Our teacher Guan Jinghuan, a famous veteran TCM physician in Hubei province, has been engaging in clinical research for more than forty years in the treatment of nephrosis by the combined Chinese and western medicine, and he has accumulated a wealth of experience, especially in treating intractable nephritic diseases. The following is an introduction of his experience in treating chronic nephritic hematuria.

Dr. Sheng Xiesun, from a TCM physician's family, has practised acupuncture for 50 years. In Dr. Sheng's view, although the traditional acupuncture techniques were based on Miraculous Pivot (灵枢经)， and already well-developed in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, we must be aware that the formation and development of acupuncture techniques have been going along with the improvement of acupuncture needles. The acupuncture techniques described in Internal Classic (内经) are the ones practiced in the times of the "nine needlings"; while in the Song and Ming Dynasties the needling techniques were based on the use of filiform needles.

Knee Osteoarthritis, a retrograde disease, is mainly characterized by pain in the knee joints and limitation of the movement. It is a common and frequently occurring disease affecting the health and life quality of old people. In recent years, acupuncture treatment of knee osteoarthritis with satisfactory therapeutic results has been repeatedly reported,2-3, 5-6 but there has been few report on the observation of long-term therapeutic effects after treatment. With acupuncture as the main therapy, 109 cases of knee osteoarthritis were treated in this series. 91 cases with good therapeutic results were followed up for 6 months. A report is presented in the following.

Osteoarthritis, a nonspecific inflammatory lesion, is a commonly seen joint disease. Clinically, it is mainly characterized by arthralgia, swelling, and motor impairment. Since the knee joint is the load-bearing joint of the human body, and is susceptible to trauma, gonitis tends to have the highest morbidity in the four limbs, which manifests itself arthritis of patella and femur at the early stage; narrowness or disappearance of the medial joint space at the mid stage; and damage of the cartilage accompanied with flexion deformity at the late stage. In recent years, based on the experience of Prof. Cao Yiming, the author has treated 47 cases of gonitis by combined use of Chinese drugs and acupuncture, and obtained satisfactory therapeutic results as reported in the following.

Chronic renal insufficiency is the result of renal injuries and progressive deterioration caused by various reasons. At the late stage, i.e. the period of uremia, it may be complicated with abnormalities of various systems. Along with the development and popularization of hemodialysis, the survival time of uremic patients can be prolonged, but uremic pruritus affects greatly the quality of life of the patients. For this purpose, we have treated 68 cases of the patients with acupuncture and western medicine respectively, and made clinical observations on the therapeutic results. A report follows.

Pointed condyloma in the anus is caused by a virus of human papilloma, marked by the presence of rapidly growing cutaneous verrucae with itching, mild pain and offensive secretion. Diagnosis can be made based on biopsy. The disease is of high recurrence and very difficult to be cured radically. The author combined surgery with external washing with Chinese herbal medicine and achieved quite good results. The following is report of the treatment.

Thirty-six cases with hyperglycemia were treated with the method of promoting blood circulation and removing stasis in a course of 4 weeks. The treatment was significantly effective in correcting the abnormal viscosity of the blood by reducing the contents of total plasmic cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and apoprotein B (apoB), while the level of the apoprotein A (apoA) was elevated.

In this series of 65 cases of aplastic anemia, 26 cases were treated by the kidney-tonifying and mediating method, 19 cases by western drugs, and the remaining 20 cases only by tonifying the kidney as controls. The results showed that the kidney-tonifying and mediating method was significantly superior in the total effective rate to the method of western drugs and that of tonifying the kidney alone (P<0.01), and it was also superior in the improvement of symptoms, myelogram, and peripheral blood count to the other two methods.

Proctoptosis, a disease of downward displacement of the anal canal, rectal mucosa, rectum or partial sigmoid colon, is known as prolapse of the rectum in TCM, which is frequently seen in the weak and thin babies or children of 2-4 years old. The author treated 36 cases of infantile proctoptosis by using extremely shallow puncture in the acupuncture techniques from Aug. 1995 to Dec. 1998 and obtained satisfactory results as reported in the following.

Forty-five cases of apoplexy were treated by electroacupuncture only at the points of Yin Meridians (i.e. the Hand- and Foot-Taiyin Meridians), and the other 30 cases as the controls were treated only at the points of Yang Meridians (i.e. the Hand- and Foot-Yangming Meridians). The total effective rate was 91.1% in the former and 86.7% in the latter, with no statistically significant difference between the two groups, indicating that acupuncture only at the points of Yin-Meridians is also an effective therapy for apoplexy.