The work's overarching themes ask the reader to question themselves in regards to the importance of superstition, as well as to man's constant quest for meaning and control of the circumstances encountered while living in an increasingly complicated world.
After walking through the streets as the sun rises, he meets up with a man "[...] clad entirely in black",[3] with whom he trades the silver pieces earned from his tea shop for a roll of steamed bread dripping with blood.
Husband and wife then set out to cook the bloodied steamed bread in a lotus leaf, paying no mind to a curious customer who inquires as to the peculiar smell emerging from the oven.
A man enters and reveals that the reason for his happiness is the acquisition of a "guaranteed cure"[3] for his son's ailment: a warm bread roll dipped in the blood of an executed criminal who reportedly engaged in revolutionary activities.
His subsequent coughing fit is almost drowned out by the noise of the conversation until one of the customers notices and tells him to stop coughing—as he has ingested a "guaranteed cure".
[4] The use of the fallen revolutionary's blood to strengthen Little Chuan's weakening body symbolizes an attempt to "preserve vitality";[4] when the cure fails, it demonstrates that this is not enough to better the woes present in Chinese society.
[5] Through the theme of superstition, Lu aims to demonstrate that the only real path to a better future is the one offered by modern medicine[6] and revolutionary thought,[4] rather than tradition.
[5] Lu creates characters that are emblematic of the different kinds of individuals he identifies within Chinese society, and explores their respective subjectivities while inquiring as to their conception of the self and their place in modern China.
[5] The consumption of another's blood is reported by the characters of "Medicine" as being able to treat Little Chuan's ills by imbuing him with the fallen revolutionary's life force.
[8] This is why revolutionary ideas are key to Lu: old, traditional institutions are portrayed in this story as feeding on younger, more modern thought processes that are trying to emerge.
[7] While amongst the shortest stories presented in the collection, "Medicine"'s concern with modernizing Chinese thought and conceptions of the world is emblematic of Call to Arms as whole.
[5] Lu's stylistic choices, his critique of traditional conceptions of man, health, and sickness, as well as the solution he found in modernity has had a lasting impact on his contemporaries[5] as well as on later Chinese writers.