Chapter 811: Sweltering Heat and Humidity

Chapter 811: Chapter 811: Sweltering Heat and Humidity

While the parents described the boy’s condition, the doctors in the conference room observed him closely. His face was rather flushed. A nearby doctor checked the boy’s tongue—it was pale red, scattered with red spots, and had a greasy coating. Once the parents finished speaking, Ju Jiahong took the boy’s pulse. It felt slippery under his fingers.

"Everyone is now familiar with the patient’s basic condition," Ju Jiahong said after sharing his findings on the pulse and tongue coating with the group.

Many doctors in the conference room looked thoughtful. Some even whispered among themselves. "Judging from the boy’s complexion and tongue coating, these are entirely heat symptoms. Generally speaking, this condition should result in boundless energy or insomnia. How could it cause lethargy?"

"Exactly. This is highly unusual."

Normally, heat symptoms manifested as irritability, fever, night sweats, and insomnia with vivid dreams. Even if lethargy occurred, it wouldn’t present quite like this boy’s case.

At this point, a female doctor spoke up. "Could it be an imbalance of Yin and Yang in the boy’s body, specifically Yin deficiency leading to hyperactive fire? But typically, Yin deficiency is accompanied by a dry mouth and throat, which he doesn’t seem to have."

"If it were Yin deficiency with hyperactive fire, the pulse should be fine and rapid," another doctor countered. "However, this boy’s pulse is slippery. It doesn’t quite match."

The crowd fell deep into thought once more. Liu Haixue and Liu Haohui exchanged a glance, in no rush to speak. As for Zhu Gaoyuan and the others, they tacitly withheld their opinions for the time being.

The boy’s condition indeed appeared complex. It was a mixture of deficiency and excess, likely presenting concurrent cold and heat symptoms. However, with so many doctors present, a few certainly had their own insights—such as Zhu Gaoyuan, Liu Haixue, and Liu Haohui.

It was just that since yesterday, Zhu Gaoyuan and his peers had noticed something subtle: Ju Jiahong seemed highly interested in Li Xu. Naturally, they were quite curious about him, too. Under this unspoken agreement, they all kept quiet.

Seeing that no one was speaking, Ju Jiahong turned to Li Xu, who had remained silent the entire time. "Dr. Li, what do you think?"

"Actually, it’s quite simple to understand this condition," Li Xu said. He hadn’t planned on speaking up much; if Ju Jiahong hadn’t asked, he would have preferred to listen to the other doctors’ opinions. But since he was called upon, Li Xu didn’t hesitate.

"Let’s look at the big picture first," he explained. "The human body’s sleep and wake cycles are regulated by the dynamic balance of Yin and Yang. It’s like day and night, the sun and the moon. During the day, the sun rises, which means Yang Qi is abundant. That’s when people are awake and working. At night, the sun sets and the moon appears, meaning Yin Qi is abundant. That’s when people rest and sleep.

"Normally, sleeping at night and being awake during the day is the natural state of things. Once this norm is violated—excluding scenarios like staying up late for overtime—it indicates a pathological state. Sleep imbalances caused by illness are nothing more than Yang Qi failing to descend at night and Yin Qi failing to rise. It’s like the sun refusing to set when it should, or the night refusing to fall.

"It’s akin to winter and summer," he continued slowly. "Nowadays, people place a heavy emphasis on mental enjoyment and have many nighttime entertainment options. But in the past, when entertainment was scarce, people usually slept later in the summer and earlier in the winter simply because it gets dark earlier in winter and later in summer.

"Based on this overarching principle, we can see through the boy’s heat symptoms and grasp the root cause. When Yang Qi is exhausted and Yin Qi is abundant, the eyes close in sleep; when Yin Qi is exhausted and Yang Qi is abundant, one awakens."

"Does Dr. Li mean that the boy doesn’t actually have heat symptoms?" a doctor asked. He wasn’t questioning Li Xu; he was genuinely seeking guidance. "Then how do we explain his flushed complexion?"

"Damp-heat accumulating and steaming upwards to disturb the head and face can also cause a flushed complexion," Li Xu explained. "A blockage of damp-cold can lead to the same result. In addition to a flushed face and a pale red tongue with red spots and prickles, the boy also presents with a bluish tinge on his nose, a greasy tongue coating, and a slippery pulse. The greasy coating and slippery pulse both indicate turbid dampness within his body, while the bluish nose further points to cold in his spleen and stomach.

"Li Donghuan, one of the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan Dynasties, stated in his *Treatise on the Spleen and Stomach* that ’deficiency of the spleen and stomach leads to lethargy and a fondness for sleep.’ Zhu Danxi, another of the Four Great Masters, also wrote in *Danxi’s Experiential Therapy* that ’when the spleen and stomach are afflicted by dampness, the body feels heavy and weak, leading to indolence and a desire to lie down.’

"Let’s also consider the duration of the illness," he continued. "The boy has been undergoing Western medical treatment for two to three months. The onset of the illness occurred right in the middle of summer. During the summer, the pathogenic factors of damp-heat are pervasive. The boy already suffered from a deficiency and coldness of the spleen and stomach, resulting in a lack of source for the generation of Qi and blood. This caused his defensive Qi to fail in securing the exterior, allowing the summer damp-heat to take advantage and invade his body. Therefore, the boy’s array of heat symptoms is not evidence of hyperactive internal Yang Qi, but rather a pathological manifestation of an external pathogen invasion."

After Li Xu finished speaking, many people in the conference room fell into deep thought. Zhu Gaoyuan and the others instinctively looked toward him.

Among the many young doctors present, those with truly high skill levels were in the minority. Most of them hadn’t possessed a sufficient understanding of this condition beforehand. Naturally, the majority were those who initially assumed it was a heat syndrome, felt confused because it didn’t match the lethargy, and were left completely clueless.

After hearing Li Xu’s explanation, these doctors experienced a sudden dawn of realization. It was like listening to a teacher explain a difficult problem and instantly understanding the solution.

As for Zhu Gaoyuan and his peers, they acknowledged that Li Xu’s skill level was quite impressive. While this illness wasn’t insurmountably difficult, it was still fairly complex. Using this case as a benchmark, anyone capable of clearly differentiating its symptoms would be considered a highly skilled doctor in most hospitals.

If a perfect score was one hundred points, a clear analysis of this condition definitely crossed the passing mark. In the entire Xinglin Realm, this placed him above seventy percent of the medical community.

As early as the late-stage treatment of Jiang Guojun’s father following his car accident, Ju Jiahong had already witnessed the prescription Li Xu wrote. At that time, although he felt the formula was seasoned and sophisticated, he mostly attributed it to Li Xu’s acute sensitivity to specific emergencies.

But today, at this exchange conference gathering all the young elite traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in Feng City, listening to Li Xu’s dissection of this "lethargic youth" case caused something to shift. The arrogance that Ju Jiahong usually kept hidden behind his reserved demeanor finally began to show a crack—one that demanded he truly take Li Xu seriously.

Li Xu’s analysis just now hadn’t been a simple matter of reacting to symptoms as they appeared. He had started from the macroscopic philosophy of the waxing and waning of Yin and Yang found in the *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor*, setting the overarching tone of "Yang failing to overcome Yin." Then, he unraveled the issue layer by layer, pinpointing the microscopic pathogenesis of dampness afflicting the spleen and stomach alongside the invasion of summer pathogens.

This way of thinking demonstrated a remarkably brilliant holistic perspective. It proved that to Li Xu, this illness was as transparent as a clear meridian chart, presenting no difficulty whatsoever.

At merely thirty years old, and without the constant guidance of a master from a major hospital, he was actually able to apply the holistic dialectical view of traditional Chinese medicine with such natural ease.