Excerpt / Summary One cough can tell two very different stories. Western medicine may look for airway irritation, infection, inflammation, or other respiratory causes, while Chinese medicine may consider patterns involving cold and heat, phlegm, Lung Qi, constitution, and the balance of the body as a whole. Starting with one of our most familiar symptoms, this book explores how two medical traditions can look at the same human body yet ask different questions—and what we may

Ni Haixia passed away in 2012 at the age of 59 (by traditional East Asian reckoning). Logically, the story of this controversial overseas practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine should have ended there. Yet, more than a decade later, young people continue to re-edit, share, and watch his low-resolution classroom lecture videos.

What Ni Haixia truly left behind may not be any specific herbal formula, but rather a way of re-examining the human body. He brought the *Neijing*, *Shanghan Lun*, and *Jingui Yaolue* out of the realm of ancient texts and into everyday life, while simultaneously positioning Traditional Chinese Medicine in a new dialogue—or confrontation—with modern medicine.