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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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!
BlessedMomma´s last blog ..Random Mobile Pics Of What We Have Been Up To
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
Wow, fascinating.
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.
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.
Jolanthe´s last blog ..Today I Resolve…
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?
BlessedMomma´s last blog ..Julie&Julia Movie Review…….sorta
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!
Marsha´s last blog ..Uniform, schnuniform
Wow! Thanks for sharing this. It is so interesting!
Dana´s last blog ..Driving to Dingle (Day 11)
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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