Chicken gizzard lining used for Gallstones, Cholecystitis

What is chicken gizzard lining(Ji Nei Jin)?
It refers to the inner lining of the gizzard of Gallus Gallus Domesticus Brisson, an animal in the family of Phasianidae. As a result, it is also commonly known as Chicken Gizzard’s Stomach Lining, Endothelium Corneum Gigeriae Galli, Chicken’s Gizzard-Skin, Chicken Inner Gold, the inner lining of the chicken gizzard, Chickens Gizzard membrane, Membrane of Chicken Gizzard, and so on. The harvesting process is rather easy, but please note that don’t wash it with water first. Instead it needs to peel it off right after the chicken is killed and the gizzard is taken out. And it is usually used raw, fried or processed with vinegar.

Medicinally it is irregularly flaky, slightly curled, and in various sizes. The intact one is about 3.5cm in length, 3cm in width, and 0.5cm in thickness. Surface is yellow, yellow-green or brown, thin and translucent, and with many obvious prism-like ripples. It is brittle, fragile, shiny, and with horn-like cross-section. And it has slight fishy smell and slightly bitter taste.

Lining of chicken gizzard benefits
As everyone knows, chicken has two stomachs – one is forestomach and the other is gizzard. Chicken has no teeth, which is the exact reason why it has to swallow some small stones and sands and store them into the gizzard. The benefit of doing so is that the food can be finely ground through the friction of gizzard lining and gravels. Since the lining is able to help digest hard food, for the same reason it also works on food stagnation, infantile malnutrition and so on. What’s more, this herb can deal with all the gall bladder problems, in particular the calculus. Its strong ability of inducing decomposition of calculi can be inferred from its grinding stones inside the chicken body. In fact it is one of essential ingredients in many herbal recipes for the treatment of Gallstones, Cholecystitis, kidney stones, bladder stones, and other gallbladder problems. You may think that this kind of inference is quite weird. But tell you the truth, that is the a typical simply methodology held by ancient TCM practitioners.