Ancient Chinese medicine and its modern interpretation / by Bernard E. Read.

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

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ancient Chinese medicine and its modern interpretation / by Bernard E. Read. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/22 page 11
    earliest days and found in Shen-nung’s Pen-t’sao Ching H), said to have been written some 5,000 years ago. Quite 1,000 reports have appeared in modern literature upon this herb and its alkaloid ephedrine10 used in the modern treatment of asthma and hayfever, as a drug to raise low blood pressure, to shrink swollen nasal mucous membranes and various other uses. It is related in chemical structure to the naturally occurring principle in the body adrenaline. It acts partly in inhibiting amine oxidase and so strengthens the action of adrenaline secreted in the body, and hence is a great adjuvant to the normal body processes. There are certain symptomatic drugs used for the treatment of particular symptoms rather than diseases, which, however doubtful their uses may have been, their effects were well known. The dried secretion of the parotid gland of the toad, cK an su (Jft &k), contains a principle almost identical with that in the well known drug digitalis. It has undisputed value as a heart medicine. The Daturas are so well known as atropine containing drugs that not much need be said. The famous old Chinese surgeon, Hua T’o (# PE), doubtless used this drug with hemp and alcohol as an anesthetic for doing his operations. Its action on the parasympa¬ thetic nervous system would explain many of its old uses, some of which are identical with modern usage, such as in coryza and asthma. A similar plant, henbane, was used by the old Saxons for toothache, by inhaling the fumes from the seeds placed on a shovel of burning coals. I found them used in an identical manner by the Mongols. The well known drug Yuan Chih (*£>£), Polygala, is a good substitute for Western senega as a cough medicine. It contains the same potent glucoside able to stimulate the cough reflex. Drugs of unknown action. So many might be placed under this heading it is hard to select a few good examples without implying that a great many are useless. This may be so, but there are others which have been tested and found to create effects for which so far no satisfactory explanation has been found. Huang-chi (Hf is 10 “Ephedrine and Related Substances,” by K. K. Chen and C. F. Schmidt, Medicine, 1930, 9, 1-117.
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