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| Chinese herbs boiled by Edmund Lo |
The autumn season is indeed upon us, and this also means that the cold/flu season has arrived. This season coincided with the shutdown of my immune system, perhaps as a result of two consecutive working weekends. This is an indirect and reluctant way to say that I fell ill. I usually fall ill at the end of the school semester, when the immune system is no longer on overdrive. This would normally give me more free time to recover. Since we are currently in the middle of the semester, I do not have such a luxury. Hence I decided to pay a visit to a Chinese herbal doctor.
Those of you who are familiar with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) will immediately recall both the somewhat repulsive smell and taste of the potions. A friend of mine even commented that “sickness is preferable” to having to drink them. I, however, do not mind them; as a wee boy who was always sick, I had to drink them on a daily basis for almost two years. I have been properly-trained to ignore the associated bitter taste. But what draws me back to TCM is not a kind of operant conditioning, as if disgusting taste leads to better health. It is rather the holistic approach.
