Swiftlet's nest, also known as bird's nest or bird's vegetable. Recorded in the book "Ben Jing Feng Yuan". It is the nest built by the saliva and feathers of the Collocalia esculenta Linnaeus, a bird of the swiftlet family, which is collected in the months of February, April, and August. The saliva gland of the swiftlet is highly developed before it lays eggs in April each year. The newly built nest is purely made of solidified saliva, white and clean, known as "white nest"; the first nest that is collected. The second nest built by the swiftlet often contains some feathers, with a darker color, known as "feather nest", sometimes with bloodstains, known as "blood nest".
【Processing Method】Take the raw medicinal materials and remove impurities.
【Characteristics of Medicinal Herbs】Irregularly crescent-shaped or boat-shaped, 6-10cm long, 3-5cm wide, concave like a pouch, adhering to the rock surface relatively flat, the mucous is arranged in layers, delicate, and wavy, slightly raised on the outside. The inside of the nest is rough, resembling the texture of a loofah, hard and brittle, the cross-section is similar to keratin, and soft and swollen when soaked in water. It is transparent and shiny, resilient when lightly pressed, slightly fishy smell, slightly sweet taste, and chewy and slippery. Commercial medicinal materials are divided into three types: white nest (official nest): white in color, occasionally with feathers, the best quality; feather nest: gray in color, with more gray-black feathers inside; blood nest: containing reddish-brown blood vessels.
【Processing Function】Sweet in taste, neutral in nature. It enters the lung, stomach, and kidney meridians. It has the functions of nourishing yin and moistening dryness, benefiting qi and tonifying the middle, and transforming phlegm and stopping cough. It is used for chronic deficiency, pulmonary tuberculosis with cough, phlegm asthma, hemoptysis, vomiting blood, long-term diarrhea, long-term illness, weak body with nocturnal emission, frequent urination, and other symptoms. It can be combined with astragalus to treat spontaneous sweating due to deficiency (from "Chinese Animal Medicine"); combined with sand ginseng and lily to treat cough due to deficiency and exhaustion (from "Necessary for Unknown Medical Treatment"); combined with lily and rock sugar to treat pulmonary tuberculosis with hemoptysis (from "Chinese Animal Medicine"); combined with autumn white pear and rock sugar to treat elderly phlegm asthma (from "Wen Tang Ji Yan Fang").
