This is why I like Malort

I had a Little Too Much Fun this weekend and came down with my fourth upper respiratory tract infection this winter. It started with a scratchy throat and progressed overnight to a fever that had me stumbling deliriously through the grocery store yesterday, lost in the tea aisle. The fever broke early in the morning, but I was up most of the night feeling like there were hot charcoal briquettes lodged down in my pharynx. I remember dreaming about going to clinic to get herbs for it, one of those fever dreams where the herbal formulae book was more like a potions book from the Potter-verse, full of moving text and ingredients like blue dragon eggs and moondrops. I showed up for my clinic shift but my throat was too swollen to talk and I didn't want to infect my patients, so I left them in the hands of my senior partner and made myself this potion:



From the left to right: honeysuckle flowers, forsythia seed pods, burdock fruit, leopard lily root, Chinese puffball, balloon flower root, woad (indigo) plant and root.

This formula, yin qiao ma bo san, "Honeysuckle, Forsythia, and Puffball formula," dates from 1798's wen bing tiao bian, the Systematic Differentiation of Warm Pathogen Diseases.

The ingredients are primarily antipyretic and antiviral (i.e. they clear heat toxins), with about half of them being indicated specifically for swelling and pain of the throat. Balloon flower root dries phlegm and helps prevent the infection from descending into the lungs by expanding the chest and raising the lung qi.

The herbs are decocted for 20 minutes, strained, then decocted again. The strained decoction is taken three times a day between meals.

It tastes like grass and dirt, and the puffball spores give it a gritty texture, but it should resolve the infection within a couple days.

amazing quadruple happiness heart and liver tea!

Dear herb nerds,

Today I bought some pretty brown dried flowers labelled he huan hua at the Vinh Hoa herb shop. I mostly bought it because it looked so cool in that giant jar right in front of the cash register, and had such a lovely fragrance, but I also loved what the owner had to say about it.

"It's good for your heart. it will make you relaxed in your heart." She said the same thing about reishi (and was dead on), so I couldn't resist. After looking at it closely and reading the Bensky entry I decided it is actually ye huan hua, the cocos magnolia flower. I am very happy that it not albizzia flower, though, because OMG it smells amazing. like childhood memories.

I went home and made this amazing quadruple happiness heart and liver tea from the giant pile of herbal teas in my cabinet.

Try this:

equal parts ground reishi mushroom,
crushed magnolia cocos flower,
Chinese rose (rosa chinensis) or tea rose (r. rugosa),
peppermint or field mint.

steep in a warmed teapot with boiling hot water for 10 minutes. can be steeped several times.

while the result will be slightly different depending on which kinds of rose and mint are available, here you have a lovely comforting tea that nourishes the heart, and moves heart and liver qi and blood. It's pretty balanced in temperature, containing two neutral, one warm and one cool ingredients; It smells like waking up in a garden. It boosts the immune system and makes your breath smell nice, too!

If you can get rosa rugosa it would probably be great for distressing menstrual complaints. If you can get the super secret wine fried reishi it will be warming; same if you use spearmint. I'm sure it could be further tweaked by adding lotus stamens or lily bulbs to make it cooling but I think it's kind of perfect as it is.

Just thought I would share.