Ancient Medicine Modern World

I’m just not a Mahuang kind of guy. I don’t have the physique, nor the kinds of health problems that Mahuang kinds of people tend to have.

Anyway, Mahuang scares me a bit. It is one of the herbs along with Fu-zi, Da-huang, and Huang-lian that demand respect and sharp clinical skills to use safely. I remember how crazy it used to make me to see all those diet product companies that touted Mahuang as the answer to effortless weight loss. My teachers all taught us that it was an herb to be used with careful consideration. Use it when it is called for, but don’t be careless with it. Being cautious by nature, I might error on the side of using it too seldom.
Which is a different kind of mistake.

Not surprisingly, flying between seasons and timezones, and into a world thick with the dust of demolition and construction, I managed to get a cold. A bad one. And I have no time for downtime. A month might sound like a long time in China, but this one is packed tight, and with little margin for error.

There is that familiar dry cough, and the chest is so tight I feel like slipping a crowbar between the ribs to break open some movement. My usual chase the cold formula from Taiwan is not working its usual fine effect. But, as luck with have it, I am chewing through the Mahuang chapter of 十大類方. And the illness presentation for this herb is pretty much what I am living at that exact moment.

Dr Huang has this idea that there are a number of constituional types that resonate with different herbs. Those constitutional types tend to get sick in certain ways. And those ways generally are ways in which those resonate herbs just happen to work. But, there are those occasions when we fall ill outside the pattern of tendency. And in those cases, it is appropreiate to use herbs that match that pattern. But, they are to be used short term and with caution.
It is not unlike being a visitor in a foreign land.

At the moment, my cold has given me a visa to Mahuangville. My symptom pattern matches it in almost a textbook way. It’s an 8 kuai taxi ride to an herb store that will not only have what I need, but will cook it up and vacuum pack each dose into these nice plastic bags.

A day later, I’m coughing out the green phlegm, and have thrown away the crowbar. After two days, my energy feels mostly normal. After three days, even the cough is gone.

Match the herbs to the presentation. Simple!

No, not simple, elegant!