Pioneering doctor Hanaoka Seishū 華岡 青洲, of the Edo period, combined his knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine with Western surgical techniques he had learned, and became the first to perform surgeries with anesthetic. He was the first to formulate and use general anesthesia to remove tumors from cancer patients. His proceedure came 50 years before anyone else would perform surgery with general anesthetic. In the medical manuscript (example seen above), hand-painted pictures visually document the likeness to the men and women patients who went to Hanaoka for treatment, as well as the medical conditions being treated. https://youtu.be/RNGfown7iys
We can not receive nourishment without acceptance of our task at hand. Partaking with some sense of openness, we may transform our duty into something of personal, or even greater, value. This ability to transform is a central focus of the earth element in oriental medicine. Sometimes the foreign experience we must digest does not resemble something conferring nourishment, but rather a pile of something indigestible; something difficult and unwanted that we are faced with. 