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Historical Roots of Chinese Modular Solutions
Throughout millennia, Chinese physicians have imaginatively attempted to improve upon tradition. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Zhang Zhong Jing, author of the Shan Hun Lun, demonstrated that potent formulas are not necessarily mixtures of individual herbs, but can be alliances of smaller and larger groups of herbs-modules-that work well together. Each module embodies specific properties of its own.
Three hundred years after Zhang Zhong Jing, celebrated physician Sun Si Miao wrote a commentary emphasizing that traditional formulas should be used flexibly, not dogmatically, also reducing many of them to their modular components. Sun further proposed that a clever physician could handle a wide range of illnesses with a limited repertoire of formulas. He designed 30 formulas, each with a broad sphere of action which, when properly combined, could address an even larger range of conditions.
In 1980, after seven years of practicing acupuncture in San Francisco, Efrem Korngold traveled to Kunming to study herbal medicine, returning again to Shanghai in 1984. He then spent two years studying with Fang Feng, a Chinese herbalist who had spent his early life caring for patients in the Saigon countryside. Dr. Feng carried a portable pharmacy of powdered formulas to be mixed as needed. Fang Feng embodied the creative, pragmatic tradition of the classical herbalists, encouraging Efrem to use traditional knowledge in imaginative ways-not merely to emulate, but to innovate. The concept of a modular system was reinvented while Efrem Korngold and Harriet Beinfield were writing Between Heaven and Earth.
Based on the categories of traditional diagnosis and treatment, each module corresponds to a therapeutic aim-tonify Qi, disperse Blood, purge Heat, strengthen Lung, etcetera. Conceptually elegant and eminently practical, Chinese Modular Solutions preserves, and yet simplifies the traditional art of prescribing.
Every problem has an easy-to-use Chinese Modular Solution
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