The Standard Use of Herbal Dosage

Hi Tutor,
I Just confused. I compare with other TCM herbology compedium some of the dosage were differs from each other. for example Herbs A on one book stated the dosage use is 1.5 to 10 gram. Herbs A on other book its stated dosage use is from 3 to 9 gram. is there no standardization for the use of dosage?


Regards,
Johan

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JohanHo

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:37 am    

Dear Johan,
Tutor asked me to answer your question.
Yes, of course there’s standard use for the dosage of the materia medica.
But the slight difference could be possible as you know China is so big and so many practitioners are doing in this filed, so there could be different opinions here and there.
Besides, the one-ram difference is not really something serious in majority of the materials (the toxic ones are excluded), the reason is in great connections with the history of changing the unit of the dosage.
Before 1978, in China we used a different unit to measure the dosage of the herbal materials, i.e. 500 grams as 1 Jin (half kilo), while 1 Jin consists of 16 Liang (ounce), one Liang is divided into 10 equal parts, each is known as 1 Qian. It does sound complicated, and not so easy to calculate. Then in 1978, it was decided to make a change, i.e. 500 grams as one Jin, while to measure the dosage of herbal materials, the basic unit is gram instead of Qian. Then it is apparent 1 Qian equals to 3.333333333… grams, so very often we would use 3 Qian before, so roughly 10 grams. While some people would think we don’t have to really bother memorizing the .333333, but just 3 is good enough. So there’s a 9 instead of a 10.
Very often, in traditional Chinese medicine, the maximal dosage is always much more focused while the minimal one is not, for the former is often connected with the toxic dosage, while the latter is not that important, being ineffective is the worst. Besides, the people growing in different parts of the country are in much different size, northern people are much bigger than the ones in south, the average height of northern Chinese men are 175 cm, as tall as those in US, while in some southern provinces, it is only around 165, see, the lower dosage you have noted maybe is good for the people there.

Ok, hope you have an idea about.
Certainly in China we have the authorized pharmacopoeia by government, which is the real standard.

M.H.

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miraculous hands

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:15 pm    

Hi Bro ,
Thank you for your explaination in details. got enlightened now

Best Regards,
JH

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JohanHo

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:38 pm    

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miraculous hands

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:22 pm