Cultural Practices: Medicine in ATLA
I thought I’d do a quick overview of the medicines and treatments that we see employed in ATLA. This post will be a little different from the usual, as it’ll include a few personal anecdotes from yours truly and a content warning since some medical practices can be a bit gruesome to describe.
Also known as the meridian system or jīngluò (經絡), these are the metaphysical “veins” through which chi flows. Although modern science rejects the existence of the meridian system, belief in chi pathways forms the basis for many treatments within Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Also known as Huachansu (华蟾素) or “Chinese Toad Essence”, it refers to the practice of using secretions from the skin of Asiatic toads for medicinal purposes. The chemical, cinobufagin, found in these secretions has been known to have many beneficial effects in humans:
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In TCM, cinobufagin is extracted by drying toad skin and steeping it in hot water, essentially using it to brew a medicinal ”tea”. However, thanks to modern science, cinobufagin can now also be taken via pill or injection.
For obvious reasons, Aang couldn’t exactly be shown drying and skinning pond critters to make hot froggy juice. Can’t say how effective sucking on frozen frogs is for curing the cold, but I’m sure someone out there has tried it. I will say, I never related harder to Aang then when the herbalist tells him to go gather frogs for medicine and he just looks bewildered. My grandparents were strong believers in the health benefits of toad skin and used to have me hunt for them during fishing trips.
When Zuko takes Iroh to a local Earth Kingdom clinic to cure his uncle’s poisoning, fire cupping or báguàn (拔罐) is briefly shown as another treatment available there. Here is a quick description of the process from the Wikipedia page:
Fire cupping involves soaking a cotton ball in almost pure alcohol. The cotton is clamped by a pair of forceps and lit via match or lighter, and, in one motion, placed into the cup and quickly removed, while the cup is placed on the skin. The fire uses up all the oxygen in the cup which creates a negative pressure inside the cup. The cup is then quickly placed onto the body and the negative pressure “sucks” the skin up.
According to TCM, the purpose of cupping is to dislodge stagnant blood and encourage circulation, thereby improving chi flow to cure common ailments. My headcanon is that this treatment is a specialty of the Fire Nation cause, you know, fire cupping. It also ties into the importance of body heat in firebending and would be a pretty decent treatment for a chi-blocked body; I also headcanon chi-blocking as having roots in firebending.
I have second hand experience with fire cupping. My mother once tried fire cupping on my dad but I think she might have overheated the cups because he ended up getting pretty big blisters on his back. You can imagine what happened when he accidentally rolled over on to his back while sleeping…
Moral of the Story: Please leave all medical treatments, both traditional and modern, to trained professionals.
Acupuncture is probably the most well-known type of TCM in the English-speaking world. It is the practice of inserting very thin metal needles into the skin along the meridian system to improve chi flow. As far as I know, porcupine needles have never been used. ;-) Acupuncture is typically used to treat various types of body pain and stiffness.
Surprisingly, I actually don’t have any real life experience with acupuncture. As far as headcanon goes, I imagine this might be a specialty of the Earth Kingdom once metalbending becomes more commonplace.
In the near future, I’ll probably make a post detailing other traditional Asian and Indigenous medicines that would work well in the Avatar world.
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