In the Chinese language, the word asthma is expressed by two hieroglyphs. The first one, pronounced "Xiao", means howling or wheezing, and the second one, pronounced "chuan", means panting, gasping or dyspnea. During an attack of the disease wheezing is always accompanied by panting, whereas panting does not necessarily carry with it wheezing. There are two classes of the symptoms. One is the deficiency class, and the other is the excess class. Symptoms of the excess class fall into two types: the "cold" type and the "hot" type. A patient who shows symptoms of the "cold" type expectorates watery, colorless sputum which is frothy in appearance, feels oppressed in the chest and has difficulty in breathing. He does not generally feel thirsty, and is fond of hot drinks.

The patient"s tongue coating is white and slippery. His pulses are shallow and are packed too close. He may feel very cold or have a fever. A patient of the "hot" type has phlegm which is thick and sticky, and he expectorates it with difficulty. He is florid, often feels thirsty and is very fond of drinking water. His tongue is red; the tongue coating yellow and greasy. His pulses skip in number, and he may run a fever at the same time. The symptoms of deficiency are mostly due to deficiency in vitality of the lungs or the kidneys. In the case of pulmonary deficiency the patient"s breathing is lacking in amount of air; his speech is uttered in a low voice; his cough is weak in sound; and the coughing up and ejection of sputum is made with great effort. In addition, coughing and expectoration is often induced by a change in weather or caused by some special smell. In the case of renal deficiency, air, which is essential to life, cannot be inhaled with power; breathing is in short spurts; and panting is ready to break out at any time.
In treating a patient who is under a raging attack of the disease, the general practice is to dispel first of all the unhealthy environmental influence in accordance with the principle of traditional Chinese medicine that in an emergency what is on the surface should be tackled prior to what is at the root. For symptoms of the "cold" type, warming up the person and giving vent to contents of the lung should be the first priority; for symptoms of the "hot" type, the fever should be reduced and the lungs be cleansed, with the aid of medicines for reducing phlegm, stopping coughing and quenching panting. When a person has been ill for a long time and is deficient in vitality, the doctor should take into consideration both what is on the surface and what is at the root of the illness. When the illness is quiescent, the doctor should foster or build up resistance to the disease, and cultivate and develop the basis of health. He may resort to such means as supplementing energy, invigorating the spleen, and reinforcing the renal organ.

1.A simple method to eradicate chronic bronchitis
For one day at the beginning of the summer hot period, if you have chronic bronchitis, you should eat only sterilized raw cucumbers and boiled hen"s eggs. You must not add any salt to the cucumbers or eggs. Neither should you allow yourself to drink any water. When you are hungry, eat the boiled eggs; when you are thirsty, gnaw at a cucumber. Try to live in this way for one single day, and you will be spared the pain of chronic bronchitis for years.

2.Garlic immersed in honey for asthma treatment
Select in springtime 60-90 bulbs of young and tender garlic, wash them clean and immerse them in honey. Seal the receptacle and preserve the garlic in honey for six months. When autumn and winter arrive, open the receptacle and eat one bulb of garlic a day. You will not be tormented by asthma for at least three years.

3.Apple and hen"s egg for curing chronic bronchitis and asthma
Select a large apple that can stand erect on its flat bottom. Cut into the top of the apple with a knife and get out of it a piece of the apple in the form of the cork of a wine bottle. Do away with the core of the fruit, and dig out a cavity in the apple with a small spoon so that the fruit become a very much like a large cup that does not leak. Get a fresh hen"s egg. Break the shell and pour the white and the yolk into the apple cavity. Then seal the aperture with the cork-like top and steam the apple in a steamer or pan for 40 minutes. Eat the apple when it is very hot. Eat such an apple a day for three days on end for your chronic bronchitis and you will be surprised by its effect on your disease-chronic bronchitis or asthma.

4.Thick soybean milk can cure asthma
Soak soybeans in water for a long period. Press the milk out of the beans by using a meat mincer or any other mincing machine. Strive to make the milk as thick as possible. Heat the thick milk in a pan. Add to it a little monosodium glutamate and salt. Drink this thick soybean milk as if it were tea. You will feel its good effect of asthma treatment after a certain length of time.

5．A path to the banishment of chronic bronchitis
A man who has caught cold and developed cough may not pay enough attention to his illness so that he might get chronic bronchitis in the end. Then he might consult a doctor. The medicines that the doctor gives him might, however, bring him no great benefit. He may continue coughing with the production of a lot of sputum. What should he do? It is advisable that he eat a delicious dish of three dried Chinese fruits sweetened by rock candy. The three fruits are longan (popularly called guiyuan in China), jujube (Chinese date, popularly called hong zao in China) and Chinese hawthorn (popularly called shanzha in china). Of these three fruits, jujube is the most important.

As for the other two fruits, 500 grams of the meat of longan will suffice for one winter, and a rather insignificant quantity of hawthorn will suit the purpose here. These three dried fruits are stewed with an appropriate amount of rock candy until they form a gruel, which is to be preserved in a refrigerator. Administration starts around Christmas and continues for 81 days. The consumption of two spoonfuls a day will be the right way of administering the doses. It can be taken for granted that for the man concerned here coughing will not befall him even if he catches a cold later at any time. Neither will bronchitis, thanks to the sweet dish. The dried fruits are available at any large Chinese grocery.

6.  Grapes steeped in alcohol with rock candy for treating bronchial asthma
This is a folk prescription discovered by a patient in his effort to find a method for curing the disease which had tormented him for fifteen years.
Take 500 grams of grapes, preferably rose fragrance grapes and steep them, with 100 grams of rock candy, in a strong liquor, made usually from sorghum in China. The grapes must be washed clean, all those that are not intact or are rotted being excluded. The rock candy should be broken into small fragments. The utensil for doing the steeping should be a bottle which has a large neck. The bottle with the alcohol and the grapes and rock candy have to be tightly sealed and placed at a cool place, where it has to remain for about 20 days. The contents are then ready for administration. Every day, in the morning, 20 grams are to be eaten on an empty stomach, and another 20 grams are to be consumed in the same manner in the evening before going to bed.
According to what the patient related to the compiler, this medicine would show effect in three months and eradicate asthma in a year. For three years on end since that time the patients had never had any attacks of wheezing, dyspnea, cough, and expectoration of mucoid sputum. His asthma had been completely cured, he said.

7.  Honeyed walnut meat and sesame for treating asthma
A person who had suffered from labored breathing, chest constriction, and coughing for 35 years was miraculously saved from the torture of these symptoms of asthma by a simple method which he had learned from some source and would like to impart to other people. The method is as follows. Take 250 grams of walnut meat and 100 grams of black sesame (The sesame is to be slightly fried in a pan first). Pound with a pestle the walnut meat into small pieces. Get a large spoon or small ladle used for serving rice. Take one ladleful of honey and two ladlefuls of water. Boil them on the stove or otherwise. Pour them immediately into the pounded walnut meat and the black sesame. Mix them thoroughly with a pair of chopsticks. Then put the mixture into a steamer to be steamed for 20 minutes. Use a soupspoon to eat the product in the morning and in the evening, each time by two spoonfuls.

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