Dr John H. F. Shen
by Ray Rubio, D.A.O.M., L. Ac. (Westlake Village, CA, USA)
Somehow, early in my practice about 10 years ago, I was lucky enough to come into contact with Dr. John Shen. At the time, I didn't know that this was "the" Dr. Shen, as in the famous Chinese Pulse Master and Herblist who was the inspiration for Dr. Leon Hammer's Pulse Book, and one of the major influences for Giovanni Maciocia, Jane Lyttleton, Lonny Jarrett, and many, many other leaders in our profession. I just found out that there was a workshop being offered in Berkley on advanced herbal prescribing, so I signed up and went. What an eye-opening, mind-opening, and heart-opening experience for me!
Dr. Shen was from the Menghe-Ding lineage of pre-moaist, pre-tcm Chinese physicians famous in Shanghai at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries. Like his predecessors of this lineage, Dr. Shen employed an extremely detailed pulse diagnosis system, a facial diagnosis system, and an herbal prescribing system that most closely resembled the Shang Han Lun style of prescribing characterized by very low dosages of individual herbs - often 1.5g to 3 or 6 g.
Dr. Shen was also renowned for the development of what he called "system diagnosis", wherein patients who have a multitude of signs and systems that don't fit neatly into any Zang-Fu pattern, can then be diagnosed with what Dr. Shen referred to as either "nervous system disease", "digestive system disease" or "circlatory system disease". (see chapter 14 in Dr. Leon Hammer's book, "Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies" revised edition by Eastland Press for a thorough discussion of this topic).
In the few years that I was able to spend time with Dr. Shen in both his New York City practice, and in Shanghai before his death, I felt like I was given a glimpse into the past history of Chinese Medicine - before it became systematized and formulaic. What I learned from Dr. Shen, I mostly learned from watching him. Watching him ask questions, feel the pulse, and then tell the patient - not ask them - when, how, and why their disease or problem developed. By using facial diagnosis to determine the chronology of the disease, and using pulse/tongue and eyelid diagosis to assess the state of the nervous system, digestive system, and blood, then using probing questions to fill in the rest of the blanks - Dr. Shen was uncanny in his ability to unravel even the most mysterious and stubborn conditions. The following brief case will illustrate what I mean:
I was sitting with Dr. Shen while he saw patients during one of my trips to see him in New York City. Because Dr. Shen was quite famous, it was not uncommon for patients to fly from all over the world to come see him for help. On this particular day, a very elegant woman in her early 40's came in to see Dr. Shen complaining of violent, daily migraine headaches. Interestingly, this woman was the heir to one of the worlds most famous cosmetic/perfume families and had just flown in from Paris that day. She proceeded to explain to Dr. Shen that her headaches had started suddenly just about two years prior, and that she had been to see the best doctors in Europe to no avail. There was no family history of migraines, she had not had a head or neck injury preceding the onset of her headaches, and no medications had even been able to dull the pain even a little. She had also tried a virtual smorgasboard of alternative healers, again with no relief in her pain. Finally someone suggested that she see Dr. Shen, and so here she was.
Dr. Shen asked her some more questions about what she ate, when the pain was the worst, how was her sleep and stress levels, where the pain was localized, etc. The looked at her lower eyelid, and at her tongue very briefly, and finally he motioned for her to extend her wrist onto the pulse pillow so he could read her pulses. After spending about 5-10 minutes listening to her pulses, Dr. Shen sat back and proceeded to ask her how she was enjoying New York, where she was staying, was she going to see any shows while she was in town, etc. At this point, both the patient and I were slightly perplexed. I was perplexed because usually Dr. Shen would send the patient to the waiting room to wait while he wrote their herbal prescription, and he was just sitting there making small talk with her and not writing anything. The patient was annoyed because she had flown all the way from Paris to get help, not to chit-chat. Finally she started to weep, telling Dr. Shen that she didn't know how much longer she could live with these headaches, and that she had come to him to get herbal medicine to help her with the pain.
Dr. Shen paused, took her hand very gently in his, looked into her eyes and said that she didn't need herbs because she was already cured. I think my jaw dropped to floor, and she too looked absolutely flabbergasted. I wasn't used to Dr. Shen playing the faith-healer, so I wasn't sure what he meant. Finally, he looked at her and asked her if she had perhaps started wearing any new mascara about two years ago, around when the headaches started. She thought for a moment while she wiped her eyes, and then she slowly nodded her head and answered that her cosmetics company had launched a new mascara at that time which was formulated to be a "24-hour" mascara and be more long lasting after being applied. She had taken to wearing it at that time. Dr. Shen sat back and smiled and said that this was the cause of her headaches. He proceeded to explain that because all of her neurological and physical exams had turned up no cause to her headaches, and because there was no family history of them, and because the onset was so sudden without any head injury, Dr.Shen felt that the cause of the headaches had to be something local (in the head) causing an allerghic reaction. He said that the lower eyelid showed a chemical reaction in the bloodstream, and the pulse indicated the same thing. He then said that he also noted that when he had examined her lower eyelid, he noticed that the mascara did not come off on his fingers like it normally did with female patients. Dr. Shen advised her to stop wearing that mascara, and from that day on she was free of headaches. After that, whenever she was visiting New York City, she would make a point to stop in and drop off a present to Dr. Shen.
The patient above was only once of hundreds that I observed with Dr. Shen where he used his superior powers of observation and logical thinking to unravel very difficult cases. Dr. Shen always reminded me it is more important to understand life, than to understand disease, because disease usually comes from life. He said that being a doctor of Chinese Medicine was very similar to being Sherlock Holmes - one had to be an astute observer of even the smallest details. Sadly, Dr. Shen passed away at 90, still much too soon for myself and his other students and patients who knew him and loved him. From him I learned that all of the herbal knowledge and acupuncture knowledge in the world mean very little without the correct diagnosis.
Ray Rubio, D.A.O.M., L. Ac., (FABORM), is President of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine (ABORM), and Chair of the Reproductive Medicine Department at the Yo San University DAOM Program in Los Angeles.
Dr. Rubio has been in practice for more than a decade, and his practice focuses exclusively on the treatment of Male and Female Reproductive Disorders/Infertility.
Dr. Rubio is a member in good standing of ASRM, PCRS, ESHRE, and Resolve, and he lectures frequently to Acupuncturists on the topic of Infertility and TCM. Dr. Rubio is also President of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Special Interest Group for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).
Dr. Rubio has also presented to the REI Fellows Program UCLA/Cedars Sinai Medical School program, and he lectures on the subject of Male and Female Infertility for the Lotus Institute, Health Stream/TCM TV, and for both the AAAOM Expo and the Southwest Symposium. He also mentors other Acupuncturists who wish to study Reproductive Medicine.
机翻:
沈鹤峰博士
雷卢比奥，华盛顿特区，洛杉矶。(美国加利福尼亚州西湖村)
不知怎的，在我大约10年前的实习初期，我有幸接触到沈约翰博士。当时，我不知道这就是沈博士，就像中国著名的脉学大师和草药专家一样，他是利昂·哈默博士脉学著作的灵感来源，也是乔瓦尼·麦克伊奇亚、简·利特尔顿、朗尼·贾勒特以及我们这个行业许多其他领导人的主要影响之一。我刚发现伯克利有一个关于高级草药处方的研讨会，于是我报名去了。对我来说，这是多么令人眼界大开、心胸开阔、心胸开阔的经历啊！
沈博士出身于19世纪末20世纪初上海著名的前中医孟河丁氏家族。沈博士和他的先辈一样，采用了极为详细的脉诊系统、面部诊断系统和草药处方系统，这些系统与《伤寒论》的处方非常相似，其特点是每味草药的剂量非常低，通常为1.5g至3或6g
沈博士还以发展他所称的“系统诊断”而闻名，在这种诊断中，如果病人有许多与脏腑模式不完全相符的体征和系统，就可以被诊断为“神经系统疾病”、“消化系统疾病”或“循环系统疾病”。(关于这一主题的详细讨论，请参阅东方出版社修订版莱昂·哈默博士的著作《龙飞凤舞》第14章)。
在几年的时间里，我得以与沈博士一起在纽约和上海行医，在沈博士去世前，我感觉自己仿佛被给予了一瞥中医过去的历史——在它系统化和公式化之前。我从沈博士那里学到的东西，大部分是从观察他那里学到的。看着他问问题，感受脉搏，然后告诉病人——不要问他们——什么时候、怎样、为什么他们的疾病或问题会发展。通过面部诊断来确定疾病的时间表，并通过脉搏/舌头和眼睑诊断来评估神经系统、消化系统和血液的状态，然后通过探查性问题来填补剩下的空白——沈博士甚至能够解开最神秘和最顽固的状况，这是不可思议的。下面的简短案例将说明我的意思:
我和沈博士坐在一起，他在我去纽约看他的一次旅行中看到了病人。因为沈博士很有名，所以从世界各地飞来看他寻求帮助的病人并不少见。在这个特别的日子里，一个40多岁的优雅女人走进来看沈医生，抱怨她每天都有剧烈的偏头痛。有趣的是，这位女士是世界上最著名的化妆品/香水家族之一的继承人，那天刚从巴黎飞来。她接着向沈博士解释说，大约两年前，她的头痛突然开始，她去欧洲最好的医生那里看病都没有用。没有偏头痛的家族史，她在头痛发作之前没有头部或颈部受伤，甚至没有药物能够减轻疼痛。她还尝试了一个替代治疗者的虚拟自助餐，同样没有减轻她的痛苦。最后有人建议她去见沈博士，于是她来了。
沈博士还问了她一些问题，比如她吃了什么，什么时候疼痛最严重，她的睡眠和压力水平如何，疼痛的部位等。他看了看她的下眼睑，又看了看她的舌头，最后他示意她把手腕伸到脉搏枕上，这样他就能读出她的脉搏。沈博士花了大约5 - 10分钟听完她的脉搏后，坐了下来，继续问她在纽约过得怎么样，她住在哪里，她在城里的时候会去看演出吗等等。此时，病人和我都有点困惑。我很困惑，因为沈医生通常会把病人送到候诊室等待，而他写的草药处方，他只是坐在那里与她闲聊，没有写任何东西。病人很生气，因为她是从巴黎远道而来寻求帮助，而不是闲聊。最后，她哭了起来，告诉沈医生，她不知道自己还能忍受这些头痛多久，她来找沈医生要草药来帮助她缓解疼痛。
沈博士停顿了一下，轻轻地握住她的手，看着她的眼睛，说她不需要草药，因为她已经痊愈了。我想我的下巴掉到地上了，她看上去也大吃一惊。我不习惯沈博士扮演信仰治疗者，所以我不知道他的意思。最后，他看了看她，问她大概两年前头痛开始时是否开始涂睫毛膏。她擦了擦眼睛，想了一会儿，然后慢慢点了点头，回答说化妆品公司当时推出了一种新的睫毛膏，这种睫毛膏被配制成“24小时”睫毛膏，使用后更持久。那时她已经习惯了戴它。沈博士坐了回去，笑着说这是她头疼的原因。他接着解释说，因为她所有的神经和身体检查都没有发现引起头痛的原因，也因为没有家族史，而且因为发病如此突然，没有头部受伤沈觉得头痛的原因一定是局部(头部)引起过敏反应。他说，下眼睑在血流中显示出化学反应，脉搏也显示出同样的情况。他接着说，他还注意到，当他检查她的下眼睑时，他注意到睫毛膏没有像通常对女性患者那样掉在手指上。沈博士建议她停止使用睫毛膏，从那天起，她就不再头疼了。此后，每当她访问纽约市时，她都会特意停下来，送上一份礼物给沈博士。
上面的病人只是我和沈博士一起观察到的数百个病人中的一个，沈博士利用他卓越的观察力和逻辑思维来解开非常困难的病例。沈博士总是提醒我了解生活比了解疾病更重要，因为疾病通常来自生活。他说，当中医和当夏洛克·霍姆斯非常相似——一个人必须敏锐地观察哪怕是最细微的细节。遗憾的是，沈博士在90岁去世，对我和其他认识他并爱他的学生和病人来说，这还为时过早。从他那里我了解到，如果没有正确的诊断，世界上所有的草药知识和针灸知识都是微不足道的。
雷卢比奥，华盛顿特区，洛杉矶。，是美国东方生殖医学委员会( ABORM )主席，洛杉矶Yo San大学DAOM项目生殖医学系系主任。
Rubio博士已经从事了十多年的实践，他的实践仅侧重于治疗男性和女性生殖障碍/不育。
鲁比奥博士是ASRM、PCRS、ESHRE和resolution的优秀会员，他经常向针灸师讲授不孕症和中医的主题。鲁比奥博士也是美国生殖医学协会( ASRM )补充和替代医学特别兴趣小组的主席。
鲁比奥博士还向REI研究员方案UCLA / Cedars Sinai医学院方案作了介绍，并在莲花研究所、保健流/中医电视、aaom博览会和西南专题讨论会上就男女不育问题作了演讲。他还指导其他想学习生殖医学的针灸师。
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