Brain Cooling Herbal Drug Soothes Pain of Lost Love
Can a broken heart be mended? According to a traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Tainan, southern Taiwan Monday (Feb. 14), the answer is yes. He has said that there is a decades-old herbal concoction, originally prescribed to treat brain inflammation, which could help grieving lovers who have been dumped or otherwise broken up with their boy/girlfriend.
Chan Kuo-hsiung, the third-generation owner of a traditional Chinese herbal medicine store in Tainan's Houbi district, said that the mixture, known as the Wushulin Lovesick Medicine, was originally prescribed by his father to treat a patient who had fallen from a tall tree. The recipe was accidentally found to be effective in treating grief caused by a failed romance as well, Chan said.
Before opening his store, Chan, whose grandfather and father were both traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, earned a Chinese medicine doctor's license from an institute in Hong Kong.
During the 1960s and the 1970s, Chan said that Taiwanese society became more open and people become more liberal while seeking love. However, this also resulted in an increasing number of people being dumped or breaking up with their girl or boy friends, he recalled.
As his father's lovesickness medicine gained increasing popularity, Chan said that as a young man he often rode on a motorbike with his father to places around southern Taiwan to distribute the medicine to help grieving lovers.
Chan said that his father's medicine was so well known that a record company even published a song in the Taiwanese Minnan language inspired by the love drug.
The herbal concoction was originally prescribed to treat people who fell from tall trees and suffered from cerebritis, caused by injuries to the brain, he said.
The medicine was meant to improve blood circulation in the brain and thereby cool the brain tissues and reduce inflammation, he explained.
He recalled that in 1992, after the drug became famous, one father traveled a long distance to meet the Chans. He was seeking help for his son, a student at a prestigious university in Taipei who had quit his studies and returned to their southern home after finding himself hopelessly in love and unable to express himself.
The father said that his son had been too shy to express himself after falling in love with a female classmate. Ten years had passed since his son had returned home one year short of graduation and he still continued to live like a piece of wood, the father had explained to the Chans.
The addled brain of the lovesick young man became better after taking the concoction for four months, Chan said.
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