Treatise on Febrile Diseases is a classic work of Chinese medicine. There is a lot of food used as medicine in this book. Roughly speaking, there are as many as seventy or eighty kinds, including cereals, fruits, mammals, birds, vegetables and so on.
According to the theory of fever in traditional Chinese medicine (exogenous disease), pathogenic heat damages body fluid at the beginning of exogenous disease, and the diet is also very clever until after the disease. Eating food blindly, because dry and fresh are different, there are other effects.
For example, the volatility of lotus leaves, fresh lotus leaves and dried lotus leaves is different. Therefore, in hot summer, fresh lotus leaves can be used to cook porridge to get its fragrance, which can exorcise evil spirits, while dried products naturally have no such good effect.
For another example, ginger, which is often eaten, is eaten earlier. In The Analects of Confucius, there is a record that Confucius did not withdraw ginger food. As we all know, ginger has been used in food for more than two thousand years. Long ago, ginger was used as medicine.
There are six kinds of medicinal uses of ginger in Treatise on Febrile Diseases. For example, ginger is pungent and warm, and the northern folk custom uses ginger and sugar to boil boiled water to keep out the cold after cold wind and rain, thus preventing exogenous diseases. The effect of Guizhi decoction on relieving muscle surface cannot be separated from the pungent temperature of ginger. Ginger also has the effect of neutralization. For example, when people eat crabs, they should use ginger and vinegar as ingredients, that is, use the warm stomach of ginger to neutralize the coldness of crab meat. Ginger can also assist the yang, such as the dew ginger drink in Treatise on Febrile Diseases, which combines the sweetness of ginseng with the warmth of ginger to assist the yang. By the way, when steaming crabs, we should put some perilla leaves in some places in the south, which is also based on the pungent temperature of perilla to solve the coldness of crabs.
Fruit has been used as medicine for a long time, and there is little difference between usage and consumption. For example, hawthorn is sour and sweet, warm in nature, and has the functions of promoting digestion and removing blood stasis. Single use can cure food stagnation, and the effect is better when combined with malt and medicated leaven. Traditionally, we call these three flavors "three immortals", which are also very commonly used in clinic today, especially for children who stop eating, and the effect is very good. In fact, this usage is also widely used among the people.