licorice

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Here's a translation by Heiner Fruehauf of a passage about gan cao from

Zhang Xichun's Chinese at Heart But Open to the West: An Integrated

Approach to Traditional and Modern Medicine (Yixue Zhongzhong Canxi

Lu, 1923), Fruehauf, classnotes

"One can further say that if processed, the tonic properties of licorice

become enhanced, while if left unprocessed, it not only tonifies the center,

but also disinhibits. It is therefore appropriate for the treatment of

cholera. The theory that raw licorice has a disinhibiting effect can easily

be proven in clinical practice.

I once treated the child of a Mr. Wang from Kaiyuan. Endowed with a

weak spleen and stomach, the boy suffered from serious indigestion and

kept throwing up his food. Also, his urination was inhibited, producing

edema in virtually every part of his body, as well as a large and distended

belly. I prescribed fine licorice powder, to be mixed with an equal amount

of the Western drug Pepsinum. I had him take one qian (3g) of this mixture

three times per day. After several days, the vomiting stopped, the urination

returned to normal, and the swelling and distention disappeared.

Another time, my friend Wei Ziba from Tieling organized a business meeting

in Tongliao County. They produce a lot of licorice over there, and Ziba

made it a habit to put some licorice in his teapot every day, pour hot

water over it, and drink it like a tea. After about ten days, he noticed

that both his stool and his urination started to get quite busy, and he

stopped drinking the licorice water. When he saw me later, he related this

to me and asked why an herb that is usually thought of as a tonic can disinhibit

urination and bowel movements. I answered: "When cooked or processed, licorice

tonifies; when used unprocessed, it disinhibits. Even though you put the

herb into a teapot with hot water, it never got cooked. Therefore, its

effect was still close to the raw herb, and therefore could disinhibit."

Yet another time, my student Li Zibo told the story of a child suffering

from abdominal pain. The problem was treated by applying an umbilicus warming

plaster, but soon thereafter ulceration occured at the application site.

The doctor said that frequent consumption of licorice decoction could cure

the problem. Because the patient drank too much of the licorice decoction,

urination became inhibited and symptoms of edema and abdominal distention

emerged. He therefore switched to another doctor who also was not able

to help. The boy lived close to the train station, where there were always

wagons loaded with licorice. His sister often brought some of it home so

they could chew on it, and as this became a daily habit, his edema and

distention gradually disappeared.

These examples demonstrate that the functions of unprocessed licorice

and processed or cooked licorice are fundamentally different. When working

with licorice, therefore, shouldn't we always consider the raw or processed/cooked

state of the herb as an integral part of the prescription?"

 

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Chinese Herbal Medicine