Eight Horns

Chinese Proposal to blend their old traditional medicine with modern western medicine
mercedo
Sat, 09 Dec 2006 05:39:07 PST
The effective ingredients of Tamiflu was found from Chinese traditional medicine 'eight horns' -I wrote it before. Chinese people usually don't extract effective ingredients from natural materials, in this case it's a horn. They use it as it is. They grind it and make powder. They take it through mouth.
In the first place they observed the phenomenon of nature closely and learned through empirical rules, probably they might have eyewitnessed that some animal took it and got recovered from the illness, etc.
Western culture take more positive way. They synthesise the chemical material, and try giving it to some animals. When they were able to certify the effectiveness of medicine, finally they conduct a clinical trial. Chinese empirical method will give them a hint which material to research.