Dr. Xu: A Chinese Medicine Novel

At the bedside, Evan begins an examination of a patient too young to describe how she feels.

Evan began examining the little girl.

“Dr. Xu, do you need me to get the test reports?” Simon asked.

“No.” Evan shook his head slightly.

“Evie. Evie.” He called her twice. The little girl opened her eyes and looked at him, but soon closed them again in exhaustion.

Evan gave a small sigh. Barely over a year old, she could not even talk. Why were children’s illnesses so hard to treat? In Chinese medicine, pediatrics was called the “mute specialty.”

Children this young could not speak at all. Even slightly older children struggled to describe exactly how they felt.

Chinese medicine brought together inspection, listening and smelling, inquiry, and palpation—the four diagnostic methods. Here, one of the four, inquiry, was effectively lost. Children’s pulses were also difficult to assess. They tended to fidget, making an accurate reading harder still.[1]

Physicians through the ages had therefore approached children’s illnesses with great care. Several distinctive diagnostic techniques had developed as well.

Evan began by carefully inspecting her face. Her complexion was bluish-yellow. She coughed, with labored breathing and fullness in the chest. The area around her mouth was bluish, her lips pale.

In children, a bluish face, especially at the bridge of the nose, between the eyebrows, and around the lips, often came with a high fever. It pointed to jingfeng—infantile convulsions.[2]

Her lips were pale, but neither dry nor on the verge of cracking. Had her body fluids really been spared? Four days of fever, a fever this high, and her fluids were still intact?[3]

Evan continued his examination. Taking her right hand, he rubbed her palm with the fleshy pad at the base of his left thumb. There was no sweat. Then he tested her left palm with the corresponding pad of his right hand. No sweat there either.

Such a high fever, yet no sweating. Sweating indicated exterior deficiency; no sweating indicated exterior excess.

An exterior excess pattern?

Evan lifted her hand to examine the vein markings on her index finger. This was a special diagnostic technique for infants and young children, applicable only to those under two.

At that age, qi and blood were not yet fully developed, and the channels were not yet settled. The superficial veins of a child’s index finger were a branch of the Hand Taiyin Lung channel. Examining them therefore had the same diagnostic value as examining the pulse at the wrist.

The technique was called pediatric index-finger vein inspection, also known in Chinese as “fingerprint diagnosis.”[4]

The three segments of the index finger were divided into three gates: Wind, Qi, and Life. The first segment was the Wind Gate, the second the Qi Gate, and the third the Life Gate.

Evan had her extend her index finger and held her other fingers still. With his right thumb, he stroked straight along her index finger, from the tip toward the base.

The people gathered around watched curiously.

“What is he doing?” Evie’s father could not help asking.

“Pediatric index-finger vein inspection,” Leo answered. “A special Chinese medicine diagnostic technique for very young children.”

“Oh.” Her father nodded. The name alone sounded impressive. Just what he would expect from the disciple of a nationally eminent specialist.

Simon pressed his lips together. He had once thought this sort of thing unscientific. Now he did not know what to say. His thoughts were in turmoil.

After a few strokes, the veins became clear.

They were blue, indicating infantile convulsions, and extended beyond the Qi Gate.

Evan grew more solemn. The three segments of the index finger were the Wind, Qi, and Life Gates.

Veins visible at the Wind Gate meant that the pathogenic influence had entered the collateral vessels. It was still shallow, and the illness was mild. But when the veins extended from the Wind Gate to the Qi Gate, the influence had entered the channels. The illness had penetrated deeper and become serious.

The final segment was the Life Gate. If the veins extended all the way from the Wind Gate to the Life Gate, the pathogenic influence had entered the zang organs and could endanger life.

Judging by Evie’s condition, if they failed to bring it under control today, she would certainly progress to severe illness. Then she would be in real danger. The seriousness of the case weighed on Evan too.

He slowly breathed out, steadied himself, and reached to feel her fingers.

“Hm?” He frowned. “Her fingers are a little cool?”

He set down both her hands and quickly reached down to feel her feet. They were cold too. Such a high fever, yet her limbs were not warm.

Evan drew in a breath and nodded slightly.

Continuing his examination, he pressed over her body. Her chest and abdomen were full, with hiccup-like movements.

He turned and called out, “Could someone get me a tongue depressor?”

“I’ll go.” Simon went to the nurses’ station for one.

It was brought back and handed to Evan.

Downloaded as a PDF or EPUB? This chapter was scraped from without the author’s knowledge.

Evan had Evie face the natural light. “Come on, Evie. Open your mouth. Ah…”

Her mother joined in. “Evie, let’s open our mouth. Ah.”

Evie obediently opened her mouth a little.

Evan inserted the tongue depressor, pressed gently, reached a little farther in, then quickly withdrew it.

“Urgh…” The stimulation at the root of her tongue made Evie gag.

In that instant, Evan saw her whole tongue. The tongue body was pale, the coating grayish-white.

He disliked having to do it, but it was necessary. A child this young and this sick could not be expected to stick out her tongue and hold it still. Only by making her gag could he see the whole tongue.[5]

A pale tongue, with a grayish-white coating.

A pale tongue indicated cold or deficiency. A coating that changed from white to gray, wherever it appeared on the tongue, indicated pathogenic heat spreading through the channels after an externally contracted illness.

He understood now. The realization came all at once.

Still, he could not afford to be careless. The child could not withstand another misdiagnosis. If they failed to control the illness, it really would become severe!

Evie had been so quiet. She had lain in her mother’s arms throughout his lengthy examination without fidgeting.

It was not impossible to examine a child’s pulse, but doing so took time—five minutes at the very least. Most children did not have that kind of patience. Once they moved, an accurate reading became impossible.

That was what made pediatrics so difficult: the diagnosis.

“I’ll check her pulse as well,” Evan decided.

He took Evie’s hand. Instead of resting it on a pulse cushion, he placed his thumb over the pulse at her wrist and his index finger against the back of her wrist to hold it steady.

From the outside, it looked as though he was holding her wrist between two fingers.

The wrist pulse had three positions: cun, guan, and chi. Normally, three fingers were used, one for each position. But a child under two was so small that the wrist had not grown enough to accommodate them.

One finger could cover all three positions. The technique was called “one finger examining three positions.” One finger had to do the work of three. It was no easy pulse to read.[6]

Evan let out a few breaths and calmed himself. A quiet mind was essential in pulse examination. A doctor who could not settle down could not read the pulse accurately.

He examined her carefully. Evie stayed quiet and still, resting in her mother’s arms, which reassured him considerably.

After some time, he finished examining the pulses at both wrists.

The pulse was floating and slippery. A floating pulse indicated an exterior pattern; slipperiness within it indicated wind-phlegm in the Lung.[7]

Evan breathed a sigh of relief. It was clear now.

“I’ll write the prescription!”

The others outside all started. He had reached a diagnosis.

Reader Notes

Reader Notes

↩︎ The “mute specialty.” Chinese medicine compares information from looking, listening and smelling, questioning, and touching, including pulse examination. “Mute” here describes a practical difficulty: a very young patient cannot give the doctor a reliable account of symptoms. It does not name a speech disorder. The novel stresses the loss of the child’s own answers; inquiry can also include the history given by a parent, as Simon has already done in the preceding chapter. Source: Hong Kong Department of Health — Diagnostic Methods and Features of Chinese Medicine Practitioners.↩︎ Jingfeng. This traditional pediatric category covers convulsive illnesses and related disturbances, rather than ordinary fear or a single modern neurological diagnosis. “Wind” in such terminology can refer to abnormal movement within the body. Here Evan reads the facial color in that framework. The narrative does not describe a new seizure during his examination; the two earlier convulsions were reported in Chapter 66. Nor does the color description supply an oxygen measurement or establish a new biomedical diagnosis. Source: WHO — Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminologies, entry 2054, “Infantile convulsions”.↩︎ Fluids and the exterior. “Body fluids,” jin and ye, is an established Chinese medicine term for the body’s nourishing and moistening fluids. Evan’s question about their preservation is his interpretation of the lips, without a new laboratory result. “Exterior” describes a level of a traditional pattern. The absence of sweat is associated with exterior excess, while sweating can occur with exterior deficiency. The brief rule in his reasoning belongs to that framework; sweat alone does not establish an infectious agent or a child’s overall condition. Source: WHO — Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminologies, entries 226, 1011–1012.↩︎ Vein markings and the three gates. “Fingerprint” translates zhiwen here, meaning superficial vein markings rather than the ridges used for identification. The Wind, Qi, and Life Gates are named regions along the index finger, running from its base toward its tip. They are distinct from the wrist-pulse positions named later. The chapter’s age limit is under two; the Ministry description below uses under three. Both the vein-reading method and its traditional Lung-channel explanation are described there. These sources document the diagnostic tradition, without proving Evan’s prediction for this child. Sources: Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare — Inspecting Finger Veins (in Chinese); WHO — Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminologies, entries 621–624.↩︎ Tongue body and coating. Chinese medicine distinguishes the underlying tongue tissue from the coating on its surface. Color, moisture, and texture are assessed together. A gray coating can have different traditional interpretations; its color alone does not uniquely identify heat. Evan’s particular deduction about a white coating becoming gray is retained from the novel, whose exact source has not been established. The account of provoking a gag is likewise a scene in the story, rather than a reader instruction or a method endorsed by the terminology source. Source: WHO — Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminologies, entries 640, 642, 691 and 698.↩︎ One finger and three positions. Cun, guan, and chi are neighboring assessment positions at the wrist, rather than separate arteries. A Chinese diagnostic standard describes assessing a child’s three positions with a thumb or index finger. Evan’s supporting index finger is on the back of the wrist; his thumb feels the pulse. The novel’s minimum of five minutes is retained, although the cited standard specifies at least one minute per wrist, with three minutes for both recommended. The standard supports the existence of the technique, without establishing every timing or accuracy claim in the narration. Source: GB/T 40665.4—2021 — Pulse Palpation, sections 3.2–3.3 and 4.3.2.2–4.3.3, hosted by Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (in Chinese).↩︎ Floating and slippery. “Floating” describes a pulse felt readily with light pressure; “slippery” describes a smooth, flowing sensation under the examining finger. These are tactile qualities, rather than descriptions of vessels moving or skin being wet. Earlier chapters have used the individual terms. Here Evan combines them in an inference about wind-phlegm affecting the Lung, a Chinese medicine functional system. That inference is the story’s clinical reasoning. The terminology definitions do not themselves establish a viral diagnosis, identify a prescription, or predict a treatment response. Source: WHO — Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminologies, entries 889 and 900.