Chapter 35: Listening to the footsteps to know the disease
Su Xipo and his wife stood in the large square to greet them.
When I got off the bus, I saw that Mr. Xipo was completely different from the famous doctor I had imagined. I had expected him to have a thick, long beard and a sage-like appearance, but instead he had a flat head, a round face, short hair, and no beard.
Mrs. Xipo looked like a lady from a noble family. She wore a red sweater with a lapel and a gray woolen coat. She looked decent and not fat, and she looked very kind.
The master introduced the Xipo couple to me, and I hurriedly said, "Hello, Mr. Su, hello, Master's wife."
Xipo smiled and said, "Please come in."
Entering the courtyard and climbing three steps, on the left were the clinic and pharmacy, and on the right was the home. Entering the living room and walking further in, it turned out that Mr. Su, like his master, had a study to entertain guests.
Mrs. Xipo made tea and served cakes with great swiftness. She also warmed up a pot of wine and poured a cup for each person.
I shook my head. "I'm not very good at drinking."
The two of them drank and talked.
After reminiscing about an old time, we got back to the point. The master said he had chicken blindness. Could Mr. Su prescribe a remedy? (Chicken feather blindness refers to poor vision in the evening. This is because chickens, when entering their coops at dusk, can't find the correct entrance to their chicken coops.)
Su Xipo wrote down several medicinal herbs in a flamboyant and flamboyant style. Perhaps because he knew the person well, the writing seemed careless and not, as his master had said, a work of calligraphy that could be preserved.
The master collected the prescription and said, "When your father was still alive, he often told me to exercise less to nourish my mind. I've never understood whether he meant to exercise less physically or less mentally."
Xipo said, "Don't get angry. Physiognomy is a medical concept. Your thin forehead is a sign of poverty in your childhood, caused by lack of food and clothing. You have a constitution characterized by yin deficiency and excessive fire. Yin is calm and yang is impulsive, so anger is not advisable. Take your time with everything. Of course, you can also emulate Mr. Lu Xun, but you won't live to be sixty."
The master said, "I see. When I was young, I loved to argue about who was better, but in recent years I've finally become more self-disciplined. I learned that from you."
Xipodao said, "Zeng Guofan has a poem: 'Bow my head and bow,' said the butcher, 'All things are like passing clouds in the vast void.' He wrote it to his younger brother Zeng Guoquan. Unfortunately, his brother had poor self-cultivation. After his comeback, he sued the Governor-General of Huguang, Guan Wen, resulting in a loss for both sides."
Master said, "Coincidentally, twenty years later, Zeng Guofan's son Zeng Jize deeply understood his father's true meaning of life. Thousands of miles away in England, Zeng Jize wrote a similar poem: I bow my head to Tao Pengze, and ask the innkeeper about all matters of multiplication and division."
Oh my god, I sat there with my face burning. I wasn't unfamiliar with Zeng Guofan and Zeng Jize, but my mind was blank as to what the "屠羊" in the poem meant. I pretended to go to the bathroom and went outside. I searched Baidu and found out that "屠羊" (slaughtering a sheep) didn't mean "kill a sheep," but "屠羊" (slaughtering a sheep) meant "slaughtering a sheep."
The ancients were also quite humorous and loved to poke fun at themselves. However, it seems I was right not to drink, because they were the kind of bosom friends who could talk and have fun together.
After leaving Su's study, I went to his living room first. I realized that I hadn't noticed before, but there was a calligraphy hanging on the wall: Excellence in work comes from thinking.
It's interesting that the idiom "proficiency comes from diligence" is used. Yet, Su Shipo wrote it as "thinking." Come to think of it, what's the point of being diligent if you don't think and ponder?
Looking at the calligraphy again, it's a self-contained entity, with an indescribable feeling: it can be said to be methodical, yet its spontaneity is evident everywhere; it can be said to be spontaneity, yet its every stroke is methodical. Using calligraphic terms to describe this state of mind is too dull.
My feeling: It's like a girl of eighteen or nineteen, leaning against the door and smelling the green plum with purity. But if it's too pure, it will be boring after looking at it for a long time. You need to add some sexiness and seduction to the purity to arouse the man's love and desire and the urge to take a bite. Only then can you be a real beauty.
It's too elegant and too complex. Five words can best describe it: flirtatious and pure. My grandfather, Su Xipo's calligraphy, can bring this kind of synaesthesia to people - it's indescribable, but it hits the heart directly.
If Wang Yiming's calligraphy is compared to Xipo's, the difference is truly as vast as heaven and earth, a difference far greater than a thousand miles. The comparison reveals that this is a world of hype.
After leaving the living room, I headed towards the pharmacy. I saw a line of people waiting to see a doctor sitting in the lobby, and some people busy getting medicine. I was about to leave when I heard someone on the second floor of the duplex shout, "Number 8."
A woman stood up and walked upstairs.
If I hadn't been attracted by the sound of the woman coming upstairs, I would have gone back to the study to listen to their conversation.
The sound was particularly loud, and when I looked, I saw that it was a wooden staircase.
How to install a wooden staircase in this modern western-style building?
I couldn't help but follow the woman up the wooden stairs. A man who was dispensing medicine for a patient stopped me and said, "Hey, you don't know the rules. Come one by one."
I said, "I'm not a doctor, I'm Master Hongyi's disciple."
The man still beckoned me, and I retreated down the stairs.
The man waved again, and I walked over. He smiled and said:
"You are a guest. Wait a minute, I'll take you upstairs." He hurried out from behind the counter, took a look upstairs, and then took me upstairs.
On the second floor, there was a small hall. A middle-aged man who looked very much like Su Xipo was writing a prescription for a woman. There was another man who looked like his assistant sitting beside him.
Until the woman took the list and left. The person who led me upstairs said to the middle-aged man:
"Brother, this is Master Hongyi's disciple."
The middle-aged man extended his hand: "Welcome, welcome. My father said you were coming yesterday."
"My name is Wan Shanhong."
The middle-aged man said, "My name is Su Xing." Then he said to his helper, "Call number nine."
"I hope I didn't disturb you."
"fine."
I asked, "Why do you want to go upstairs to see the doctor?"
He didn't answer me. He seemed to be in a trance.
I felt a little embarrassed. The helper remained silent. After a while, a man came up.
Su Xing said to the man, "Tinnitus, forgetfulness, dizziness, inexplicable irritability, easy to lose temper, and sore waist and knees. Is that right?"
The man said, "That's all right. I've been to several big hospitals, but they can't cure me."
I am bored. As a doctor, I don’t look, ask, smell or cut. The patient just sits down and tells me the symptoms. How do I diagnose the disease?
I was just thinking about it when Su Xing dragged out his words: "25 grams of wolfberry, 50 grams of yam, 100 grams of polished rice..."
A helper-like person writes on the prescription and hands it to the patient.
Su Xing instructed, "Bring it to a boil over high heat, then simmer it over low heat. Take it once in the morning and evening. Take it for seven consecutive days."
The helper said, "There's no one down there."
Su Xing apologized, "I'm sorry. Some patients travel dozens or even hundreds of miles to see me. I'm sorry to have neglected you so that they can go back earlier."
The helper made tea and brought it to me, then went downstairs.
I said, "It's okay. I shouldn't have bothered you. It's just that I'm curious about this wooden staircase."
Su Xing chuckled, "This is a family tradition. When I was an apprentice, I treated patients downstairs. After ten years, I moved upstairs. If I couldn't treat patients upstairs accurately, I would switch to dispensing medicine. Of the three of us brothers, I'm the only one who treats patients upstairs now."
I still didn't understand, so I asked, "Why do we have to go upstairs to look?"
Su Xing laughed so hard that I felt embarrassed.
He said, "This is your first time in my house, so it's understandable that you don't know. My family's custom is to sit upstairs and listen to the patient's footsteps as they come upstairs, and then we can tell what's wrong with them."
Huh? I lost my composure and nearly slipped off my chair.
Su Xing said, "It's time to eat. Come on, I'll go down with you."
There was no big fish or meat on the table. Apart from stewed chicken, scrambled eggs and fried tofu, there were only some mountain products - fresh wood ear mushrooms, ground skin, seaweed, hanging melon... I think these dishes are not available in winter.
Su Xipo seemed to see through my thoughts and said, "My family doesn't buy supermarket goods. We have our own greenhouse. Don't worry about eating it, Xiao Wan."
During the meal, Su Xipo said to his master, "As for the medicine, go back and get it. I'm short of one. The Jiangxi Traditional Chinese Medicine Store has the purest medicine in the city.
Secondly, the ginseng must be white. Red ginseng enters the blood, while white ginseng enters the lungs. I've clearly written this, but some stores won't take responsibility and will just sell it as long as it's white ginseng."
Then I realized that the master was here to prescribe a prescription.
On the way back, I asked with concern, "Master, do you have chicken blindness?"
The master didn't answer. If the master didn't answer, it would prove that I was a pig, or even less intelligent than a pig.
No conversation along the way.
Then why did the master come to visit Su Xipo?
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