A trip to a Chinese herbal doctor...

One of the foundational components of traditional Chinese medicine is herbology, a practice whereby various natural ingredients (dried roots, flowers, barks, berries, horns, insects, etc) are brewed together to form a concentrated tonic (藥). The tonic is used to nurture the patient, helping to correct whatever imbalance has weakened his or her body, and the ingredient combination is uniquely crafted based on the patient's particular needs. I may not fully (or even marginally) understand how it works, but it has been practiced for many thousands of years, and a billion or so people rely on it today. I'm not one to argue with that kind of track record.

When both Katherine and I came down with a nasty bug this week, we decided to take a trip to the herbal doctor that Katherine frequents the most, giving me my first ever experience. (I've been inside herbal doctor shops with Katherine many times before, so that wasn't new, but I've never been a patient.)

After describing my symptoms to the doctor, he took my pulse (on both wrists in succession), examined my tongue, peered down my throat, and asked a few additional questions about the general state of my body (including what foods I had been putting in it recently). Shortly thereafter, he wrote out a list of ingredients on his prescription pad and handed it off to his pharmacist. The pharmacist quickly went to work, sorting and measuring an abundance of dried ingredients from the large glass jars that lined the wall behind his counter...

My prescription

Next came the brewing process, but that takes a few hours, so we went back to our apartment to rest. Later, around dinner time, we picked up our medicinal drinks and toted them home...

As black as midnight

Down the hatch!

"You displease me!"

As you can see by my reaction (which was not at all staged - Katherine caught my genuine response before I regained composure), this wasn't a walk in the park. It was, without a doubt, the most difficult dose of liquid I've ever had to swallow. One or two sips wouldn't have been bad, but the cumulative effect of the whole cup was...unpleasant. Still, I got through it (twice, actually - two cups spread across two consecutive days), and I'm glad I did. Hopefully both Katherine and I will start to feel better soon.