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Chapter 386 The Strangeness of Chinese Medicine

Ding Yuan recalled the process of making traditional Chinese medicine in the past.

A medicine pot, a pack of traditional Chinese medicine, a few bowls of water, boiled for half an hour, and then filtered through the medicine residue, leaving half a bowl of medicine soup...

Then the problem is coming.

For the time being, I think that the package of medicine I bought is very accurate, so is the process of decocting the medicine accurate?

How many milliliters of water is needed in total?

Not to mention three bowls of water boiled into one bowl, the size of each bowl varies from household to household.

How many minutes and seconds does the decoction take?

Don't say anything about boiling on high fire and turning to low heat to simmer for half an hour. The material of medicine pots in each household is different, the stove is also different, and the standards for high and low fire are also different.

Therefore, the time to boil the water varies from household to household, and the amount of water lost in the medicine jars during this process is also different. Some people can burn through the medicine jars by turning on a low fire for half an hour.

Finally, the medicine was finally cooked.

So, how many milliliters of the filtered medicinal soup is needed?Is the filtration thorough, or is the concoction at the bottom of the tank completely drained?

Do you want to squeeze those medicine dregs hard again to squeeze out all the medicine juice inside?

After drinking the medicine, do you want to lick all the medicine dregs at the bottom of the bowl?
These questions were seriously raised by Ding Yuan, and the old man who asked them was a little speechless.

Ding Yuan concluded: "So, ordinary traditional Chinese medicine does not need to be particularly precise, unless it is a poison, it must be a very poisonous poison."

Old man Li said anxiously: "If you think this way, you are wrong. The earliest name of Chinese herbal medicine was poison, but the concepts of poison and medicine were separated later. The highly toxic Chinese medicine is called poison, and the weak poison is called medicine." ..."

After a pause, old man Li added: "That's why there is a saying that medicine is three-point poison. Any medicine is poisonous, even if it is vitamins, you will be poisoned if you take too much."

Ding Yuan wondered: "So, isn't taking medicine a very dangerous thing?"

"Of course, do you think that taking medicine is eating sugar? Most people just don't feel the damage to the body caused by taking medicine indiscriminately. After all, most medicines will not cause death or disability immediately."

Old man Li said solemnly: "If you don't believe me, you can go to the hospital to test your liver, kidney and heart function while taking medicine indiscriminately, and see the changes in various data indicators."

"However, since the accuracy of the medicine is so high, and there are all kinds of decoction methods, why haven't there been any accidents?"

"This is..."

Old man Li pondered for a while: "Actually, in the treatment concept of traditional Chinese medicine, the human body is a perfect whole, and all treatment methods are only to maintain the balance of this whole. The so-called treatment is just to make the whole body return to a normal state on its own. .”

"For example, if you get angry, it will show many symptoms. Some people will get acne, some people will have toothache, some people will have mouth and tongue sores, and some people will have a sore throat..."

"But the treatment plan of traditional Chinese medicine is a panacea. Regardless of the effect or the speed of recovery, it is all about reducing the fire. As long as the body's yin and yang are balanced, all symptoms will naturally be resolved and they will recover on their own."

"So, the treatment methods of traditional Chinese medicine are actually just an aid to the human body. It is human beings who really fight against the disease."

"Therefore, for some minor illnesses and minor pains, even if the medicine is not accurate, or even the wrong medicine is used, the disease can be cured..."

Ding Yuan was confused when he heard this: "Can the disease be cured even if you use the wrong medicine?"

"Of course, just like the difference between the warm-heat sect and the typhoid-fever sect, although there were some biases and mistakes at the time, most of the patients were cured. As for the damage to the body, it may be ignored as a serious illness... "

Old man Li paused for a moment, then smiled again: "You are not an insider, so you won't understand these things. In short, it doesn't matter if there are some mistakes in Chinese medicine sometimes, the human body will naturally correct it, silently and hardly noticeable."

"But sometimes, a little bit of error can lead to huge deviations in the results."

"You should have heard the story of this kind of blind herbal medicine killing people. It's somewhat like a legend or a rumor."

"However, recently, someone told a story about Chinese herbal medicines."

"This Chinese herbal medicine is called Fumai, and its full name is Fumai."

"Floating wheat is the shriveled wheat caryopsis. If it is placed in water, it can easily float up."

"According to the research of Westerners, the main components of this thing are starch, enzymes, protein, fat, plus some calcium, iron, phosphorus, vitamins..."

"They think it's like bread."

"Bread is also made of wheat, and its nutritional content is no different from that of floating wheat."

"That's why Westerners believe that it is completely possible to tear a little bread and bread crumbs instead of this traditional Chinese medicine."

"But everyone guessed it in the end, the bread crust can't replace the floating wheat, it doesn't have any medicinal effect, and it makes the whole Chinese medicine formula ineffective."

Old man Li was quite proud and proud. He spread his hands helplessly: "Actually, if we explain it using modern science, I don't know what the principle is. Anyway, it must have nothing to do with nutrition."

"Traditional Chinese medicine believes that floating wheat has a kind of floating air, which cannot be replaced by baked bread, even if all the ingredients in it are extracted."

"There are many things in Chinese medicine that we don't know why. We just continue the tradition and use them as they did thousands of years ago."

"For example, everyone knows about acupuncture and moxibustion in traditional Chinese medicine. They also know that the meridian system does not exist in anatomy, but these meridian points do have therapeutic effects, and the effects are even extremely obvious."

"Sometimes, I even suspect that these medical skills should have been taught by another advanced civilization at the earliest."

"The ancients couldn't understand the principles, so they could only use it by rote memorization, and compiled a set of paradoxical and contradictory Chinese medicine theories."

"The development of Western medicine is actually very late. In the Middle Ages, they were almost helpless in the face of the Black Death, and even used the absurd method of bloodletting."

"It wasn't until modern times, when natural science developed and Western medicine had better research conditions, that it gradually began to make progress."

"But natural science is only a few hundred years old after all, and now it can only be said to be in its infancy."

"Human beings still have many unsolved mysteries, no matter at the macro or micro level, there is only a little bit of understanding of this nature and the universe."

"We cannot use the current scientific system to understand Chinese medicine."

Old man Li said solemnly: "Although it has been passed down for thousands of years, it is definitely not the simple and superficial knowledge of primitive people."

(End of this chapter)