While we were buying some cream for insect bites at a drugstore, we were able to see a prescription for Chinese medicine being filled.
Two ladies read the prescription and found the needed herbs and roots in the drawers behind them. Each item was carefully measured and weighed before being folded up inside a sheet of paper.
You can see that the tools used are just the same as hundreds of years ago — the scale and the abacus.
Chinese medicine and Western medicine are, of course, radically different. When our friends try to encourage us to see Chinese doctors and take Chinese medicine, we politely refuse. To keep from offending them we tell them that Western bodies respond better to Western medicine. Chinese medicine only works for Chinese people. They seem to accept that reasoning.
The items are boiled together and the resulting liquid is the medicine. The patient waiting for his prescription told us that all Chinese medicine is very, very bitter but that he couldn’t get well without it.
Actually, I’m sure many of the medicines do help one’s health, but my husband and I still joke about “eye of newt” potions. And it’s not too far-fetched. See the dried lizards on the top of the cabinets?
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I am just happy to see that at least this one place of business wasn’t a cluttered and unorganized mess! Next the actual doctor’s office, the pharmacy is the next place I would definitely want there to be some sort of order to. Yikes!
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Can you get away with more mess in a store when there are way more people working there than there ever would be in the states? In the two week I spent in Guangzhou while my friend picked up her adopted baby, I noticed how many more people seemed to work in the stores and shops, and they all knew were everything was.
It reminded me of my mother in law’s kitchen when all my in-laws cook at the same time and miraculously don’t step on each other. I’m not comfortable with it, but it seem to work for them.
-Christine in Massachusetts
Well, there certainly are more people working in stores. There are more people everywhere.
I’ve not had the situation where they all know where everything is. In fact, when workers tell me that they don’t have a certain item, I often can find it myself if I continue looking. They are often surprised that their store did, in fact, have the item.
Wow, fascinating.
There is a beautiful sense of order to it!
Can the same herbs and remedies be purchased at the pharmacy without a prescription if the patient, through study or experience requests a particular remedy–just as I can purchase most herbs independently, or are they controlled like pharmaceuticals are here in the West?
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Oh, they’re not controlled at all. I didn’t make that clear. You can also buy these things from street vendors or market stalls. But the benefit of the pharmacy would be cleanliness, more precise measuring, and one stop shopping. They have it ALL in those hundreds of drawers. I’m guessing there are more rare and expensive ingredients that only a pharmacy would have. The term prescription was used loosely. It’s really more of a recipe or shopping list. Grandma could write one for you if she knows what you need.
That’s really fascinating…but I’m with you and your ‘Western’ logic.
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Wow, I didn’t realize that prescriptions were not really that regulated! Very interesting! Are the pharmacies expensive? Can the average family afford to shop there easily?
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I might be able to stomach some of it if it were in capsule form, but to drink it? Blech!!!
I don’t know how it is in China, but in Korea you have to be careful with medicines and vitamins. They aren’t always what they claim to be!
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Wow! Thanks for sharing this. It is so interesting!
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Your post are always so interesting. Thanks so much for sharing little tidbits of your life with the rest of us.
Blessings,
Dawn
You’re welcome!
I can’t take those herbal remedies; they always me sick to my stomach. I even had to stop taking vitamins – gave me gastritis(probably the iron). I’ve had a few people try to convince me to see eastern practitioners, no thanks. I like my nice synthetic laboratory made western drugs.
I like to cook with herbs, but that’s where it stops. Interesting pictures!
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Hello, I loved reading your older posts on Chinese Medicine. As a western-minded but eastern-trained practitioner of acupuncture and a specialist in Chinese Herbs, it was really fun to read your views on herbs and on the cleanliness issue–which IS a real issue if you know anything about the field of herbal medicine.
Here are some more juicy tidbits of inside information for your group to chew on:
Chinese herbs and especially their FORMULAS are BETTER, in many ways, then western herbs, due to their LONGER history of usage. Also, many Chinese herbalists are trained through medical colleges and western herbalists are often weekend-internet warriors with no formal license or certification (yikes…Look out when choosing your herbalist. This lack of clinical training is very bad for the field…)
Chinese herbs are a godsend and nothing short.
If you ever get diagnosed with kidney stones or arthritis-like conditions, keep them in mind!
Many are being turned INTO western medications, and we as herbalists are fighting the pharmaceutical companies from taking total control over our field. Do you like mint? I’m surprised there isn’t a corporate patent on it…lol right? I’m actually not kidding!
..Herbs in natural form are rarely dangerous, but super-doses can be–when the individual ingredients are pulled apart and synthesized for pill-type concentrations favored in western medicine.
Example in point: EPHEDRINE is concentrated from the grassy herb Ma Huang, a wonderful asthma herb to dilate the bronchi and throat and increase ventilation in cases of ACUTE ASTHMA ATTACKS; in concentrated form the pill-form stimulant chemical was sold as a dietary supplement for increased wt. loss and energy and was responsible for deaths! But the doses prescribed for weight loss were FAR beyond the traditional doses used –the bulk herb (leaves, sticks and twigs used to make tea). Death was the result; improper dosing was the cause. And banning of the import of the Chinese herb Ma Huang was the ultimate bummer.
Unfair! Now, herbal specialists cannot use this herb for asthma, as it is hard to get a hold of! Further, meth production using the concentrated pills of Ephedrine-containing cough medicines (produced in the USA) is exacerbating the debate over the herb Ma Huang.
We herbal fans are fighting just to regain the use of this UNREPLACEABLE asthma herb! We need the public’s help to keep our herbal access doors open. If one by one, all the strong herbs that are the basis for our formulas are taken from us, we will not be able to treat using traditional methods.
But the most interesting issue for me is that in Chinese hospitals herbs and also acupuncture are used alongside, and often in place of western pain-killing and other medications to great effect. East-meets-West is the very very best medicine.
Chinese clinics are proving this!
People who are allergic to surgical anesthesia often NEED acupuncture to deaden the pain during surgery, and this use is catching on in the USA.
When acupuncture-herbs are used in surgery, often only 1/2 the med levels are needed! Amazingly safer bec. ‘going-under’ is always risky….
In the future, you may just receive a magical eye-of-newt potion with your pain pills…..
but drink-up, there are literally thousands of years of clinical trials to back up the use of these herbal formulas.
Dried Gecko is a popular herb, by the way, and is ground up, boiled and drank as a strange sort of tonic tea for chronic cough and weak-type lung conditions, basically. Also for low libido. The dry lizards on the cabinet in your photos look to be a pair of geckos–male and female. This herb is often used in this manner; as the different sexes have different herbal effects on the body.
Gecko or Ge Jie is a vital essence, yang and qi tonic for low immunity, impotence and asthma. It really works! Animal herbs are STRONG, compared to most PLANT-based herbs. Many chinese herbs are also mineral substances or fungi; hard to stomach for many Americans but very effective clinically.
The Asian cultures all tend to base their cooking around the use of spicy and also medicinal herbs. Vegetables and meats are all forms of herbal medicine; diet therapy is a major division of Chinese Medicine clinically especially in America.
Finally, you should know that
Classical Chinese medicine focuses LESS on modern research than traditional chinese medicine (TCM), and classical approaches use only ancient formulas written by what are the ‘mozarts’ of chinese healing long ago….
Different states have very different rules about the practice of herbs and acupuncture for money, and some don’t even have rules, so be sure to choose a licensed practitioner with lots of passion and experience–preferably one with a Master’s degree or even a Doctorate in Acupuncture (D.A.O.M.).
Different practitioners have very different skill levels when it comes to Chinese herbs–many ARE NOT trained at all or didn’t do very well in school and practice anyways…so pick a skilled practitioner in Chinese Herbs IF you want good results.
Self-diagnosis and non-supervised use of bulk herbs and harsh (strong, bitter) formulas is NOT recommended, as you can damage your body through imbalance in a relatively short period of time if using the wrong formula.
But if you have FIRE because you are going through menopause, you NEED that strong thick bitter fire-draining formula to get good results…for example. But you may need a little Gecko added in on the side to warm the formula a bit and add a tonic swing.
Hope this was enjoyable and reached somebody special.
My envy for your living in China…WOW…what an herbal experience that must have been …
live and love life
a.m. in Oregon