What I think about when I think of herbal medicine

Zhaoyuan, China in the late 1960s. Every school is closed—been so for the past ten years. Gramps is in his twenties, grinding away at the leaves of yew and willow bark with a granite pestle. The kettle is glowing—red hot, but he has no trouble lifting it. It’s no trouble when the skin on your fingerpads is so calloused from repeated stress that they make a resonant tapping sound when they contact the metal, like how the soles of a runner adapt with the beating of every step. After pouring, the energy from the restless water transforms the dry green grit into an evergreen paste. Many-a-tincture have been made, but this one is not for Lǎo Zhāng Dà Gē, or Xiǎo Mó Mò, or any one of his neighbours. This is for his youngest son—the one who could soon be dead from consumption. 

Flash forward six decades. Step into any pharmacology classroom at any reputable university generating research deemed worthy of being funded and they’ll be sure you know it: recent studies show that most herbals are ineffective in treating disease or are only as effective as placebos—the therapeutic equivalent of a flat white sugar pill. The correct term isn’t even “herbal medicine”, it’s “herbal supplement”—technically a food product. I wonder what my grandpa would say. He’s not around anymore, but I think of him when research for my pharmacology report inevitably leads me to publications that flatten and debunk the value of herbs in medical treatment. “Ginger root is as effective as a placebo in reducing motion sickness”. “Panax ginseng is not effective in preventing cardiovascular disease.” 

I know the science to be well-informed and procedurally sound. Some herbals like Ma Huang have even been known to cause lethal strokes in the worst of cases. Ingesting concentrated substances in any quantity can be dangerous and the public should be protected from such risks. But my dad recovered from his tuberculosis and so did nearly everyone else from his town, so what am I to think? Who is right? A question such as this should be simple enough. Yes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Indeed, there is no scientific evidence that herbals are anywhere near as effective as antibiotics with the data as we know it. Yes, this is an anecdote—just one hell of a coincidence! And yet… And yet, I can’t help but dismay at the cruel symbolism of this fact. Deracination is no bed of roses. Or rather, it is, if the roses had slightly dulled thorns that made you miss your hometown. But the bed has already been made by none other than the wonderful, carefully calibrated scientific method, and sleeping in it feels like a betrayal of my grandpa’s decades-long work as a doctor in China. 

“What was it, then?”

“It wasn’t the herbs.”

I will never know who or what really cured my hometown’s epidemic sixty years ago no matter how much I study. The Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a good time for paper records. I need to accept that, or else I’m just a child licking her lips at the promise of gold at the end of a rainbow, only to be met with a sardonic cackling one hundred meters in when I look up and see that the rainbow has not gotten any closer. Regardless of the methods he used to treat people, he did it with love and care. My dad told me about how he couldn’t eat dinner when he got home on most nights because he would have already drank and dined with the families that called on him. Grandpa was making the best of what equipment and knowledge he had, and he would have wanted me to do the same. 

I’ve only gotten to know you through stories, but thank you for saving your son and, by proxy, for saving me as well.