The Healer Is King (Volume 1)

The Healer Is King is an urban medical web novel by Fang Qianjin, serialized on 17K Novel Network around 2012. It runs about 3.56 million Chinese characters and is complete. The protagonist, Lin Yuan, comes from a family of traditional Chinese medicine; his grandfather is an old TCM doctor living in seclusion, yet Lin Yuan himself enrolled in a Western medical school and after graduation became an intern in the internal medicine department of Jiangzhong City Second Hospital. Because he uses a cup of ginger and brown sugar water to warm a patient's stomach and dispel cold, he is publicly reprimanded by the attending physician. Just then, Vice President Jiang Haichao, seeking to treat the critically ill young girl Zhang Xin, whose high fever will not subside, turns to him after many efforts. Lin Yuan uses 'qi observation' to discern the hidden ailments of the patient's family members, and with family-inherited TCM techniques such as qi-observation pulse diagnosis and golden needle acupoint therapy, he resolves one difficult case after another, gradually winning recognition from a bullied intern to forge his own path in medicine. The work incorporates TCM techniques such as 'qi-observation pulse diagnosis,' 'golden needle acupoint therapy,' and 'Burn Mountain Fire, Penetrating Heart Cool,' interspersed with typical medical cases such as acute jaundice, dysphagia, and diseases of affluence, writing about both medical skill and medical ethics. It is regarded as one of the representative works of the pure TCM school of urban fiction. This volume is the first in the series and contains the two arcs 'Intern Doctor' and 'Practicing Medicine in Jiangzhou,' beginning with Lin Yuan's first arrival at Jiangzhong Second Hospital and covering early plot points such as the heavy use of White Tiger, acute jaundice, graduation, renting a room, the Yonghui Martial Arts Club, the journey to western Sichuan, the smashing of the clinic, Jinhua Pharmaceuticals, the clinic's first patient, and a thousand gold for one needle.