Original source www.zhihu.com
Because there have been too many jokes historically about secret formulas
In 1959, Tianjin launched a “Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Formula Contribution Campaign”, aiming to mobilize folk TCM practitioners to publicly disclose their ancestral secret formulas under the slogan “ZZ Ba Shuai Hang, Up and Down United, Everyone Searches for Fine Prescriptions, Everyone Offers Treasures,” which were then collected, organized, and verified by the Tianjin Herbal Company.
However, this grand campaign was halted after just three days, not because no one “contributed formulas,” but because… too many were contributed.
Starting from the announcement of the “TCM Formula Contribution Campaign,” the Tianjin Herbal Company received over 100,000 secret formulas from folk sources within just three days!
To put it into perspective, after three years of collection and verification, New China published the “Chinese Pharmacopoeia” in 1953, which included fewer than 600 types of medicinal substances.
Wow! The folk TCM practitioners in Tianjin managed to produce 100,000 secret formulas in just three days, as if like “plague rats.” Even the Ministry of Health would be overwhelmed trying to verify these 100,000 formulas, let alone a mere local Tianjin herbal company.
This massive grassroots movement was shut down within three days. The plan to individually test all these 100,000 folk formulas was later abandoned, becoming a “castrated diary” — nonsense.
Therefore, the first point to clarify is that historically, old TCM practitioners did not keep secrets hidden; whenever given the chance, everyone wanted to disclose their ancestral “family treasures.”
So, the question posed by the original poster is wrong from the start.
Next, let’s consider the second question: what was the value of these secret formulas contributed by those old TCM practitioners?
Although the Tianjin Herbal Company did not complete the statistics and organization of the contributions, in those days, offering formulas to the motherland was a “glorious thing” for TCM practitioners, and many rushed to do so.
In fact, the year before the Tianjin “TCM Formula Contribution Campaign,” Shanghai also conducted a “Formula Contribution Campaign.”
However, the folk TCM practitioners in Shanghai were not as “crazy” as those in Tianjin.
Shanghai began mobilizing old TCM practitioners to contribute formulas in the winter of 1958, and by the end of 1959, had collected over 100,000 formulas. This timeline was relatively more ample compared to Tianjin.
Therefore, Shanghai had the time to test these folk TCM herbal prescriptions and then compile them into volumes for publication.
But there were still 100,000 entries. Shanghai had no good way to conduct experiments, so they reverted to the old specialty of TCM book compilation — direct transcription.
Priority was given to organizing the formulas contributed by TCM practitioners in municipal medical institutions, with a total of 57,000.
The Shanghai Municipal Health Administrative Organization applied principles of priority and urgency to verify and analyze these formulas, finally selecting 351 formulas from the 57,000 to compile into a book.
Well, selecting 351 formulas from 57,000 gives you an idea of the “quality” of these contributions.
So the selected 351 formulas should be pretty good, right?
Not really~
Let me quote a few for you to consider.
Contributor: Cao Tiyin
Indication: Prevention of eye diseases
Formula: equal parts of Hangganju (Chrysanthemum indicum) and goji berries; preparation method and usage: grind into powder, form pills with honey about the size of a wuzi seed. Take three qian each time; long-term use can prevent eye diseases.
Also this one:
Formula name: Dan Fang
Origin: Folk
Indication: Insomnia
Prescription: 28 red dates, 20 shí (adenophora), 10 lotus hearts, 5 longan fruits
Preparation method: decoct with water
Usage: once a day, continuous use for two weeks
And another:
Indication: Chronic cough
Prescription: YS shell 3 qian, Fritillaria 3 qian, Licorice 3 qian, Schisandra chinensis 3 qian
Preparation and usage: decoct with water, take continuously for 4-6 doses
Insomnia, cough, prevention of eye diseases…
This is the “level” of our folk secret formulas.
Not to mention the dangers of things like YS shell, there are already enough existing Chinese patent medicines to launch a full-scale siege on Guangming Ding.
So why bother with your contributed formulas?
This is the “best selection” from the 57,000 folk secret formulas.
That would be considered good. Most of the other “contributed formulas” were so anti-intellectual that they became jokes.
In fact, China had a “Formula Contribution Campaign” as early as the Anti-Japanese War period.
In September 1941, at the Second Congress of the National Medicine Research Association in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, representatives called on the TCM community to break the old conservative views and bad habits, to voluntarily disclose their “secret formulas” for collective discussion and research.
The border region government then received a heap of strange and bizarre TCM “secret formulas.”
For example, some folk TCM practitioners openly disclosed their “secret formulas” that used pig urine as a diuretic, based on the backward and misleading idea of “taking something rotten to correspond with like.” Others’ “secret formulas” were simply the work of shamans and witch doctors — for example, for a child with fever and incessant crying, the treatment was to stand a rolling pin in a water jar and call the names of deceased family members. If the rolling pin did not fall, then the child was told to bow at the deceased’s grave the next day, then the fever would subside.
The folk TCM contributions were so absurd that the 1944 Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Cultural and Educational Conference passed a resolution on “Developing Mass Health and Medical Work” which stated:
“Western medicine should actively cooperate closely with TCM, use scientific methods to study Chinese medicine, help TCM become scientific, jointly combat diseases and death, and reform sorcery. TCM should vigorously learn science and Western medicine, openly disclose their secret formulas and experiences, and technically proficient doctors should help educate less capable doctors to make progress.”
By this time, the Central Soviet Area had lost hope in the folk TCM formula contribution campaign.
Professional problems were to be solved by professionals. These ridiculous TCM secret formulas were difficult to identify, so they simply called on Western medicine to “help TCM become scientific through scientific methods.”
I wonder how TCM fans feel when they see this sentence in the document.