My father's traditional medicine

My father is a person of all trades. When he was younger, he learned the trick of Chinese Sinseh of curing sprains or dislocation of joints, application of herbal medicine with the formula of which passed down from his distant uncle. The herbal medicine was a combination of the Chinese traditional medical herbs plus one kind of leaves from the tropical forest. We went to the forest once to locate some of those leaves from a creeper plant and he taught us to tear apart those leaves and learn to distingush by the tissue structure of the specie.

Many village folks came to our home for that magical cure and my father is well known in the village then. To me the herbal medicine was a very good formulation that relieved pain of most of the patients. So much so that one of my father's buddies had learned that formula and built a name of his own as sinseh of bones and marketed the medication under his own brand. The news about him was that his house in Kampar was burnt down by a fire and subsequently he and his family moved to Kuala Lumpur. Other than some occasional visits to my fathers in those earlier years, heard that he passed away and never to be seen anymore. That brand of medication is forever lost!

My father's interest in medicine had driven him to learn from some qualified Chinese medical hall practitioner on traditional medicine. One of the guys he always liked to talk to was from this so-called "Dongfong or Oriental" medical hall in the village. This guy had a lot of medical books written both for traditional Chinese and western medicine related to topics such as vitamins etc. This person subsequently migrated to USA and I have also never seen him anymore.

That time there was no photocopy machines and my father diligently hand copied many of those manuels for his studying. Later part he was so particular and fussy about the handwriting that he paid someone living on the western side of the village by the name of Wong Ngen to copy on his behalf. I still remember the look of that man, he wore a square dark spectacle, riding on a big ancient bicycle, passing many of the handcopied medical notes to my father. His handwriting was good and it also happened that his son of my age was from the same primary school.

Time flies and that herbal medicine was never used anymore and at one time I asked my father for the formula and he said it is no more useful with the advances of modern day western medicine. Anyway I am still curious on the formula of this good old traditional medicine, it is very effective and useful. I personally feel that this medicine did a lot of goods for the patients compared to the actual skill of my father in twisting and making good of those dislocated joints!