Great stuff, thanks!

Eric, since you are doing such a great service in herb identification would you respond to a question regarding differences between property and flavor concerning the meteria medica of ancient and modern times? Received an article from the NatInst of Health by Zhang XX, Wang ZG appearing in the institute for the medical literature of Shandong Traditional Chinese Medicine University, Jinan 25014, China. In this article the authors state "The property and flavor (four properties of cold, hot, warm, cool and five flavors of spicy, sweet, bitter, sour, salty) which marked the function of efficacy of Chinese Materia Medica had different records in TCM ancient literature, even being completly opposite. By analyzing the reason, it maily involves such aspects as different properties of soil, and water different harvesting seasons, incorrect nomenclature not corresponding to reality, different angles (?), double properties and flavors, former mistakes and latter corrections, different processing methods etc. Any comment on these issues?

Hi Jim,

I don't think I can definitively answer your question, but I do have a few thoughts. Some items vary from source to source in terms of their stated temperature. The most commonly seen examples are differences in degree- cold vs. cool, warm vs. hot, and slightly warm vs. balanced. However, some items such as Zhi Shi have dramatic differences in temperature even amongst authoritative source texts (some say it is cold and some say warm).

Similarly, we can see differences among source texts with regard to the indications of formulas. For example, Chuan Xiong Cha Tiao San is sometimes said to treat wind-heat while other sources say that it treats wind-cold (see this blog for more on this).

Another major area of variation lies in channel entry. Channel entry didn’t develop until the Song dynasty (about a thousand years ago), and there is still disagreement and variation on stated channel entry among even core curriculum books to this day. Classification of herbs by category is also somewhat new, and there is a lot of variation in this as well (i.e., Xi Xin can be put in exterior-resolving or interior-warming, Sang Ji Sheng can be put in the supplementing chapter or the wind-damp chapter, etc). See this blog for more on this.

As for your comments about medicinals that had different soil, incorrect nomenclature, corrections of earlier errors, different processing methods, etc… I agree with these points and many examples are very well-established. Some items, such as Chuan vs. Zhe Bei Mu and Bai vs. Chi Shao Yao, were not differentiated in ancient times. Others were misidentified or corrected. Botany was not very sophisticated in ancient times, and even key sources like Li Shi-Zhen’s Ben Cao Gang Mu had many examples where the drawing of the source plant was inaccurate (for example, corn had only just arrived from the New World and it was rarely seen in China at the time, so the corn monograph in the Ben Cao Gang Mu used a drawing of the similar looking plant Yi Yi Ren). There are many examples of items that were confused botanically, and we find many items in the modern pharmacy that remain confused to this day. Many historical books have tried to correct errors of previous works, so your point about “former mistakes and later corrections” is well-established and highly relevant.

As you mentioned, processing methods often influence the temperature of a substance. In ancient times, they either didn’t use or didn’t record the wine-steaming method that is used to process rehmannia into Shu Di Huang. Early texts used dried rehmannia (Gan Di Huang, more commonly known as Sheng Di Huang) to supplement yin, but nowadays Shu Di Huang is considered stronger in terms of its yin-supplementing action. Actually, people often use the form of Di Huang that is most suited to the case- hot patients get Sheng Di and cold patients get Shu Di. Sheng Di is cold and is better for boosting liquid, while Shu Di is warm and better for supplementing yin and essence. Fresh Di Huang is even colder than Sheng Di, and is used to clear heat and generate liquid. So here we have an example where the nature of Di Huang has changed over time because different processing methods have become common.

Similarly, ginseng has different processing methods that affect its temperature. In the old days, they only had wild ginseng that was sun-dried (white ginseng). It is neutral to slightly warm. After ginseng started to decline in the wild, they started cultivating it. However, the cultivated product was weaker and the Pao Zhi method of making red ginseng (Hong Shen) arose to increase its medicinal strength. Red ginseng is stronger than cultivated white ginseng, but it is warmer in nature because it is steamed. In Korea, red ginseng is made by soaking it in a tincture that often contains Fu Zi prior to steaming it, which makes it even warmer than the Chinese red ginseng. In Japan, ginseng is par-boiled, which makes it warmer than white ginseng but less warm than red ginseng. These regions have different cultivars and species of ginseng as well as different processing methods, so the temperature of ginseng today is more diverse than the descriptions in the earliest texts.

Eric Brand