i always wonder how chinese medicine can work so well... it's brown, it's bitter, and it's a mix of random-looking stuff (it's not 'random' perse, it just looks random) that you can only find in the "mountains" and "wilderness"
old chinese men takes your pulse, and then he writes a bunch of scribbles, walks to his huge shelf of medicine, picks out all these different dried and curled up herbs? (sometimes even bugs), and puts them all together into that big piece of white paper, folds it up making it look like a parcel or something. and finally, tells you to boil them together and drink it.
how can i trust you old man?

haha j/k

but how did people KNOWWW that it would work? from before?
i asked steph and b today during lunch..
they said trial and error...
lots of people must've died in the process
it reminds me of how i've also always been curious about all the different fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, meats too- how do we know which one is good to eat, and which one is not?
you can't just pick out a random mushroom from your backyard and go "hey, let's have dinner"
you can die la
i'm so fascinated
i've always imagined these foraging people, walking around the land to find these delicious looking fruits, "wooooo this fruit looks delish!", takes a bite, and then dies. And then the others will go "oh be sure we never eat this fruit next time/again"