Processing (, or ) in Chinese ''materia medica'' (
Chinese herbology
Chinese herbology () is the theory of traditional Chinese herbal therapy, which accounts for the majority of treatments in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A ''Nature'' editorial described TCM as "fraught with pseudoscience", and said that t ...
) is the technique of altering the properties, sterilizing and removing poisons of
crude medicines by processing using heat and combination with various materials in a kind of
alchemical
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
approach to preparation. It lacks scientific evidence and hence is considered as
pseudoscientific.
Methods
Pao Zhi processing may involve such means as washing, soaking, boiling, steaming, fermenting, drying, roasting, honey frying, wine frying, earth frying, vinegar frying, calcining, or other means. This is a kind of alchemical processing used in everyday preparation of herbal, mineral and animal medicinals.
There are also more esoteric traditions of processing, including those involving
mercury, but the term is used to refer to the more common preparations. For instance, frying with wine is believed to enhance the circulatory properties of herbs. Frying with salt is believed to draw the herbal actions to the kidneys. Otherwise cooling herbs may be warmed up by heated techniques.
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080908062651/http://www.planetherbs.com/articles/processing_chinese_herbs.htm, date=2008-09-08 Tierra, Michael, OMD, L.Ac.''Processing Chinese Herbs: Basic Principles And Its Therapeutic Importance''
See also
*List of traditional Chinese medicines
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, there are roughly 13,000 medicinals used in China and over 100,000 medicinal prescriptions recorded in the ancient literature.Certain progress of clinical research on Chinese integrative medicine, Keji Chen, Bei Yu ...
*Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body
Li Shizhen's (1597) ''Bencao gangmu'', the classic materia medica of traditional Chinese medicine ( TCM), included 35 human drugs, including organs, bodily fluids, and excreta. Crude drugs derived from the human body were commonplace in the e ...
References
Traditional Chinese medicine
Pharmaceutics