Where are Large Multinational Pharmaceuticals When You Need Them?

My skin has been becoming more pizza-like as of late, so I decided to stop in the neighborhood pharmacy that I walk past every day to go home.  The staff figured out what I wanted, plain as my face.  I went ahead and bought the zit cream, although I had misgivings that I didn’t see 5% or 10% on the packaging.  The initial product they suggested had the ingredients in English, but the ingredients seemed to be what would probably make acne worse or not do anything.

And then after I had bought it, out of the corner of my eyes I caught sight of it.  A dried lizard.  I went in for further inspection and below that shelf there were dried sea horses side by side with other animal miscellany. The center aisles were all stocked full of assorted unprocessed herbs.  I guess there’s something to be said for home-brew/witches-brew medicine.   That I’m having nothing to do with it.    

There’s not Eastern medicine and Western medicine.  There’s a crapshoot and then there’s tested medicine (open to further even further testing): side effects are not limited to dyspepsia, headache, howling at the moon, compulsive gambling and schizophrenic narcissistic rage.   Consult your physician.  

Once I speak good enough Mandarin, I want to go to another of these stores and find out what they say the herbs and animals remedy.  And then go to two or three others and see if I get a consistent story.  I suspect that there will be a panacea-element – that some of the concoctions can cure everything under the sun.  But that’s my initial prejudice.  Anecdotal treatments certainly can later on become tested medicines.  I’m curious if there is a project to catalog “ancient cures” here, and provide empirical testing.  The “pharmacy” I went to had government licensing certificates on display: some form of official imprimatur.