https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/A4PeQB2Vq1CW8xtc-5KQOA
Welcome everyone to share your experiences with the medicine in the replies, to facilitate other students’ search and learning
73. Sophora Root
The water brewed from it smells almost the same as Astragalus (黄芪), with a sweet bean-like odor. Drinking it, you can still find the feeling of Astragalus, but the bitterness of Astragalus is intensified by 20 times.
I don’t quite understand why many families use it to treat sore throats. My throat was fine originally, but after taking a sip, it actually felt tight (however, considering that common folk like to use things like bezoar to calm the heart, it is somewhat understandable). The “symptomatic treatment” medication guide has been passed down generation by generation within families, rarely undergoing systematic review—the entire TCM industry is like this as well.
Personally, I think this medicine is simply a “poison.” After drinking it, the lungs feel uncomfortable, a chill spreads over the body, there’s a slight trembling sensation, then the head (back of the head and the brain) feels tight, and the ears start to itch.
If you take 50 grams of this stuff at once, it can directly kill a person. After a light trial, everyone should be able to somewhat feel this.
If considering the method of attacking poison with poison, it might be used for tumors in the throat, lungs, or brain? Not quite sure; students with a deeper understanding of this medicine can share their insights.
However, this medicine itself has a characteristic; it has a certain “short-term qi-tonifying” effect and can also clear turbidity (the cost being blockage of blood vessels). Therefore, boiling it directly in the patient’s room and letting the patient inhale the steam might have another kind of effect, allowing a better balance of clearing and tonifying.
73.1 Northern Sophora Root
It has a slight fruity aroma, sweet with a bit of sourness (vaguely a ketone compound feeling as well).
When drinking, it is purely bitter, with a slight sweetness if you really look for it.
In terms of effects, it has some phlegm-dispelling effect. The throat feels cleared, and the spaces between the heart and pericardium, and heart and lungs also feel somewhat cleared. After clearing, it causes belching, bringing out some turbid air, but more gradually it descends to the stomach and is expelled through the digestive tract—so if you have a weak stomach, you might not tolerate it well.
The side effect in this process is that the sealed structures of the heart and lungs could develop a “leak,” which over time is harmful.
74. Maitake Mushroom (马勃)
Here we have this medicine again. Opening the bag releases a cloud of dust, which immediately reminded me of my colleagues in the pharmacy department. I quickly told the manager that masks when dispensing and ear protection when grinding powder must be strictly enforced, otherwise aging will be tough on everyone.
Our corporate culture is still quite advanced; the medicine prices are lower than competitors (for example, sour jujube seed has been undercut to less than 1.2 yuan per gram—ask around in all Beijing if any “legitimate pharmacies” can do that?), and labor benefits are higher than competitors (during this event’s peak, the daily labor cost for part-time students alone was over 2,000 yuan)—according to the energy conservation principle, shareholders’ profits must be relatively less.
But it’s still not enough; we must continue to improve, pushing prices down and personnel benefits up. Whether shareholders earn more or less is enough to live on, but what matters is that everyone can be happy.
I say something you might not believe—in all the time since opening, although business is relatively good, I have never taken a penny in dividends; all profits have been invested in customized medicine. The benefit is that with this first-mover advantage, in the next 3 to 5 years, any top medicine in the Beijing market that other clinics want will have to come to our “Boutique Medicinal Materials Alliance.”
There are two reasons: first, the Beijing Drug Administration’s regulations prohibit sale of decoction pieces from outside regions in Beijing (unless, like Shengshi Baicao, you have the capability to obtain approval), so the Beijing market is very closed; second, customization has order quantity requirements, so once first-mover advantage is established, even if later clinics find sources, when calculating the capital cost of large-scale customization, they find it more suitable to directly use our products.
Back to trying the medicine. Maitake, when fresh, looks like charred sponge from an old mattress. After soaking in water, it looks like something freshly pulled out of a toilet—I have no courage to put it in my mouth.
The smell and taste are somewhat like a concentrated version of duckweed, with fishy, slightly bitter, and slightly astringent notes.
Its lung-clearing effect is excellent. After drinking, the esophagus and lungs quickly feel a cool sensation spreading to the diaphragm—but this medicine itself is rather turbid, so it is not very friendly to the throat.
Its principle is roughly “adsorption,” going down smoothly, adsorbing phlegm, turbidity, heat, and toxins around the way into the medicine, and then being expelled through the digestive tract.