Animal preparations used in Chinese medicine / by Bernard E. Read.

  • B. E. Read
Date:
[1939]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Animal preparations used in Chinese medicine / by Bernard E. Read. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reputed value of these preparations for eye diseases and various conditions which might be due to nutritional deficiencies, but why chicken excrement should revive a suicide from hanging or cure a cold one cannot say. The excreta of Birds. Four kinds of excreta are commonly found in the drug stores, those of the pigeon, sparrow, bat and flying fox. The last mentioned called 3l M flh is very famous as an eye remedy for night blindness and has been found to have a good content of vitamin Dragon and Snake Drugs. The story of the Peking man. Sinanthropus pe\inensis, will stand as a classic. It started in a Peking drug store when a tooth was found in a packet of dragon’s teeth. Dragon’s bones and teeth as so commonly used are the fossil bones of a great variety of prehistoric animals including man. The remote zoological relationship of the animals brought together in this chapter of the Pen-fsao emphasizes their close cultural rela¬ tionship,^^ it includes dragons, snakes, crocodiles, lizards, etc. There is more of value to the student of folk-lore and symbolism than to the student of modern medicine. Dragon’s brains for diarrhoea and dragon’s saliva as a sexual stimulant do not command serious attention from the physician, they are cultural curiosities providing entertaining research in other fields. For some strange reason the frogs and toads are classed among the insects. The dried secretion of the parotid gland of the toad used as a heart medicine is of great scientific interest, for the chemical structure of its active principles and their physiological properties are almost identical with those of the renowned heart drug digitalis. This with the active principles from the puffer fish and the salamander, are some of the very few animal remedies with such strong action that marked toxic or fatal effects may be seen. Shell-fish and Turtles.^^ The 29 headings include all of the common shell-fish, the main virtue of which appears to be the high content of lime in the shells. Oysters were recommended for P. G. Mar and B. E. Read, Chinese Remedies for night blindness {Chin. /. Physiol., 1936, 10, 273-284). B. E. Read, Dragon and SnaJ{e Drugs {Pe\ing Nat. Hist. Bull., 1934). B. E. Read, Turtle and Shell-fish Drugs {Peking Nat. Hist. Bull., 1937).
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