Treating My Son's Throat Emergency with the Folk Herb Method My Father Passed Down

My son, since childhood, has been extremely prone to sore throats, and it is hard to tell whether it is tonsillitis, epiglottitis, or both. Every time a cold or other cause brings on a sore throat, I am thrown into a panic. His throat pain is hard to relieve with either Chinese or Western medicine, and the condition progresses rapidly; within a few days it becomes difficult even to drink water or speak. At those moments I deeply understand why the ancients called the throat a "fortress pass"—it is a critical, life-threatening area.

Fortunately, my father knows a folk herbal method: juice is squeezed from the fresh stems and leaves of Fojiaocao (Sedum lineare, stringy stonecrop) and dripped into the nose. The method works instantly; whenever my son's condition has turned serious, this is how I have saved him. I did not previously know the plant's scientific name; I simply gathered it from the fields around our village. Now, with convenient apps, I can upload a photo of an herb and have it identified automatically, and that is how I learned it is Fojiaocao. To be sure I was not mistaken, I ordered some dried Fojiaocao online for comparison and confirmed the two are the same plant.

One year my son had an attack; we tried every method without success, and there was no Fojiaocao in our Beijing home. I had my father gather the herb and send it to our hometown railway station. In the waiting room I found a fellow villager taking the train to Beijing that night and asked him to carry the medicine to Beijing West Station, where I met him to collect it. Luckily I met such a kind person, and I got the medicine smoothly the next day. I rushed home and gave it to my son; within about half an hour his condition eased.

To make sure we had the medicine on hand during attacks, I once grew Fojiaocao myself. But this herb does not overwinter well in the north, and if I was careless it would die. In those days I moved my potted Fojiaocao indoors to a heated room each winter and back outside in spring; in this way it survived about ten years. During those years, every time my son had a sore throat I used it directly, and each time it cured the throat pain in its earliest stage, which was a great relief. I forget whether it was last year or the year before, but in a moment of carelessness all the Fojiaocao at home died.

Recently my son developed another sore throat, and at first I did not pay much attention. Moreover, my father, after falling in June, is now recovering at my sister's home in the county town and cannot return to the village, so I wanted as far as possible to solve my son's problem with other medicines. But after exhausting every Chinese and Western approach without effect, I could only watch him worsen day by day until he could no longer speak.

Finally, with no other option, I had my sister go back to the village to find the herb at the spot my father designated—he, to make gathering easier, had planted quite a lot of Fojiaocao around our old family house. My sister did not know the plant, so we used a WeChat video call and I guided her remotely. In this way the two of us gathered Fojiaocao from our old home, and she sent it to me by SF Express. On receiving it I immediately gave it to my son; within half an hour his symptoms eased greatly, and he could speak, drink, and eat again. By the next day he was fully recovered.

Every time I treat my son's sore throat, I cannot help but feel disdain for both modern clinical medicine and the theoretically polished doctrines of Chinese medicine. For all their high-sounding theories, when it comes to solving real problems they are not as effective as the plain folk herbalist. My brother-in-law had the same problem as a child; the local doctor simply removed his tonsils. But the operation did not cure him; now in his forties he still has frequent recurrences, and without tonsils each recurrence is accompanied by a high fever that is hard to bring down.

I very much want to extract the active component of Fojiaocao and develop it, as Professor Tu Youyou did with artemisinin, for the benefit of the countless patients like my son and brother-in-law. The trouble is that my personal resources are limited; developing a new drug requires enormous investment in personnel and materials, and the goal is hard to reach. But whether or not it can be done, I will try.

I also hope that individuals or enterprises more capable than I can achieve this goal. As long as this medicine comes on the market and patients can conveniently buy a finished product from a pharmacy during an attack and get rapid treatment, I personally do not care whether I profit from it. For me, having a readily available drug that can save my son at a critical moment is enough; how much more so when such a drug could benefit countless other patients.

I do not know whether future generations of my family will suffer from this throat emergency; improperly managed or with ineffective drugs, such emergencies carry a certain mortality, and death can come quickly. I hope this specific remedy can be developed as soon as possible to save the lives of throat-emergency patients at critical moments.

According to TCM materia medica literature, the main effects of Fojiaocao are treating "moth throat" (i.e., acute tonsillitis or epiglottitis), sore throat, epistaxis, and rheumatic arthritis. Its active component may be chrysin, which has anti-inflammatory, tissue-repairing, and anticancer effects; unfortunately it is not yet used clinically, so clinical data are lacking.

I see that online shops such as Taobao have some herb gatherers selling fresh Fojiaocao, but the herb is hard to gather in winter. My sister gathered a large bag of it this time; I squeezed a big bowl of juice, divided it into twenty 10 ml small bottles, sealed them in ziplock bags, and stored them in the freezer for my son's future needs.

I have also made my son memorize the name Fojiaocao and read up on the literature about it, telling him it is an herb he may rely on all his life, and urging him to learn how to grow it. Because one day I may be gone and unable to care for him, and this specific remedy may never be developed; he must know how to treat himself with this ancestral folk method.

I deeply detest book-learned rigidity. I have studied Chinese medicine for over ten years and am about to study clinical medicine, but I intend to believe in neither blindly. Medicine has infinite possibilities; a medical person who falls into sectarian prejudice becomes an incorrigible bigot and a frog at the bottom of a well. I would not dare trust such a person with my life. When saving a life, one must not be bound by any sectarian view, always place the patient's life first, and, unshackled by dogma, seek the most effective treatment for the patient.

One of my great-uncles was a folk herbalist who knew hundreds of wild herbs and how to use them to treat people. But when I was small I saw him always selling tofu; the reason is that rural herbalists have a tradition of treating villagers for free and must make their own living. That is, of course, morally admirable, but it is bad for the transmission of medical experience.

Because such a hard life attracts few successors, his two sons (my two uncles), though still alive, did not inherit his skill. My father was once interested but had no wish to inherit his uncle's mantle; he mastered only a small amount of herbal healing. This knowledge has effectively been lost to our family, which is a real pity.

If I am lucky enough in future to meet folk herbalists like my great-uncle, I think I will set aside time to study with them. Any experience that saves human life is something we should neither scorn nor forget.