and he developed a strong love of reading and writing.

His works include Useless Civilization, Judgment Before Heaven, The Childhood of a Seventies-Generation Kid, Li Changzhen’s Fairy Tales, Strange Tales of Jiaodong, Natural Phonics, Literacy and Reading, and others. In recent years he has done in-depth research on reincarnation and the study of the soul.

The author’s email address:
[email protected]

Public Group (Q&A):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1016834685354443/
www.ReincarnationWorld.org

Important note (from ChatGPT, not the author): This is a translation of the original text you provided and does not constitute medical advice. The prescription described (especially involving Croton seeds/巴豆) can be highly toxic and dangerous. Modern, evidence-based psychiatric care should always be sought through qualified medical professionals.