#我来唠家常#
▲ Xinjiang, 5445 meters above sea level in the Tianshan Bogda Peak, several blooming snow lotus. Photo by Hao Pei
-The Legend of the Gentleman of Things-
Nux nux cassia seed cang's ear
And lotus seeds
Huang Yanzi Bitter Bean River Yuzi
I want to save face~
When it comes to traditional Chinese medicine, most people think of Shennong's Materia Medica. This pharmacological monograph, collected and sorted out by many medical scientists during the Qin and Han dynasties, is the first systematic summary of Chinese traditional medicine. In traditional Chinese medicine, plants are undoubtedly the most important source of medicinal materials.
▲A corner of the pharmacy. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
Lu Xun once recalled in the preface of "The Scream" the medicine for his father in his youth - reed roots in winter, sugarcane after frost for three years, and crickets in the original pair...... Later, this fragment entered the Chinese textbook and became the first impression of a generation of people on traditional Chinese medicine, and Lu Xun himself, who wrote these words, probably also had some resentment.
It can be seen that the "dispute between Chinese and Western medicine" that has been fermenting on the Internet in recent years is actually not a new topic. Since the beginning of the 20th century, this debate has been going on for more than a century. Despite this, we still do not have a clear understanding of Materia Medica......
▲ Hand-painted licorice. Diagram / Diagram Worm Creative
What is Materia Medica?
Traditional medicine around the world has the practice of using plants in medicine. In China, as early as the 2nd century, the Shennong Materia Medica, which systematically recorded and analyzed botanicals, appeared. Since then, all the plants that can be used in medicine have been collectively referred to as Materia Medica. Since then, "Materia Medica" has become a synonym for people to understand and express traditional Chinese medicine. In fact, the process of continuous development of Chinese medicine is the process of people accumulating experience around the use of materia medica.
▲ Meili Snow Mountain, residents who go up the mountain to dig wild angelica. "Meili" means medicine mountain in Tibetan. The number of wild medicinal herbs is limited, so local medicinal farmers collect herbs and sow seeds in order to sustain the growth of medicinal resources. Photo by Liu Jiewen
Most of the medicinal materials used in traditional Chinese medicine have their own specific production areas, and this precise correspondence between geographical space and herbs is the "authenticity" that the herbal field pays attention to. According to this authenticity, Chinese herbal medicine can be divided into ten "Taoist real estate areas". The northern part of Shanhaiguan and the three eastern provinces and the northeastern part of Inner Mongolia produce customs medicine; Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi and other real estate northern medicines; while the Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningning, and Qinghai regions produce Western medicines; the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau produces Tibetan medicines; and the Sichuan-Chongqing regions produce Sichuan medicines. In addition, there are Yungui medicine, Zhejiang medicine, Jiangnan medicine, Guangzhou medicine and so on.
▲ Hundreds of herbs in China's authentic medicinal material production areas. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
Just like plants, people in different geographical spaces have different constitutions and different diseases, and the principles of medication are also different. Northwest China is arid, Jiangnan is humid and miasma, and people in the northwest rarely have yin deficiency, while those with yin deficiency in the south of the Yangtze River are several times that of the northwest. In different places, people have different drug habits. Land, people, and medicine are not isolated from each other, but a complete ecology.
▲ Red and blue flowers, originating in northwest China, the ancient Xiongnu activity range. The rouge used by the Xiongnu women is made of the pigment extracted from the red and blue flower species, and the red and blue flowers have been widely used as dyes in the Central Plains during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Photo/Wen Li "Jinshi Insects and Trees"
Materia Medica, always gives people the impression of "local and native". In fact, there are a large number of imported products in the common materia medica in China today. According to Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica", Zhang Qian introduced grapes, alfalfa, garlic, pomegranate, flax, walnuts, broad beans, cucumbers and other plants when he went to the Western Regions, and these imported plants have become common and commonly used by Chinese, and are often used in medicine.
▲ The foreign spice vendors depicted in the picture book "Jinshi Insects and Plants" in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. The goods carried by the traders were Suhexiang, which originated in the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia, and entered China through the Western Regions, where it was very popular. Traditional Chinese medicine theories believe that aromatic drugs have the effects of dispersing evil spirits and awakening the brain, strengthening the spleen and dissolving dampness. Photo/Wen Li "Jinshi Insects and Trees"
For example, saffron, also known as saffron, is mostly purchased from India through Tibet and sold to the mainland. In traditional Chinese medicine, saffron is regarded as a drug for gynecological blood circulation and menstruation, and it often appears in medicinal diets. It can be seen that Materia Medica is not a fixed and isolated product, it not only connects the past and the present, but also connects China and the world.
Human activities have always played an important role. As a result of the rapid population growth, the wild collection area could not supply enough medicinal herbs normally, so it was changed to a cultivated production area. For example, ginseng, which was thought to be a cure for diseases after the Ming Dynasty, became extinct in the Central Plains with over-mining, and the Dao area changed from Shangdang to Northeast China. In the Qing Dynasty, Northeast ginseng began to change from wild digging to artificial planting, which reflected the disturbance of the ecological environment by the development of human society.
▲ The growth process of ginseng. Ginseng can grow up to "six leaves" and stay on the six-leaf plant for years to decades. Ginseng with more than seven leaves is very rare, only grows in the wild, and most of them are 100-year-old ginseng. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
▲ On November 2, 2018, ginseng sold in Shenyang Pharmaceutical Market. In the past, Northeast ginseng only belonged to the court and wealthy families, but with the success of large-scale cultivation, the legend finally ceased and entered the homes of ordinary people. Photo/Visual China
In the field of Chinese medicine, there is no absolute boundary between food and medicine. In our daily diet, there are many herbs hidden. If a brine goose does not have pepper, star anise, cloves, and cinnamon to make brine, it is definitely not enough to taste good. And if the base of a hot pot is missing the flavor of cinnamon, I am afraid that it will also lose its soul. Not to mention the Cantonese nourishing soups such as angelica ginger mutton soup and cordyceps flower scallop soup, just the well-known cordyceps flowers, angelica and dried scallops in the names of these two dishes have proved to us the close connection between medicine and food.
▲ Cordyceps flower scallop soup. The soup contains cordyceps flowers, dried scallops, Huaishan, wolfberry, figs, red dates, corn and chicken, which is a very nourishing Cantonese old fire soup. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
Lingnan is located at the intersection of marine climate and inland climate, with long sunshine, high temperature and high humidity, and the intake of a large amount of seafood has also formed the hot and humid physique of Lingnan people. Therefore, Lingnan has formed a unique health culture. To this day, Lingnan people are also accustomed to drinking herbal tea to reduce fire, eating turtle paste to dispel dampness, drinking porridge to nourish the stomach, and making soup to maintain health.
In addition, herbs were also used in ancient times to make skin care products for women's beauty, which are divided into two categories: internal and external, the latter is a cosmeceutical. For example, anti-aging poria cocos and white melon seeds, angelica angelica and almonds can whiten and rejuvenate the skin. Legend has it that Yang Guifei's beauty secret recipe "Yang Taizhen Red Jade Ointment" is made of almonds, which can make people "ruddy and pleasant, and the color is like red jade after ten days".
▲ The "nail decoction lipstick" made by ancient women with cinnabar, comfrey, cloves, and musk is today's lipstick. Photo/Wen Li "Jinshi Insects and Trees"
In terms of internal use, Chinese medicine believes that astragalus can promote edema and replenish qi and blood, and this herb has now been made into oral liquid. The well-known compound ejiao paste is also made from herbs such as ejiao, codonopsis, and red ginseng. In addition, herbs such as licorice are also extracted into whitening cosmetics using modern techniques. Experiments have proved that the licorice flavonoids contained in licorice have been shown to reduce the production of melanin, and long-term use has a whitening effect.
▲ Licorice is known as the "national elder" of traditional Chinese medicine, and it can be seen in many famous prescriptions, such as Sijunzi Soup, Lizhong Pill, etc. In recent years, the discovery of licorice flavonoids has once again received attention in the domestic cosmetics industry. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
Materia medica has profoundly influenced all aspects of Chinese life, not only to cure diseases and save lives, but also to make food, and in the past, the countryside used to dye cloth using the soil method, and also used herbs such as chestnut shells, lotus seed shells and black trees. In Tibetan areas, people add multi-flavored herbs to spices, and the incense made has the effect of concentrating and sterilizing. These millennia-old traditional Chinese medicines cover almost all native plants. In China, life without Materia Medica is unimaginable.
It is these countless herbs from different mountains, forests and plains that inject various flavors into the lives of Chinese. The magnificent mountains and rivers have given birth to abundant herbal resources. The history of the development and evolution of Materia Medica itself is a National Geographic legend.
How to go from a stick of grass to a medicine?
Herbs were studied in both the East and the West, with the development of Materia Medica in China and part of early naturalism in the West. For example, plantain, verbena, dandelion, etc. are all curative grasses of the ancestors of the East and the West.
▲ Li Shizhen not only sorted out the research of his predecessors, but also discovered and recorded many new materia medica, such as Panax notoginseng in the picture, which was first clearly recorded in the "Compendium of Materia Medica". "The Nanren army used it as a medicine for gold sores, and the clouds have miraculous skills", the ancients used Panax notoginseng to treat bruises, which is the main ingredient of Yunnan Baiyao, which can stop bleeding and dissipate stasis, reduce swelling and relieve pain. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
With the development of history, naturalism appeared in the West, and botany extended from it. In China, the Compendium of Materia Medica, as an unsurmountable peak in the history of herbal research, has become the most important work produced at the intersection of Chinese pharmacology and naturalism. There are 1,892 kinds of medicinal materials in the book, which can be classified from inorganic to organic in the horizontal direction, and according to the growth environment and the properties of the medicine in the vertical direction.
Materia medica can be classified according to the five elements. The representative color of the wood of the five elements of the herb is turquoise. It is more into the liver and gallbladder meridians, and the taste is more sour and pungent, such as lotus leaves, angelica, and horsetail, all of which belong to the wood category.
▲ Woody herbs: lotus leaves, bamboo leaves, horsetail, honeysuckle, mulberry leaves, mung beans. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
Fire represents red, and Chinese medicine believes that it corresponds to the heart, intestines, and blood vessels. Therefore, the herbs of fire are mostly bitter and salty, such as Coptis chinensis, hook vine, and gardenia all belong to fire.
In addition, licorice, turmeric, rhubarb, etc. belong to the soil category because of their yellowing color, which has the effect of entering the spleen and stomach. The yams, angelica, and almonds that enter the lungs and large intestine meridians belong to the gold of the five elements. Rehmannia rehmannia, mulberry and cistanche belong to the water of the five elements, corresponding to the human body's kidney and bladder meridians.
▲ Fire herbs: salvia, betel nut, red dates, gardenias, roses, red beans, etc. Photo/"Authentic Customs: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
In the application, there is a treatment principle of "treating cold with hot medicine, treating heat with cold medicine". In molecular biology, the theory of TPR channels can endorse the classification of cold and hot gases.
After systematically classifying the herbs, the next step is to administer medicine. And where did the medicines used by doctors come from? The Chinese herbal medicines on the market today can be divided into two categories: wild and cultivated. The people who grow Materia Medica are called medicine farmers, and they are also farmers, and the medicinal materials grown by the medicine farmers are often separated from grain crops and sold in special medicine markets.
▲ In 1948, a medicine stall in the medicinal material market in Shantou City, Guangdong Province. Photo / Han Zhiguang, photo / "Authentic Scenery: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
The herbal medicine market has a long history in China, and the pharmaceutical industry as an industry was very active in the Tang Dynasty, and Lin'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, was even more famous for its prosperity in the pharmaceutical industry. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the industries and institutions served by the medicinal materials market formed a mature system. To this day, the medicine market in the Oriental Market in Anguo City, Hebei Province opens on time at 8 o'clock every day. Regardless of spring, summer, autumn and winter, hundreds of pharmacists and more than 2,000 kinds of medicinal materials will gather here. Angola is a distribution market, from which medicinal herbs from all over the world are sold to merchants, and this scene has been playing out in China for thousands of years.
▲ "The grass is a medicine to Anguo, and the medicine is fragrant from Qizhou". Anguo Pharmaceutical Market was established in the Song Dynasty and is still one of the most important distribution centers for medicinal materials in China. Photo by Huang Binbin
When I was a child, I watched costume TV series, and I often encountered such a bridge: the heroine's life was dying, and the male protagonist risked his life to save people and went to the cliff to find a "fairy grass" that could bring the dead back to life. This story is not groundless, in Taining County, Fujian Province, in the southern part of Wuyi Mountain, there is such a group of medicine farmers, who shuttle through the Danxia cliff for more than 300 days a year, planting the legendary "fairy grass" - Dendrobium officinalis.
▲ Wild Dendrobium officinale is a national first-class key protected plant, which grows very slowly, and it is difficult to see native species in the wild. Wild ones cannot be harvested, so many laboratories have developed tissue culture, large-scale cultivation of Dendrobium officinale. The medicine farmers in Taining County also planted Dendrobium officinale that was cultivated, not the native species. Photo / Liu Tao, photo / "Authentic Scenery: The Evolution of Materia Medica"
Every planting season, the medicine farmers need to hang on the cliff wall and plant dendrobium, which can be planted 200 square meters per person at the end of the day. After the planting season is over, they will also go deep into the mountains to pick pure wild dendrobium. The whole process is completely unprotected and can only be operated by one's own experience and instinct.
▲ Hole order root in the operation. Photo by Liu Tao
Kong Linggen, a medicine farmer, is nearly 60 years old and still works on the cliff. In his opinion, there is no trick to this cliff walk on which he depends for his livelihood. "It's boldness and carefulness, practice makes perfect," he says, describing his decades of work. Medicine farmers like him, who work hard all day long, just to get a taste of materia medica, is by no means an exception, such people and stories can be seen everywhere in this land of materia medica, without them, materia medica is grass after all, and cannot be sublimated into medicine.
The last step of materia medica from herb to medicine is to make medicine. For humans, in addition to edible plants, undomesticated plants always have "toxicity", and these herbs need to be weakened by certain means, increase the medicinal properties of the herb, and sometimes even use the toxicity to cure diseases. These special means have a unified name in Chinese medicine - concoction.
▲ Yu Baitang of Hangzhou Fang Huichun Hall is boiling the ointment recipe in the traditional way. Photo by Yang Lei
The processing methods of Chinese herbal medicine are divided into 17 kinds according to the "Lei Gong Cannon Treatise", including concoction, preparation, broiling, degree, flying, stir-frying, simmering, exposure and so on. According to the different processing rules and the distribution of medicinal resources, thirteen medicine gangs have been formed in the field of traditional Chinese medicine, from which we can peek into the rivers and lakes of the herbal medicine industry. The northerners need nourishment, and the southerners seek to dispel poison, so the characteristics of the concocted genre between regions have begun to become prominent. In the late Ming and Qing dynasties, the processing technology of traditional Chinese medicine decoction pieces was divided into the Beijing Gang, the Sichuan Bang and the Jiangxi Gang. Among them, the Jiangxi Gang is divided into the Zhangshu Gang and the Jianchang Gang.
In the Camphor Gang, white peony needs to be soaked for a week in advance. When cutting, the "gravitational force" of the knife is emphasized, and the seasoned pharmacist can control the thinness of each white peony within 0.1 mm, which is a test of real kung fu and real endurance. Some skilled pharmacists can even use a guillotine to cut an inch-long white peony into a complete 360 pieces in three minutes.
▲ The cutting table of the camphor tree gang, the scene of blowing the white peony up after cutting has the reputation of "white peony flying in the sky" on the rivers and lakes of Bencao. Photo by Yang Lei
The Sichuan Gang people are particularly prominent in the production of pills and ointments of medicinal materials. They used the fermentation method to extract the Liushenqu, the frost-making method to concoct the cool watermelon frost that lowers the fire, the pot calcination method to smelt the lotus leaf charcoal, and the purification method to extract the miscanthus salt......
This is the transformation process of materia medica from herb to medicine. From the preliminary analysis and research of Materia Medica, to the picking and planting of medicinal farmers, the distribution of pharmacists in the pharmaceutical market, and the processing of pharmacists are indispensable. It is precisely because of the extensive and close practice of traditional Chinese medicine and people's lives that it has been written into the cultural genes of the people and has been passed down tenaciously and continuously to this day.
New era, new materia medica
In 2015, Tu Youyou won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of artemisinin. Professor Tu's inspiration was a recipe in Ge Hong's "Elbow Reserve Emergency Prescription": hold Artemisia annua, soak it in two liters of water, wring the juice, and take it. This is the source of the controversy caused by this "highest honor". Opponents argue that the "Artemisia annua" mentioned in ancient books is not the Artemisia annua in the flora (A. annua) in the flora (A. annua). carvifolia), but Artemisia annua (A. annua), and the ether extraction technique is unique to modern medicine. Such controversy is actually a microcosm of the future development of traditional Chinese medicine.
▲ Tu Youyou on the Nobel podium. Photo/Visual China
In essence, the development process of traditional Chinese medicine is the process of deepening the understanding of materia medica by traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in the past generations. In the modern era, this kind of exploration has not stopped.
The traditional Chinese medicine identification mode is mostly "based on shape identification and guided by empirical identification", which is also criticized because of the "ancient and ancient" characteristics that are often exhibited. However, today, with the continuous progress of modern analytical techniques, natural medicinal chemistry and molecular biology, modern analytical methods such as gene sequencing have been integrated into the identification of traditional Chinese medicines.
▲ The "electronic tongue" developed by Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Photo by Gan Yingying
Based on modern biomimetic technology, the inheritance and standardization of the identification methods of traditional Chinese medicine of the deceased are the future development direction of traditional Chinese medicine identification. For example, the "electronic tongue" device developed by Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine is currently used to correct the taste of traditional Chinese medicine. Through the analysis of the prepared solution, the "electronic tongue" can be used to identify medicinal materials efficiently and accurately, and has broad development prospects.
In 2016, the fourth national census of traditional Chinese medicine resources began, and the last census was 30 years ago. At that time, the technical means were relatively traditional, and after researchers collected medicinal plants, made wax leaf specimens, and identified species, the most important result was the compilation of books such as "Medicinal Plants".
▲ Researchers from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine are observing and studying the cellular structure of a crude drug. Photo by Gan Yingying
After 30 years, the census of traditional Chinese medicine resources has entered the digital era. In the pilot work, a unified national census technical specification has been formed, and the modern technologies involved include spatial information technology, database technology, network technology, digital photography, etc. There is no doubt that a comprehensive survey of Chinese medicine resources will benefit the continuous integration of Chinese medicine research with high technology in the future.
Perhaps under the premise of modern technology, traditional Chinese medicine will become more convenient, safe and effective, and better serve the public. Will traditional Chinese medicine die out? Will modern medicine "co-opt" traditional Chinese medicine? It will take time to answer these questions, but it is certain that Chinese medicine will continue to exist for a long time. Because, in the great history of disease and medicine, all controversies are short-lived, and only disease is the eternal opponent of mankind.
▲ In 2006, researcher Chen Shilin, one of the earliest scholars engaged in wild tending research in China, and experts from the Royal Botanic Garden of the United Kingdom visited the wild tending base of fritillary in the mountains and rivers of Kangding, Ganzi, Sichuan. Photo by Xiang Li
Whether it's science or traditional medicine, in the future, they will all end up in different ways. And the materia medica that has permeated our lives will always exist and accompany the Chinese for a longer period of time.