Jun 16, 2013
Dried snakes and turtle plastrons seen at a market for traditional medicine in Xi’an, 2011
Sometimes it seems like just about anything can be used in Chinese medicine. Dried snakes and turtle plastrons are sold alongside mushrooms, ginseng, and buddha fruits. Other, stranger, ingredients are also used, such as rhinoceros horn, powdered scorpions, or fossilized bones. To a western mind it can seem more like ancient alchemy than medicine and many of the core doctrines are seen as false or foolhardy by science.