Bezoar, an important herb for encephalitis in TCM

What is bezoar(Niu Huang)?
In Chinese herbology, it refers to the dried cow gallstone of Bos taurus domesticus Gmelin or Bubalusbubalis Linnaeus, which is an animal in the family Bovidae. So, other name of it include Cattle Gallstone, cow gallstone, ox gallstone, Ox bezoars, cow bezoars, Bezoar from an ox, and so on. In China it is mainly produced in Beijing, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Hebei, and Heilongjiang. It is usually harvested when cattle is slaughtered. In this process if a mass found trapped in gallbladder, bile duct or common hepatic duct, it needs to filter out the bile, take the stone, remove the outer thin membrane, dry in the shade, and then grind into fine powder. Based on different locations, bezoar has 3 main varieties – Dan Huang (gallbladder bezoar), Guan Huang (bile duct bezoar), and Gan Huang (hepatic duct bezoar). And gallstones are generally believed with a better efficacy.

Natural bezoar stones are mostly ovoid, spherical, triangular or square, in various sizes, and 0.6 to 4.5cm in diameter. And a small number of them are tubular or fragmented. Surface is from yellowish red to brown orange; some are covered with a layer of black shiny thin film commonly known as "black gold clothing"; some are rough and warty; some have craquelure. It is lightweight, crisp, and easy to be layered and peeled off. Golden cross section sees finely concentric lamellae and some are with white core in the middle. It is faintly scented, bitter sweet, cool and refreshing, and fragile and non-sticky when being chewed.

Bezoar health benefits
As a well-known herbal supplement, bezoar has always been revered in traditional Chinese medicine. It is said that its healing property was unintentionally discovered by Bian Que, a highly-skilled doctor in ancient China. Since then it has been used medicinally for more than 2000 years. Today it still works like a charm in the treatment of various diseases like encephalitis and hemorrhagic fever. When it comes to emergency treatments, Chinese medicine is probably the last one to be thought of. In fact, TCM has 3 first-aid secret weapons – An Gong Niu Huang Wan (AGNH), Zi Xue Dan, and Zhi Bao Dan. And statistically there are more than 200 kinds of bezoar-based Chinese patent drugs currently, such as Niu Huang Shang Qing Wan, Niu Huang Qing Xin Wan, Qian Jin San, Liu Shen Wan, and so on.

Modern pharmacological actions of cow gallstone
1. It has sedative, anticonvulsant and antipyretic effects;
2. It can enhance the myocardial contractility of isolated frog heart;
3. Its main component of bilirubin has antihypertensive and heartbeat-inhibiting effects;
4. Its water soluble portion of SMC has gallbladder contractile function;
5. Its cholic acid, in particular deoxycholate, can slack the sphincter of Oddi and then promote bile secretion;