Customer Reviews

Pao Zhi: An Introduction to the Use of Processed Chinese Medicinals

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I highly recommend this book as it is the only one that deals with the preparation of medicinal herbs in such a way as to alter their properties. In Chinese medicine Pao zhi is the technique of altering the properties of crude drugs by such means as 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 pao zhi, including those involving mercury, but the book refers 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.

I remember being given an herbal prescription that included honey fried ephedra but the school pharmacy only had the raw herb. Just adding honey wouldn't work, because the frying in honey water extracts the blood-pressure raising elements in the nodes of the ephedra stems. This book helped me do the preparation, albeit a bit blindly. (I later took pao zhi workshops with Sionneau and David Winston, which helped immensely.) The techniques really need demonstration and I hope that a further edition of the book is accompanied by a DVD.

For any practitioner of Chinese medicine who operates a raw herb pharmacy this book is essential. The techniques can be applied to western herbs with similar effect.

Este es un libro muy clasico, fundacional, que sirve una vez estudiado, para proseguir y profundizar en los temas tratados. Del mismo modo que la Iatroquimica en la medicina Ayurvedica, la preparacion de la materia medica es imprescindible pues sino el elemento esta "inerte y crudo" por decirlo de algun modo y de ese modo no es biologicamente asimilable. Totalmente recomendable.