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Chinese Herbs
By peace | August 22, 2007
Chinese Herbs are not merely dried plants or animals. In many cases they are actually crude drugs, while some have been specially processed to enhance the quality of the basic material. Most of the herbs used are never used alone. Rather, they are used together with others, to make up a prescription.
In Chinese medicine, there are more than 100 different prescriptions in general use today. The actual combination in quantities and in the number of ingredients in each prescription may vary from one practitioner to another, but generally, the main ingredients remain the same. Also, the quantity of each ingredient may vary, depending on the practitioner’s assessment of the patient’s health, his sex as well as his weight.
The practitioner usually diagnoses the ailment before offering a prescription. The patient is questioned regarding the aches and pains he experiences, his general appetite, how he feels, and so on. The practitioner also uses his power of observation to note the patient’s skin colour, texture, redness of nose, etc. Smells, especially body odour, also provide clues to the condition of the various organs such as stomach, lungs, liver, kidney, bladder and colon. Touching of the patient is also involved, in particular, to read his pulse, and to palpate his abdomen as well as the diagnostic acupuncture points.
Source: An Illustration of Chinese Medicinal Herbs
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:16 am
[…] Chinese Medicine is actively practised inside China. Outside China, in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, it is also practised, where the population is predominantly ethnic Chinese. The practice is also seen in countries where the population has a significant percentage of ethnic Chinese, like in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand or even Indonesia, or anywhere else in the world where there are large pockets of ethnic Chinese, as in Europe and the Americas. Countries such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam also practise this form of healthcare, although much modified to suit their own national requirements. […]