Why should Chinese medicine be processed in the place of origin? The main reasons are as follows: first, most Chinese herbal medicines have high water content after harvest, and if they are not processed in time, they are easy to rot and deteriorate, and the effective components are also lost, which seriously affects the quality and curative effect of Chinese herbal medicines; Second, if it is not processed in the place of origin, it is difficult to classify the medicinal materials of the same variety, different specifications and different grades, and the impurity content in the medicinal materials is high; 3. Without processing in the place of origin, the chemical components of some medicinal materials are transformed into each other during storage, which reduces the content of effective components; 4. The dried medicinal materials that have not been processed in the place of origin are hard and massive, so it is difficult to soak the slices, which causes the loss of effective components and is easy to be improperly processed or deliberately doped in the slices again, which affects the quality. Therefore, the processing of origin is of great significance to ensure the quality of medicinal materials.

Common processing methods of origin:

Leather: Sliced or whole, dried.

Leaves and whole grass: dry in the sun, or dry in the shade or dry in a ventilated place.

Flowers: spread out in a ventilated place to dry in the shade or under weak light, or dry quickly at low temperature to ensure quality and prevent rotting flowers.

Fruit: Generally, fruits can be dried directly or after harvest, but some need to be dried in the shade, such as plastic Trichosanthes. Medicinal materials, such as bergamot, lime, papaya, etc., which have large fruits and are not easy to be completely dried, should be cut first and then dried. In addition, very few medicinal materials need to be processed by roasting, smoking and other methods.

Seeds: Generally, fruits are directly dried, threshed and collected after harvesting.

Animals: Commonly used methods include washing, cleaning, drying and freezing. Some need to add appropriate preservatives.

Minerals: mainly remove soil and non-medicinal parts to maintain the purity of medicinal materials.