How do people decoct herbal medicine at home？
2 min readA patient receives small packages at a pharmacy of traditional medicine in accordance with the prescription of his or her doctor.These contain various dry herbs，and the patient usually puts them in a pot，adds water until they are completely soaked，and heats them in a pot over a fire.When the water begins to boil，the heat is immediately reduced，but the fire is kept simmering for 30 or 40minutes.Then the herbal water is poured out into a bowl；and the herbs themselves remain in the pot，which is refilled with water and placed over the fire again.The whole process is repeated three times until enough concentrated herbal tea is produced.
The doctor usually concocts a remedy from one or two main ingredients appropriate for the illness.Then he or she adds other ingredients to adjust theformula to the patient’s yin and yang condition to cancel out toxicity or side-effects of the main ingredients.Unlike western medication，the balance and interaction of all the ingredients are more important than the effect of individual ingredients.A key to success，moreover，is the treatment of each patient as an individual.
What is bencao？
Herbal medicine is the mainstay of traditional Chinese medicine.The knowledge of the medicinal herbs was originally handed down verbally.With the birth of the Chinese characters，medical books began to appear，and many were printed.They are called bencao，which means that plants are the basis of medicinal healing.
At present，there are about 300 types of medical books in existence.These include the earliest book，Shennong Bencaojing ，Shennong Herbal Medicine Classics which was written during the Eastern Han Dynasty.Another famous work，Bencao Gangmu（Compendium of Materia Medica），written by Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty.It lists 1，892 herbs with 1，160 pictures and 11，000 drug prescriptions.At the beginning of the 17th century，foreign scholars began to translate this work into English，Japanese，French and other languages.
