Tour of the Chinese Herb Dispensatory

Okay, here we are in our herb shop, or actually what I call the dispensatory, because there's another part to our herb shop where we make stuff, which we call the apothecary. But in here is where we have all the herbs and herb products. So what I want to look at today is our Chinese herb collection. It's a pretty decent size Chinese apothecary, definitely not the biggest you might run into, but we're capable of filling most formulas. So we fill prescriptions for an acupuncturist, Margo Rossi, who lives nearby. And we also make tinctures from the Chinese herbs and some of the ancient Chinese formulas. So today we want to look at the herbs specifically, and they are arranged in a standard way. All Chinese herbs are arranged in a particular organization, and they're organized by the action of the herb, what they do. So they're in different categories according to their action. And the sequence of the categories is the same pretty much from one book to another. The book that most American practitioners seem to be using is this one by Dan Bensky and some other people, Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica. This is the third edition, much expanded. And it is arranged by the same categories, and in fact our herbs are arranged according to this book. So we are in the process of developing these labels. This is a Mountain Gardens original here. I and several of the apprentices have worked on these labels over the years. And the number right in the middle is actually the page number from the book that I just showed you. So we're very happy with our labels. They give a lot of information. I don't think there's anything quite this good on the market. I'm not sure. Pick one out. You can see we've got the Chinese name and then the literal translation of the Chinese name, the opinion of the way the name is pronounced, and then we have the Latin name and the English name, the page number, and then a brief description of what the herb does, the dosage, any kind of contraindications. And then there are a number of symbols along here which refer to the way that Chinese herbs are classified, which is by their temperature, cool, cold, neutral, warm, or hot, by their flavor, which is usually considered to be five, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and pungent, and then by the meridians entered, like do they go into the lungs, does it go to the liver, the kidneys, etc. So all that information is on the lid here. So just briefly to look at the sequence of the actions, always the first herbs are the ones that release the exterior. That's pushing out if you're catching a cold, something invading, which is usually called wind in Chinese medicine. Something is invading your body and you want to push it back out. That's called releasing the exterior. So you can have an attack of hot wind or cold wind. If it's hot wind, you want to use cold herbs. If it's cold wind, you want to use hot herbs. So classic hot herbs for this kind of condition would be cinnamon twig, mahjong, or ephedra, perilla, a few others. And the classic cold herb for releasing the exterior would be mint and others. We have bonsalviches, burdock seeds, mulberry leaves, juwahs, chrysanthemum flowers. These are all cool released exterior herbs. Then we have a number of categories dealing with heat, draining fire, clear heat relieve toxins. These are all heat relieving. These have a lot to do with colds and flus also. A lot of antivirals are in these categories. This is a little study guide that we use to the Bensky book, which is more convenient because the book is so huge. So these are the categories. So clear heat is actually in four different, five different subcategories. Clear heat quell fire, clear heat cool the blood, clear heat dry dampness, clear heat clear poisons, clear heat relieves summer heat. And then we have downward draining herbs, which is like laxatives. Actually that's in three categories, purgatives, moist laxatives, harsh expellants, which are cathartics. Then drain dampness, that would be what we would call diuretics. Expel wind damp. Wind damp is a condition that we might equate to rheumatism, arthritis, that sort of thing. Often affects lower extremities. A number of herbs for wind damp conditions. Then we get into the herbs for cough. Transform phlegm and stop coughing. These are down here. And again, it's in two categories because there's hot phlegm and cold phlegm. Hot phlegm would be yellow and sticky and hard to expectorate. So that's hot and you would use cold herbs and cold phlegm is clear or white and very easy to cough up, not sticky. So for that you would use hot herbs. So there's a distinction there. Then we go down the line, we get into transform dampness, which is usually aromatic herbs that help with digestion because dampness is thought to be bad for digestion. Too much dampness in the system puts out the digestive fire, is the way that's expressed. So transform dampness and a lot of these have enzymes in them. There's like barley malt and rice malt and chicken gizzard lining. So you can see how these would help with digestion. And sheng qiu, which is fermented grains and beans. So lots of enzymes. Then we have, so that's the category called relieve food stagnation. Then we have a category called regulate the qi, which is to keep the qi circulating. The qi has to constantly be circulating around the body. If it gets stuck, you get problems like it goes up and doesn't come down. You have headaches. It can also go in the wrong direction, in which case you would have say vomiting. So your food's supposed to go down. If it's coming back up, that's like things are going in the wrong direction. A lot of these are orange peels. Like these four or five herbs are all just different kinds of orange peel. Several different species of oranges and then whether they're green or mature. Beetle husk, shallot root. So that's regulate the qi. And then we get into herbs for the blood. And there's herbs for, that's in two categories, herbs to stop bleeding and herbs that invigorate the blood. So promote blood circulation. Then we have a category called warm the interior and expel cold, which has some herbs in it like cinnamon bark, for example, fennel. Fennel seeds over here. Then we get to the tonics, which is one of the better known categories. So these are herbs for correcting deficiency conditions in the human body. And they're divided into four categories. Qi tonics, which boost the qi, which is like tai chi, qi gong. Qi is often translated as energy. And then we have blood tonics. So the first of the qi tonics is ginseng. Actually, it's deer antler, but we don't have deer antler on the shelf here. Ginseng, cottonopsis, its substitute. A lot of these are getting to be quite well known. Huangqi, that's astragalus. There's some honey fried astragalus next to it. Xiangyao, the yam. These are all, either are or are soon going to be rather famous The Chinese date is in here. Chinese licorice, and there's the honey fried licorice. And Eleuthero, Siberian ginseng, is in here also. Solomon's seal. So then we move into the blood tonics. Romania hashawu, which is also sometimes called foe tea, has gotten pretty well known as a longevity herb. So all these have reputation as being longevity herbs. Donggui, which is sometimes called women's ginseng. Chinese angelica is the best herb in the world for regulating the menstrual cycle. You can notice, you know, these herbs are not cut and sifted. If you go into a western herb shop, everything is either a powder or small chunks. One of the great things about the Chinese herbs is that they have a lot more integrity. You can still see what's there. It's not just a matter of green powder versus brown powder. This incidentally, this is a matter of sort of degree of sophistication. So this is the herb sliced. The root, that is to say, sliced. This part's called the head, and this is the tails. And the head is more blood tonifying, and the tails are more blood, promoting blood circulation. So sometimes you might actually specifically just use one part of the root versus the other. Usually we use the whole root. What else do we have in the blood tonic category? We've got bai shao, which is peony root. And then another one that's gotten quite well known in America now is goji berries. Goji berry, the fruit of Lyceum. So these are showing up very much in health food stores. One by one, all these tonics will be coming to America. And then we have groups of herbs that tonify either the yin or the yang of different organs. So yin tonics and yang tonics. Each organ is meant to have a balance of yin and yang. The liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the heart, they have to have a balance of yin and yang. So if one gets deficient or excess, then you bring it back into balance by using these various herbs. The yang tonics include some that have reputations as aphrodisiacs, that's associated, kidney yang energy is associated with sexual energy. So this is yin yang ho, horny goat weed. It's a leaf of a very common, easy to grow ground cover in this area. Tonify the yin, tonify the yang. Then we get down here to herbs that stabilize and bind, which we would call astringents. And this includes also some that are quite, definitely have tonic properties, such as dogwood berries, wuweitsa, schisandra is one that will be becoming very common in America pretty soon, a very powerful herb. Lotus seeds, water lily seeds, raspberry fruit. And then we have ankles, anchor, settle, and calm the spirit, or calm the heart and settle the spirit. These are calming herbs. A lot of them are heavy. They settle, they take your energy down. So some are even metals, like magnetite. Some are minerals like oyster shell. There are a couple of them called dragon tooth and dragon bone, which are actually fossil bones that are excavated from mountains in China. Xuanzaren is the number one herb for insomnia, the seeds of the Chinese jujube. And several others here. And then the last, there's a couple more categories down here. One is called opening the orifices, and that's for when your orifices are clogged with what they call invisible phlegm. So this can interfere with the thinking process, like herbs for memory come from this category. Down here, these are called shun tonics, actually. So mental disturbance is called shun disturbance. Shun is sometimes translated as spirit. These are tonics to induce the spirit. And then the last category at the end is expelling parasites. So that's a simple rundown on how the Chinese herb classification system.