People who often go to see Chinese medicine often know that after the Chinese doctor prescribes the medicine, they can take the prescription to the pharmacy to get the medicine. In the Chinese pharmacy, the Chinese medicine is stored in drawers, and the medicine can be obtained by grabbing it from the corresponding medicine box. So why is it called "grabbing medicine" when we go to the Chinese medicine pharmacy to get medicine? Below, I will introduce the origin of "grabbing medicine".
"Grabbing medicine" has a long history, dating back more than a thousand years, and is related to Sun Simiao, a physician in the Tang Dynasty.
Legend has it that Sun Simiao, the medicine king of the Tang Dynasty, often went out to practice medicine and collect herbs. Wherever he went, as long as there were good medicinal materials, he would go through hardships to collect them, whether it was entering deep mountains and old forests, climbing cliffs, or crossing rivers and gorges. Because there were many medicinal materials, and their properties and functions were different, they could not be mixed together. In order to facilitate classification and use, he specially made a garment with many small pockets sewn on it. Whenever he collected a kind of medicinal material, he would put it in a small pocket, making it convenient to use.
Once, Sun Simiao came to a village to practice medicine and collect herbs. Suddenly, a dog barked, and a woman lay on the ground, continuously moaning in pain. It turned out that the woman's calf was bitten by a dog, and blood was flowing. He quickly took out a medicine from the pockets on his garment and applied it to the woman's calf. In a short while, the bleeding on the woman's calf stopped and the pain was relieved. When her husband arrived and saw the scene, he was very grateful and thanked the medicine king for his help.
The medicine king collected herbs and practiced medicine wherever he went. After diagnosing and treating patients, he would take out medicine from his pockets. Because only a small amount of medicine was needed for each prescription, it was always grabbed from the small pockets in small amounts. So people called it "grabbing medicine".
Later, when pharmacies appeared, in order to prevent the various herbs from being mixed and to facilitate classification and retrieval, the shopkeepers imitated the method of the medicine king and made drawers in the medicine cabinet, which were further divided into several compartments to store various herbs. Later on, it gradually developed into a "hundred-compartment cabinet", with hundreds of drawers in the pharmacy cabinet, each drawer divided into four compartments. The experienced pharmacists in the pharmacy would "grab medicine" quickly and accurately according to the prescription. Nowadays, the "hundred-compartment cabinet" is no longer seen in many Chinese pharmacies. Valuable herbs are usually placed in glass bottles, while general herbs are still stored in cabinets. The traditional "hundred-compartment cabinet" may no longer be true to its name, and the pharmacists' "accuracy" in "grabbing medicine" may not be as precise as before.
