Foo & Wing Herb Company, inc., Los Angeles

In 1902 brothers Tom Leong and T. Foo Yuen, two Physicians of Oriental Medicine and practicing in Los Angeles, CA published a 306 page manuscript titled The Science of Oriental Medicine, Diet and Hygiene.

It's a full advertisement for the the clinic, the services and credentials of both physicians; and through anecdotes and cordial descriptions of zang fu theory, the indisputable efficacy of a system of medicine over 3000 years old.  It is also a kindly text that was written by W.A. Hallowell Jr., the same mustachioed westerner posing for patient with T. Foo Yuen in the photo below and who also holds copy-write of the text.  There is no mention of this supposition in any item description I've found but his ownership of copy-write may be enough evidence to say so.  The voice of the text has an accessible, no-nonsense romanticism about it that feels literary but with real science behind it.

Each book was complimentary to their patients and so a free and viable resource to the reading public regarding health and wellness by means of a very foreign medical system in their own words.  It's not a clinical text by any means.  It's an expose for a new century American public about the science and efficacy of Chinese Medicine.  It is also a testament to the remarkable curing skills of two brothers educated at the Emperial College of Medicine in Peking, China and who wished to found the first college of Chinese Medicine in the States!  How different things would be if regulating bodies for colleges of OM and for the practice of this medicine in the US had been established over a hundred years ago.  But how different things are now.  How exciting to see their dream for Chinese Medical education in the states amass to over 35 accredited colleges of acupuncture and oriental medicine (nineteen of which are in California--five schools in Los Angeles County alone), and many with externships in western medical centers.

Dr. T. Foo Yuen and his brother Dr. Leong never did create the first American school of Chinese Medicine that they had planned for.  The first OM College (1) in the states wasn't founded for another seventy-three years after the book's publication and that happened in Newton, Massachusetts, at other end of the country.  What happened to Drs Tom Foo Yuen and Leong and the Foo & Wing Herb Company after the book's publication.  Certainly they continued to enjoy the success of their practice for the rest of their life.  But did they stay in L.A.?  What happened to Dr. T. Yuen's son, Tom How Wing, pictured in the center of the photo on the book's second page?  Prejudice againt the Chinese was great in early Industrial America.  They were regarded as the cheap laborers building camps in growing cities, and stealing opportunities from those of other immigrants and natives.  Many people regarded them with little to no value, or even as devils, so it wasn't a great surprise to find the following degrading article against the Chinese and their medicine published March of 1913, eleven years after the Foo & Wing Herb Company publication, by California State Journal of Medicine, Vol. XI, No. 3 by Dr. Charles Kirkland Roys M.D., Wei-hsien, China (2)   
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/.../pdf/calstatejmed00125-0017.pdf 

tight, wiry & rapid!

It's a scathing review of Chinese Medicine and the Chinese as a people.  Dr. Kirkland refers to the book many times as a pamphlet, disregarding its impressive weight of 300 plus pages of empirical wisdom never before heard of by an American public.  He is not shy with his trackless commentaries demeaning the Chinese as "heathens", and even misquoting a Chinese Proverb to declare, under his breath, that "the ordinary [Chinese] physician is a murderer."  When this article was published Dr. Roys and his family had already been stationed in China as missionaries for the Presbyterian Church for ten years!  "Even the best of them," he continues, "graduates of the Imperial Medical College, are the merest ignorant empirics."
 
He concludes that the growing use of  Oriental Medicine by the people of Los Angeles, Boston and Brooklyn, where they always welcome something new, will soon tire of these fads as they did with theosophy, for example.  It's not difficult to imagine that against the backdrop of such caustic rhetoric and prejudice how impossible it would be to realize a school of Chinese Medicine in America.  How far we've come, and how exciting that we have so much further we can go.

As far as the question of what ever happened to the two Chinese Doctors from Peking and Dr. Yuen's son who stood to inherit it all?  The trail stops with a blog-post I found that linked to a colored postcard on Ebay advertising the Foo & Wing Herb Company.  However, the item is no longer listed.  We may never know.  
_________________________________________
1. New England College of Acupuncture, founded in 1975 by Dr. James Tin Yau So and his students.
2. "Charles K. Roys and [his wife] Mabel Milham Roys, were appointed as missionaries to Weihsien, Shantung Province, by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Dr. Roys was chief surgeon at the teaching hospital in Wei Hsien until 1916, when the Royses were transferred to Tsinan. The family was forced to return to the United States in early 1920 when Dr. Roys was diagnosed with a brain tumor."  He died later that year.  --Botanic Garden News, 2004

Table of Contents

Here's the link to the full document and the Internet Archive where I found it and a whole lot more:

http://www.archive.org/stream/scienceoforienta00foowrich#page/n13/mode/2up

China Zhenjiuology Films

Two years ago tcmgirl2008 (www.youtube.com/user/tcmgirl2008) posted excerpts from a series of TCM clinical intrusctional videos titled "China Zhenjiuology--A Series of Video Tape [sic]".  Zhenjiuology is the study of Acupuncture and Moxibustion.  She shares twelve such clips from the series and each runs between 6-8 minutes.  Unfortunately they are in no particular order and tcmgirl provides no follow up information regarding the source material for these posts, but each clip is an intriguing peek into a great visual resource of TCM practice in modern China.  The audio is a dual track Mandarin/English voice-over that can be challanging if the sound levels are not favorable to the English as is the case in one of the uploaded clips.  I've always enjoyed visiting these videos--especially now with a year of Chinese Medical study in my bag.  They have a palpable vintage quality to them reminiscent of early color Public Service films of the 1970s; but where the early PS films of the seventies were likely shot on 16mm film, these films from China have a softer degradation that can happen with only Beta or VHS and decades of shelf life and wear.  The funny things is that according to cgcmall.com where the entire thirty chapter series can be purchased lists the following in its description of the item re: production: Produced by China Association of Medicine; China Medical Audiovisual Press Deluxe edition, Meditalent Inc, Taiwan, 2004*
______________
*Maybe this is the copyright to this current item.  The film series itself may have been shot decades ago.  2004 could be the date of its re-issue.


Here's the official site for the promotion and sale of this 30 chapter video series:

http://www.cgcmall.com/Acupuncture_DVD_p/dv00acu30.htm

acupuncture DVD	30 courses loaded on DVDs, English and Chinese textbooks, hardcover and refined packing List Price: $999.00 Our Price: $858.00 You save $141.00!

This could be a great addition to any medical library--eastern or western.  I'm thinking now that if I can get 40 students to donate $25 then we can gift this series to the library here at SWAC Santa Fe.  Or maybe we can purchase it next year after funds have been allocated to the library committee at the start of the fiscal year.  In the mean time enjoy these excerpts from tcmgirl as well as the video introduction to each of the thirty chapters at cgcmall.com (the link above).

Hemichorea--Hemiballism after Diabetic Ketoacidosis

H.R. 3590- Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The health care bill has passed.  Though some would argue that it is not the health care bill but more a legislative vehicle that will carry the heath care bill in the future.  So what does the passage and signing of HR 3590 mean?  As the bill's title states, it aims to protect present and future patients and provide affordable health care.  Simply--and this is coming from Subpart 1 of the bill, titled "General Reform", sections 2701-2708--millions of Americans, who up until now could not get insurance because of the great expense or because an existing health condition made them an added liability, and therefore a greater expense to the insurance company can now consider health care for themselves and their families without fear of bankruptcy.  It's more complex a bill than I've simplified here.  It's not a socialized health care, but with this bill there is promise that we're heading toward a system of care in this country that aims to help all people and not just those who can afford it.

I received a letter yesterday, as did everyone else subscribed to their posts, from AAAOM regarding the bill's passage and what this means for AOM practitioners.

Unfortunately--and I say this prematurely--HR 646 Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act, sponsored by Rep. Maurice Hinchey [D-NY22] was not included in this bill.  It was naive of me to think that HR 646 might be included with HR 646 considering that getting a bill signed by the president is a 6-part process that begins with its introduction, then its referral to committee before it goes to the House for vote, then after amendments it moves to the Senate for vote before Obama's signature.  HR 646 was introduced January 22, 2009.  What is fourteen months for the 111th Congress of the United States?  A week, maybe two?  Presently, it remains referred to the following Commitees: 

House Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on

House Ways and Means, Subcommittee on

House Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on  

Since the introduction of HR 646 in 2009, AAAOM has sent 40,000 letters from practitioners, students and patients in support to the House and Senate, and gained 37 co-sponsors and it has been referred to committees.  The 2010 goals of AAAOM re: HR 646 is to introduce a companion bill and to steer HR646 from committee to hearing and finally to vote.  Yes!

Let's return to the letter and AAAOM President Deborah Lincoln's question, "What does this bill bring to the AOM community?"  She continues, “Beyond our efforts to gain support for HR 646 over the past twelve months, the cornerstone of many meetings with congressional members have centered on sustaining the non-discrimination language present in this just-passed bill. AAAOM’s efforts, alongside those of other CAM professions (including that of the Integrated Health Policy Commission [IHPC]) have prevailed, and the non-discrimination clause was sustained."

SEC. 2706 of the Subpart 1--General Reform:
SEC.2706. NON-DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH CARE: (a) PROVIDERS  A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall not discriminate with respect to participation under the plan or coverage against any health care provider who is acting within the scope of that provider's license or certification under applicable State law.

Here's the rest of letter:
“Two other key platforms of leadership activity have been served by this political outcome,” states Rebekah Christensen, AAAOM’s executive director. “And this strongly fortifies achieving the vision of the National Joint Strategic Planning Committee: ‘By 2014, acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM), an independent, licensed profession, will be fully accessible to the public through American healthcare.’" She further adds, “The synergy of this effort combined with AAAOM’s co-sponsorship of the 2011 World Conference on AOM and Integrative Medicine, is extraordinarily fortuitous in that the underlying purpose of this event is to lead the U. S. in defining the role of AOM in integrative care.” Scheduled for May 13-15, the World Conference 2011 is co-sponsored with the University of Maryland School of Medicine - Center for Integrative Medicine.
Jeannie Kang, LAc, and vice president of the AAAOM states: “This is the best outcome we could have anticipated. Politically, the door for the AOM community has now opened wide, setting the stage for our relentless pursuit to assure that AOM is fully recognized in U.S. health care delivery.”

AAAOM works hard on our behalf as AOM students and practitioners.  HR 3590 is a political door opened to the future of AOM in the US, but it is only the beginning.  If we can continue to make our voices heard through--and this includes practitioners, students and patients--in Washington, the future of AOM as an integral part of US health care can not be denied.

www.opencongress.org/senate_health_care_bill 

Studying Chinese Medicine in Santa Fe!

I've known now for many weeks now, but I want to share the news with you and the universe (if you will) through this blog. My medicine bug has developed from an itch to a full blown infection. My wife and I are packing up our life here in Chicago and heading west to the otherworldly expanses of New Mexico--Santa Fe to be exact---where I will be studying holistic medicine (Chinese) and sharing those experiences with you here on this blog and she will continue to inspire me and others with her great spirit and photographs and videos. I will be of their incoming Spring class, beginning classes Jan 11.


It's November 28, 2pm. My steady employment with the Flaxman Library where I help manage the film study collection and restore "sick" books to health is scheduled to end Dec. 18. That's 3 weeks from now! We've been working to get rid of all unnecessary items--furniture and old clothes, mostly--but writing down "3 weeks" sure opens my eyes to how much more needs to be accomplished before then. So why am I sitting here just writing about it? This needs to be done too--perhaps most of all. There's been a sort of mucus plug of emotion and the words that define these feelings that are blocking a clear flow of motivational energy. There has been a steady buildup of stagnant blood and energy because of this that reaches from the pit of my stomach to the base of my brain; and as a result, I've been experiencing a paralysis of the will (is that Kidney shen?). Writing is the best therapy for me to help my body breakdown that plug and promote a balanced communication between my gut and head. Perhaps after an hour of this therapy I will be able to concentrate and work without the distraction of the anxious knot in my belly. So here I am writing--hopefully not in circles, but perhaps a wavering attempt at a linear narrative, as natural progression as a vascular highway or the alimentary canal--thinking that somewhere along these lines the mucus damn shall fail and I might progress.











I want to talk here about my intentions for studying Chinese Medicine in New Mexico, and to do so I will share the letter of intent I wrote during the application process to SWAC that secured me membership in their graduating class of 2014. If you are familiar with the previous posts then you will recognize some of that text repeated here.

Enjoy.

***

I am thirty-three years old, and as I experience more the dynamic between this mind and body, I become more aware of myself within. I am not this body, but what is my increasing human potential? For the past six years I've been working within three special collections at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago conserving and restoring the circulating books, the artist books and the 16mm print films in these respective collections. As the I study the philosophy and the practice of Oriental Medicine I cannot deny the correlation between book conservation and the clinician's first consultation with his or her patient. It involves more than fixing what's broken; it begins with a careful assessment of the whole with all senses. How old is the object? Is the wear observed accurate for its age, for its level of circulation, for its storage condition. Is its smell earthy or more like vinegar? Does it feel cold and damp or is it dry and brittle. Is the problem congenital (i.e., in the case of an artist book if the artist refuses archival materials because it is the ephemeral nature of found materials, say, or the degradation of a paper hinge that interests the concept behind the book's design) or is the problem a result of mishandling or equipment error (re: broken films) in which case policy must be amended and education the key preventative. We can not deny the inevitable "death" of any object in a collection, but we can manage their care to delay their degradation in order to help maximize the quality of their resource. Of course, films and books--no matter how rare the print or complicated the anatomy and binding--are not people, but they are material expressions, a transference of a personal experience that needs care all the same, and I am honored to facilitate that care.

Outside of my work within these collections I am of a creative community of painters and performers, photographers, writers and critics and curators. I've collaborated on book projects and video-performance pieces; I've written and preformed in stage plays; I've taught short fiction to high-school students; I've run bookbinding workshops; I have artist books in one of The School's special collections and four different chapbooks available at a local artist run book store. Curiously, these small accomplishments and experiences that put myself out into the community have ultimately led me to pursue the study of medicine. I questioned earlier, What is my increasing human potential? I don't know the full answer, but I do know it is not just writing another--this time larger--play and finishing my novel (though these goals are unmistakable). My human potential is to engage further and more deeply with my local and (potentially) global communities. I want to open myself up to this medicine and to the people of New Mexico. My human potential is to know myself fully and to express that self without prejudice and with complete honesty. My studies and practice thus far have been rich in the humanities, and I can't think of a more natural progression in the study of what it is to be human than the study of a medicine rich in its revelations of mystic truth.

Like most people born and raised under the western health care umbrella, I grew up having no familiarity with the life style of natural medicine or preventive medicine, much less the holistic-health care model of Oriental Medicine--classical or otherwise. My idea of prevention comes from my childhood experiences of painful vaccinations and an ear infection every Fall until I was six. There was nothing sacred about medicine; it was a job which allowed our single mother, a Registered Nurse, to pay the rent and keep the cupboards half full. Its pattern was simple: it was the doctor's cold invasion, the white-walled office, hands that smelled rubbed with alcohol, the pallid eyes, the otoscope pushed too far into the canal of my raging ear; the ear infection confirmed, antibiotics, then feeling better in a day or two. It's difficult to differentiate your body from yourself at such an early age. How do you not misinterpret each illness as a personal attack on your character? Why should I endure these pains alone, I would think, when my sister--my twin, no less--had the privilege of sleeping through every October undisturbed. Why was there no devil's finger digging in her ear? What made my body's relationship with this evil bacterium so different from hers? By my sixth year my eustachian tubes had made their natural course downward, forward, medially and the seasonal infections were gone. Consequently, our visits with the doctor also disappeared and I stopped with my jealous introspections. For the next seven years we would not visit a doctor unless we really had to, that is if what ailed us could not be fixed at home--but what could not a mother cure? Between the chamomile teas and ibuprofen we came to understand that the body would take care of itself. Our mother never got sick. All her years helping the sick and dying in nursing homes, emergency rooms and eventually neonatal intensive care units the one thing she "contracted" and then communicated to my sister and me was that the body is a very capable machine.

Three years ago, however, I learned that my capable machine was everything but capable. I had neglected my body to the inconsistent lifestyle of a young man in graduate art school. Suddenly one afternoon I began to suffer from a dry, burning that affected the middle of my back, my right arm (including the axillary) and right pectoral. A week later when this burning progressed into painful blisters, and while my wife and I were traveling to Arlington, Texas for a wedding, the diagnosed was made clear: I had shingles. I asked the tending physician how this could have happened. My hygiene was very important to me, I told her, and I didn't eat greasy foods. My ignorance was showing. It is not impossible, she told me, but it is rare for some one in their late twenties to suffer the effects of the herpes zoster virus. My immune system had been compromised and stress with no regular relief was the most likely culprit. The diagnosis came too late for the antiviral to have been effective, so it was not prescribed. My body would have to carry on as before for the next four to six weeks with no outside assistance except moderate doses of a prescribed painkiller "when needed" which only made me nauseous. I mention this occurrence in my life not because it then introduced me to the powers of Oriental Medicine or to my current OM practitioner, but because it was then that I realized I had been neglecting that trinity of mind, body and spirit and that there were consequences to this delinquency. This machine is only capable as long as we work with it as partners towards a shared wellness. Since the shingles outbreak I've been exercising regularly, trying to eat seasonally, engaging in talk therapy once a week and visiting with my OM practitioner when ever I can while working to cultivate a successful herbal medicine garden in the summers (with varying degrees of success) and reading all I can get my hands on regarding the theory, the science and practice of OM and the bio-sciences. Technology and the Western medical model can nearly guarantee a longer life, but if we do not come to understand the body's fluid relationship with the mind and spirit and the relationship we share with our environment (for better or worse), and if we do not practice and regulate these teachings, how can we expect to maintain balance thereby ensuring a richer quality of life to accompany that longevity?

New Mexico is a second home to me. In fact it was my first home for my first eight years of my life, split between Clovis and Portales until my mother, newly divorced, moved my sister and me into West Texas to begin a new phase of her life. Now my wife and I are packing up our life in Chicago and moving West to the Santa Fe area to start a new era of our life together. What interests me about studying Oriental Medicine in New Mexico is, first, the scale of the land; nature abounds; there is no denial or distraction from the relationship the body and spirit has with nature. Second, the integrative primary care of this medicine as evinced through SWAC's externship opportunities--not to mention the opportunity to intern at Harbin at the Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine. As well, I am interested in other traditional medicine modalities unique to the southwest, and I hope to extend my studies into these communities during my tenure at Southwest Acupuncture College and after to understand the culture and the practice of the native herbalists and develop relationships with the native medicine men of the surrounding reservations.

I've been reading Ted Kaptchuck's The Web that has no Weaver and Ithza Veith's translation of the Nei Jing, but I've also been reading the essays from Kenny Ausubel's (founder of the Bioneers) anthology, Ecological Medicine, which includes talk about not just personal health care and disease prevention but the health and healing of our environment in conjunction with our personal and community well being. I have a growing interest in gardening and subsistence living through unoffensive farming practices that parallels my amateur (thus far) studies of natural medicine and healing. The Permaculture Institute there in New Mexico is an ideal compliment to my studies that only the natural resource of New Mexico can provide. Integrative medicine is not limited to our professional relationships with allopathic doctors and other complimentary and alternative healthcare practitioners but it can involve the cooperation of all community leaders and services, including architects, city planners, farmers, engineers, gardeners, public school administration.

Chinese Medicine school is the first step of my journey to becoming a healer and a lifelong process of self cultivation and scholarship that I don't expect to get any easier after the first four years of study. What excites me about this education, aside from the didactic study of the philosophy and foundations of Oriental Medicine and the clinical practice, are the opportunities for self-exploration, the opportunities to learn how to grow within myself so that I can share the best of me. I don't want to go to school just to become an acupuncturist and a Chinese herbalist; through Qi Gong and Tai Chi and meditation I hope to better my resolve as a human being, to act with clearer focus without the intervention of ego, to allow myself to be vulnerable yet confident at home, in the public, with my patients and other heathcare professionals.

I don't doubt that I am an eager learner of the endless possibilities of healing but what is my intention as a healer? I want, as Jeffery Yuen puts it, to "witness the intricacies of life" and tap into my greater potentials as a human being. I get great joy sharing with my wife and friends my limited knowledge concerning the hows and whys of the nature of our body, it's relationship with our adulterated environments, of our modern heathcare system and primary care. But medicine is more than fascinating trivia about our collected viscera; it's greater than politics; it's more than managing disease. It's about people helping people. I hope to master the art of Oriental Medicine through rigorous scholarship, practice and self-exploration so that I may understand and advocate more clearly how we can secure a productive, healthy life for ourselves and our families and our communities and our environment and perhaps understand something more about the process of ourselves along the way.

A New Film--Numen: The Nature of Plants

I just received a link from John of Learningherbs.com for a new film about the nature of plants--medicinally and otherwise. If anyone's interested in the value of medicinal plants--or anything that grows and changes--and how and why we should learn to reconnect with the Nature of which we are all part and parcel you can visit their website at http://numenfilm.com/ and view a short 35 sec of some great time-lapse cinematography of sprouting plants or you can join their e-mail list and view a longer, more inspirational 15 minutes of the film. Fantastic! I can't wait to get a copy for myself. Supplies are limited, they say.

Epistula Vultaris, Medical and Magical Recipes of the Vulture

It has been too long since my last post--tomorrow will be two months past. I've been busy writing a post on the spleen (a western and eastern perspective) and researching and writing for a larger essay about the magic and myth associated with ancient and modern medicine--esp. Chinese Medicine and its use of acupuncture for mental conditions (I prefaced this article with an earlier post here about the Ghost Points). I want to add a quick post here as a sort of resuscitation. I will be updating soon with the first half of the spleen post, but now I want to just add some notes of interest. Notes from some articles I've found interesting. And naturally, they pertain to the subject of Magic, myth and medicine.

The following post concerns an article I can't stop re-reading. It was published in the Oct 1943 publication of Speculum, vol. 18, No. 4 and it is about an unpublished treatise on medicine and magic from the age of Charlemagne--in fact, that's the full title--found in the back of a book in a great library in France. There is no mention of who found the letter or when or how the author (Loren C. Mackinney), who is also the translator of this Latin text, got possession of the piece. Being a well respected Scholar of Medieval Medicine, I suppose that one afternoon an envelope lined with cardboard and with a return address to the Paris Biblioteque Nationale found itself upon Dr. Mackinney's desk. His scholarship in the article is focused primarily of the list of magical and medical recipes and its comparative history.

As stated previously, this one-page treatise, titled Epistula Vulturis, was found in a medical manuscript in the Paris Biblioteque Nationale and contained the listing of 17 magical/medical recipes compounded from the various parts of a vulture and other substances. Researchers don't know who wrote the piece, or if these were just notes from a curious reader who left there research on a blank page near the end of Book I of Dioscoride's Materia Medica. Nearly half of the recipes included in this treatise, says MacKinney, closely resemble the passages from Natural History, published in the first century and written by the Roman naturalist and philosopher, Pliny the Elder (or Gaius Plinius Secundus). However the wording is more contemporary, he says, to the sixth-century writings of Sextus Placitus Papyrensis--particularly his Book of Medicine from Animals, Cattle, Beasts and Birds. But this accounts for only seven of the recipes. The other ten recipes are not found in any of the Roman handbook, which means they were undoubtedly a record of the unwritten folk medicine and magic of that period. So it's very probable that whoever wrote this small treatise was not making notes from the texts and neglected his research but rather slipped this paper gem against the gutter of Dioscoride's Materia Medica as a sort of preservation of culture.

The following is the translation of the letter by the late Professor of medieval history and specialist of medieval medical history, Loren C. Mackinny:

(Translation)
INCIPIT EPISTULA VULTURIS or
HERE BEGINS THE LETTER OF THE VULTURE

To the Province of Babylonia Alexandria, greeting from the King of Rome. The human race does not know how much virtue the vulture has in it and how much it contributes to healing. At the hour at which it is captured, kill it, using a sharp reed instead of a sword. Let him who kills it be alone, and before he decapitates it, let him say to it : "Angel Adonai Abraham, on your account the word is completed." And when you cut it open you will do well to repeat the above mentioned words.

[recipes:]

1. The bones from its head (wrapped) in deer skin will cure every pain and migraine (of the head).
2. Its brain you mix with the best of oil and put in the nose, and it will expel all ailments of the head.
3. Wrap the eyes in wolf skin and hang around the neck and it will drive away pain from the eye.
4. If you put its tongue in the right shoe and walk with it (thus) all your enemies will adore you.
5. Its gall mixed with SUGAR OF FENNEL and HOREHOUND and with OIL OF BALSAM and ATTIC HONEY, you apply in the morning, and presently it will relieve all pain in the eyes.
6. Its liver you beat with its blood and ATTIC HONEY and give thrice for seven mornings, and it will heal all epileptics and lunatics and will drive out fear.
7. Its blood purges the itch.
8. You dry its spleen and afterwards mix it with BITUMEN OF SULPHUR and OIL OF COPPER and OLD AXEL GREASE, and if you use it as an ointment it will cure paralysis.
9. You burn its lung with NETTLE and BARK OF MALAGUETTA and of ROSE in equal amounts and give it for fever; verily it will cure you.
10. You mix it (?) with MUST and CITRON for one who is impotent and he will be healed.
11. You dry and beat its little kidneys and testicles and give with wine, to him who is unable to have intercourse with his wife, and he will find remedy.
12. If you wrap its heart in lion or wolf skin (and place around the neck of one possessed) all demons will flee and if you fall among thieves (while you have it) they will adore you.
13. Its wings are valuable for many things. If you bind them on the left foot of a woman who is unable to bring forth, she will be speedily delivered; and when she has brought forth, quickly take it away (i.e. the vulture wing) lest her viscera follow.
14. If you secretly fumigate (with vulture wings) anyone's home which is being troubled, all evil will flee from it.
15. Its feet and claws lying in your home will prevent sorcery from being done there. And if it has been done formerly it will have no effect.
16. If you cook its grease with OIL OF COPPER and WAX, it will heal the sinews.
17. And if you anoint with it (i.e. the grease) a yoke animal which you plan to sell, on that day you will receive (your) price for it. Finit finit.

A pretty thorough list of recipes long out of vogue. I wonder though, about the efficacy of these healing modalities. I can't imagine the National Health Organization--through their department of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research--funding for double-blind studies on the healing potentials of vulture parts. Granted, most of these recipes are more magical than medical, but it is a peek into a world where magic and medicine were interchangeable and mythic. In a world where illness and disease is attributed to devils and sorcery why wouldn't it be a magic called medicine that would exercise the body of those pernicious influences?


We've come a long way to broaden the divide between magic and medicine by classifying the body and it various properties and functions into repeatable patterns for future identification. This system of repeatable familiarity is comforting to us. This is logical thinking, this is real to us. But should we discredit the lore of the vulture's magic and medicine as superstitious, as pseudo-scientific and therefore ineffective? The vulture's spleen, some bitumen of sulphur, some copper oil and old axle grease, may not sound like the most obvious cure for paralysis, but imagine the millions of tax payer dollars we'd save from stem-cell research if we could show the efficacy of this one simple recipe? The more I think about it though, the more the idea of harvesting spleens from government regulated vulture farms makes me want to march in protest. Okay, that's where I put my foot down. Leave the vultures alone.