 Throughout history, especially Chinese medical history, some of the greatest physicians that are the most famous for their skill, still to this day, came out of eras where there were pandemics. Now, you look at the physician Zhang Zhongjing, who lived a couple hundred years after Christ, and wrote one of the most famous herbal books still to this day. He lived through a pandemic that killed almost two-thirds of his family. And other physicians, who clearly were not young people at the time, managed to survive these pandemics, treating these patients all day long. So in this video, I want to bring up a couple thinking questions. A couple just philosophical or theoretical questions to ponder about how these ancient physicians survived while treating these pandemics. Hey, it's Alex Hine, author of the Health Best Seller, Master of the Day. Now, I've included the first link below as for a free PDF, five daily rituals that can possibly help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So you can check it out right there, the first link in the description. So I'm going to read the preface to one of the most famous books in Chinese medicine called the Shanghan Lun, because this preface kind of sets the stage for what this ancient physician had lived through and what had inspired him to dedicate his life to medicine in an era of serious difficulty. So in the preface to his herbal text, here's what it says. My ancestral clan has always been numerous, with more than 200 members in the past. But since the first year of Jian'an, in less than 10 years, the proportion of those who have perished has been 2 out of 3, with cold damage claiming 7 out of 10 of these. Deeply affected by this ruinous loss in my past and by the failure to rescue them from damage and premature death, I have diligently sought out the ancient instructions and collected a great number of methods far and wide. I have chosen the Su Wen, the Ling Shu, the Nanjing, the Yin Yang Dalun, the Tai Lv Yaolu, and the Ping Mai Bian Zheng to compose the Shanghan Zabing Lun in 16 scrolls. Even though you will not yet be able to exhaustively cure all the various diseases, you may be able to look at a disease and know its origin. If you can unravel what I have collected here, you will have thought through more than half of all these problems you may face. So one thing I find so incredibly interesting that my mentor brought up is that on some level, the fact that these ancient physicians treated these patients with pandemics and they survived, on some level may be testimony enough to the efficacy of these formulas. This physician treated a unknown number of people and managed to live and to write about it and to transmit this text to us. Now we know in ancient times there were some practices like putting sesame oil in your nose and even one of the text mentions you should sneeze it out, try to blow it out after you leave the treatment area or seeing the patients. But it makes me wonder more about the Chinese medical philosophy because it's very different from conventional care and how people today think about illness and what causes illness. So my first thing I want you to think about is that these ancient physicians somehow survived these pandemics while treating these patients with a lot less protection than you see today in the news. The second thing is that traditional Chinese medicine, the view of health and illness is very different from conventional care. One of my mentors brings up the fact that it seems like a lot of what's, what conventional medicine orients around is blame, right? Oh, it's your genetics. Oh yeah, it's viruses and germs and all these things infecting you in parasites. It's just this stuff outside of you, you just got a nuke it and you're good. It's all of these things outside of you are always the reason why you're supposedly getting sick. And yet we know that at any given time the room you're in could be filled with influenza virus and yet you don't get it and most people are not sick by it. So is it really about the host, the person, or is it about the environment? And we know ultimately it's a combination of both. But the Chinese medical view is almost always that you strengthen the terrain, you strengthen the person and then that person can walk into a room full of people with colds, for example, and not catch the cold. But it's this idea of the person Yuan Qi, the base vitality or the Zheng Qi, think of it as the good fighters to battle what's been invading when you get a cold or a flu. And so your greatest protection is not washing your hands or wearing a mask, even though of course you should do those things. Your greatest protection is always your own vitality. Your greatest protection is always going to be your own wellness, your own immunity, your own strength. Whenever you are going about whatever it is you are in life, it doesn't mean walking to a room full of people with the flu or a cold. Of course not. But it means to really focus on always what is most essential. And the Chinese medical view is that typically it's your own vitality because that more than anything will predict whether or not you catch something. So I hope this brings up maybe two big questions about what these ancient physicians were doing or what it is about Chinese medical theory that has allowed them to survive and even treat these. In ancient times these people the Chinese were doing vaccinations too in the 1500s where they were crushing up smallpox scabs and blowing them into people's noses or putting them into their skin into like a little scar or a little cut. So vaccination was well known far beyond when it was established in the western world. And even things like surgery have been practiced in ancient China for, I mean the president was said maybe thousands of years before Western Europe and I know Egyptians had been doing it even longer than that. But coming back to these two questions, how did these great physicians survive pandemics in Chinese medicine history? And two, thinking about what really causes illness. Is it something out there or is it something within? A weakness or deficiency within or is it a combination of the above? Just some thinking points for today, some little philosophy. Now if you want to stay in touch, grab the free guide below. If you download that and enter your email for the five daily rituals that can possibly help you add 10 years to your life, you'll also get an email every couple days on how to use Chinese medicine to heal yourself. Check it out down there below and then before you go, check out this related video right here.