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Master Cui’s Four Flowers Points


Journal of Chinese Medicine • Number 78 • June 2005


Yang Jizhou’s method of location Yang’s method is simpler than Zhang’s. The waxed string is used to measure the width of the patient’s mouth from corner to corner, then a paper square is cut out using the mouth width as the base measurement and a small hole cut in the center. The patient now steps on another, longer, waxed string. Measuring from the tip of the big toe, the string is drawn under the foot and up the back of the leg, running over the curves of the leg to the popliteal crease where it is cut off. We are told to use the left leg for males and the right for females. If a woman has bound feet, the text advises to use the length from Jianyu LI-15 to the end of the middle finger as measurement. This length of string is folded in half and its midpoint


placed below the laryngeal prominence with the two ends hanging down the patient’s back. The point on the spine is then marked where the strings end and the small hole in the center of the paper square is placed over this point. The four corners of the square thus form the Four Flowers and seven cones of moxibustion are applied to each of these four points.


Zhang Jiebin’s method of location Huanmen (Suffering Gate) Zhang’s method locates ‘the Four Flowers and Six Points of Master Cui’. He begins with the same method as Yang, measuring from the big toe to the popliteal crease, but then uses this measurement differently to locate two additional points to the Four Flowers which he calls Huanmen (Suffering Gate)9


. To locate Huanmen the patient sits up


straight with his hair parted in the middle. One end of the previously measured waxed string is set on the tip of the nose, pressed securely in place, and guided up through the parting in the hair, over the nape and down the back. The site on the spine at the end of the string is marked. Zhang then measures the mouth, but differently to Yang. Another small string is folded in half, the centre pressed to the root of the nasal septum and the ends cut at the corners of the patient’s closed mouth. The midpoint of this string is now placed on the marked point of the spine and opened out horizontally with the two ends of the string corresponding to the two points of Huanmen. Yang also discusses Huanmen in the same text as the


Four Flowers but he does not include it as part of the latter group of points. He locates Huanmen in the same way as Zhang, except that he measures the width of the closed mouth from corner to corner without using the septum as a midpoint measurement, and he begins the leg measurement from the tip of the middle toe rather than the big toe. Yang names Huanmen as Laoxue (Taxation point) on


the basis of the Classic of Nourishing Life which states that this point treats “the condition of enduring taxation manifesting as heat of the hands, feet and heart, night


sweating, exhausted essence-spirit and pain of the bones and sinews. It initially emerges as cough, gradually leading to spitting blood and pus, thinning of the flesh, yellow face, reduced food intake and reduced strength”. He bases the number of moxa cones applied to the points on the age of the patient plus one, and claims that it is always effective. Thus if the patient is 30 years old, 31 cones of moxa are applied. Both Yang and Zhang identify Huanmen as Xinshu


BL-15 and Yang notes, “the Heart governs blood. That is why moxibustion is applied to it”.


Zhang’s Four Flowers Zhang then gives directions for locating the Four Flowers. The patient sits up straight with the string placed around his neck so as to hang down the front and the string is cut where the two ends reach the tip of the xiphoid process. The string is then turned around to the back with its midpoint at the level of the laryngeal prominence and a point marked on the spine at its ends. Next, the width of the patient’s mouth is measured straight across as in Yang’s description, and the midpoint of this string placed over the mark on the spine and oriented horizontally. The string’s ends correspond to the left and right points of the Four Flowers. The same string which measured the patient’s mouth


width is now centered vertically over the same mark on the spine (whose location was measured using the xiphoid process). The string’s ends correspond to the upper and lower points of the Four Flowers. Zhang recommends applying 7, 14, 21 or even up to 100


cones of moxibustion to each of these four points as well as to Huanmen. Treatment is then suspended until the moxa sores erupt or are until they are about to heal. Note that while all four of Yang’s Four Flowers are


lateral to the spine, Zhang’s four points consist of two points lateral to the spine and two points right on the spine and he includes Huanmen in his description of the Four Flowers.


The Four Flowers and Yijing theory Zhang’s language and his method suggest that he bases his text on Li Yan’s book Entering the Gate of Medicine. Li states, “altogether there are six points. They have the image of Kan and Li in Already Completed [Jiji]”. This image refers to Hexagram 63 of the Book of Changes (Yijing). Already Completed is considered an auspicious hexagram in which every line is ordered appropriately. Fire (Li) and water (Kan) communicate with each other since water is located above and descends and fire is below and ascends. Thus they move towards each other10


. While a hexagram has six lines and the six points of


the Four Flowers have only four lines, the image is there nevertheless. In Hexagram 63 Already Completed the top line is yin, and yin and yang lines alternate going down11


.


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