Fluid Feelings

A Strange Cure

It was a strange cure.

But then again, the condition it treated was strange, and it’s unclear whether our own doctors even today would know what to do. After all, it is rare to meet a man who suddenly sees everything upside down.

Emotions had long loomed large in Chinese thought, especially as a threat. Since antiquity, thinkers had fretted over their disruptive sway and devised various strategies to tame them. Controlling emotional impulses was a central concern, most notably of the influential stream of Confucianism known as lixue or the 'School of Principle', represented by the three towering authorities of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi.

But the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a subtle shift in attitudes.

Visceral Feelings

In the classical theory of Chinese medicine, humans were visceral beings. The five zang or viscera (wuzang 五臟)—the five solid organs of the lungs, heart, spleen, liver and kidneys—not only governed the life of the body, but also represented the root of all the outer capacities and expressions of a person, including the ability to see and to hear; the propensity to cry, sing or laugh; and the preference for spicy or sweet foods.

Emotions, too, were inseparable from the zang. A problem in the kidneys could cause extreme fearfulness and, conversely, frightening events could damage the kidneys.{{⁴}}{{{The original passage in the Suwen (juan 23 ‘宣明五氣篇第): ‘五 精 所 並: 精 氣 並 於 心 則 善， 並 於 肺 則 悲， 並 於肝 則 憂， 並 於 脾 則 畏， 並 於 腎 則 恐， 是 謂 五 並， 虛 而 相並 者 也.’ Translation: ‘When the Qi-essence [of all five viscera] accumulates in the heart, it will give rise to joy, when it collects in the lungs, it will give rise to sorrow, when it collects in the spleen, it will give rise to dread, when it collects in the kidneys, it will give rise to fear. Such are the so-called five accumulations.’ In Cheng Shide 程士徳, et al., Suwen zhushi huicui 素問注釋匯粹 (Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe, 1982), 364. See also Ctext.}}}

Anger was rooted in the liver. But the liver also governed the eyes. This was the logic of Chen Shiduo’s cure: aberrant vision bespoke a pathology of the liver and one of the most direct ways to alter the state of the liver was through anger, its associated emotion. Of course, the liver could be approached in many other ways, and another doctor living in another age might have chosen, more conventionally, to prescribe certain drugs and foods, or to recommend a set of exercises and changes in lifestyle. But inverted vision was an extraordinary pathology, and Chen Shiduo lived, as we’ve noted, in a period that was fixated on the potency of the passions. So he opted, instead, to treat the liver with a sudden, unexpected rap to the head—that is, by provoking a surge of anger.

The imagination of the body in traditional China was inseparable from the imagination of fluids. Physicians sought, above all, to ensure the smooth and harmonious streaming of qi 氣. For they saw irregularities in qi’s flow—its reversals, imbalances, stagnant coagulations—at the core of most sicknesses. Emotions offered a direct reflection of such irregularities. Accumulated superabundance (taiguo 太過) in a particular organ (zang 臟), for example, could be read from pronounced expressions of its associated emotion. Extreme irascibility, for instance, bespoke an excess in the liver. At the same time, emotions also offered a powerful means of altering flow and acting upon the zang. Strong emotions could shake up the body much like violent gales shake up the earth.

By dissolving the chronic knots in the chest and restoring flow, anger could thus cure anxiety and grief (yubing 鬰病, youchou 忧愁). By unblocking phlegm stuck within the heart (tan mi xinqiao 痰迷心竅), it could resolve epileptic seizures.

It was hard to manage, to be sure. When unbridled, rage could wreak massive destruction. If repressed, it could result in crippling conditions like ‘hanging tongue’. But, carefully managed and strategically deployed, anger could be supremely effective in restoring flow.{{⁵}}{{{On the therapeutic use of anger, see Messner, Zirkulierende Leidenschaft, 200–23. The role of anger in the evolution of Chinese medical theory is discussed in Shigehisa Kuriyama, ‘Angry Women and the Evolution of Chinese Medicine’, in National Healths: Gender, Sexuality and Health in a Crosscultural Context, ed. Michael Worton and Nana Wilson-Tagoe (London: UCL Press, 2004), 179–89.}}}

The Angry Liver

Anger was, moreover, an intimately familiar feeling among the educated elite of Chen Shiduo’s time. In the seventeenth century, outrage against the Manchu invaders and loyalty to the previous Ming rulers led many court officials to resign their positions. Some left the bureaucracy and turned to medicine as an alternative career. Meanwhile, a growing number of scholars failed to get official posts despite having successfully passed the civil service examinations. Writings of the time abounded in expressions of frustration and grievance (naonu 惱怒), of great anger (danu 大怒), extreme anger (nu ji  怒极) and explosive anger (baonu 暴怒). But there was nothing to be done, no recourse. This was why repressed rage could congeal in the chest and turn the liver upside down, burning its lobes together into a hard, sclerotic mass. In turn, this was why there were patients, Chen Shiduo believed, like the man who saw things upside down.