Chapter 1421: Chapter 1399: Not a Good Mentor (November Monthly Ticket Extra 6)
Zheng Gu doesn’t need Manbao to worry too much for now. Shao is still researching a certain illness, so there’s no rush. But Ms.Doctor Liu, with her strong foundation and intelligence, needs to learn a lot from Manbao.
Manbao took out the medical book copied by Bai Shan from the medicine box and handed it to her, saying: "This is what I wrote during the New Year period; it contains all the cases I’ve organized."
Manbao omitted their names and all identity-related information, leaving only their pulse cases. Then she wrote down the methods of diagnosis and her prescriptions, expanding to a couple of alternative ones, and some acupuncture techniques needed...
"You can copy a set. There’s also some I haven’t finished writing; wait until I make a draft and then copy."
This is essentially a medical book!
A few doctors watched the medical book in Ms.Doctor Liu’s hands intently but didn’t speak.
Each family has medical books and medical texts left by their ancestors, which aren’t easily shown to others.
Moreover, they know Zhou Man well. If they dared to request to see her medical book at this moment, she would certainly ask to see the treasures left by their ancestors in return.
So, it’s better to wait a bit longer.
Doctor Ding and others glanced at Shopkeeper Zheng sideways.
Shopkeeper Zheng felt a bit restless, coughed lightly, and asked: "Doctor Zhou Junior, weren’t you going to teach Liru to recognize medicinal herbs?"
"Oh, right." The one needing the most attention now seems to be Zhou Liru, as she is like a blank sheet and knows nothing.
Shopkeeper Zheng smiled and said: "Coincidentally, quite a few new herbs arrived today, which I’ve only checked but haven’t sorted. How about you teach her to sort them out?"
Manbao nodded, grabbed Zhou Liru to identify the herbs, and looked at Shao and Ms.Doctor Liu, who were idle, saying: "You two come along too."
Manbao had recorded many herbs and many more were already in the encyclopedia. When she first recognized herbs, she pulled out the entries from the encyclopedia whenever they existed, writing them down alongside what Doctor Ji taught her and the books.
The descriptions of most herbs are consistent, but the entries always had a few extra lines. Manbao knew those were discovered over time.
Of course, Manbao couldn’t remember everything clearly and thoroughly; her brain isn’t that powerful.
She only memorized the main properties and uses, while others were in her notes.
At this moment, she touched the medicine box, but actually pulled out a thick notebook from the space.
This notebook was unlike any they’d seen—a thick cover, seeming to be made of leather by the naked eye.
It’s obviously expensive.
But Zhou Liru was familiar with this notebook; as a child, her little aunt would go out and collect her favorite plants and soon after write down the appearances and properties of those plants in it.
According to her little aunt, she and someone she was close to bought this notebook together, and it wasn’t expensive at all.
The family all guessed that person was Young Master Shan, because only he would sell such a valuable thing cheaply to her little aunt.
Afterward, her aunt specially made meat pies for her little aunt to take to Young Master Shan. They envied him greatly at that time because those meat pies used a lot of white flour and meat. The meat filling was first stuffed in the pie, then baked in the stove; the taste...
It didn’t lose to the pies at the entrance of Erhu Street in Mianzhou City, although they were different kinds.
Thinking of this, Zhou Liru swallowed her saliva, turned her head to Manbao, and said: "Little aunt, I want to eat the pies my aunt makes."
Manbao felt distressed upon hearing this.
She turned her head to Zhou Liru and said righteously: "Don’t casually mention my sister-in-law here, especially when we’re almost hungry."
Zhou Liru nodded, admitting her mistake.
Shopkeeper Zheng: ...
He turned to the assistant beside him: "Tell the kitchen maid to make meat pies; let’s have meat pies for lunch today."
Doctor Gu: ... Spare me, the pies she makes upset his stomach.
Manbao coughed lightly, took the notebook, and started by letting Zhou Liru recognize the simplest things. She picked up a cut piece of root and asked: "Do you know what this is?"
Zhou Liru shook her head.
Manbao first placed it under her nose, "Smell and guess."
Zhou Liru: "...It smells nice, a kind of... hmm, fragrant scent, but little aunt, how can I guess? You didn’t tell me how the herb looks when asking me to memorize the names."
"This is astragalus! You’re really silly; mom’s medicine contains this. Come, take a closer look, have you noted it down?"
Sanya looked carefully and nodded, "Noted down."
Manbao didn’t need to flip the notebook, directly telling her, "This astragalus is sweet in taste, slightly warm. It should be known; like people are divided into yin and yang, so are herbs, yin has divisions of coolness and cold, while yang has distinctions of warmth and heat... It’s associated with lung, spleen, liver, and kidney meridians, used for surface deficiency spontaneous sweat, yin deficiency night sweat, kidney inflammation edema due to insufficient yang energy, sores and ulcers, qi deficiency weakness, can be matched with white atractylodes, ledebouriella..."
"Wait, wait," Shopkeeper Zheng broke into a sweat, seeing not just Zhou Liru with stars in her eyes, even Shao with a decent foundation and Ms.Doctor Liu seemed a bit lost, he quickly interrupted her, "Doctor Zhou Junior, is this how you teach children to recognize herbs?"
Manbao naturally replied: "Yes, Doctor Ji taught me to recognize herbs this way back then; I haven’t even mentioned processing methods yet."
Shopkeeper Zheng finally understood why Doctor Ji hadn’t trained a good student in Yizhou for so many years, and the only one he trained wasn’t his student.
The shopkeeper sighed, facing Manbao’s gaze, he suddenly found himself speechless, decisively turning to Zhou Liru and asking, "Did you understand?"
Zhou Liru straightforwardly shook her head, then nodded, whispering: "This herb is called astragalus."
Shopkeeper Zheng clapped his hands delightedly: "That’s right, you just need to remember it’s called astragalus."
Unable to hold back, he pulled Manbao over and unceremoniously waved her away: "Get lost, get lost, this isn’t the way to teach students. Watch me teach her."
Shopkeeper Zheng turned his head, smiling at Zhou Liru, pointing at astragalus and saying: "Remember, this is called astragalus. This here is China root, this is white atractylodes, this is coptis, this is Chinese skullcap, Siberian dwarf pine, gastrodia..."
As Shopkeeper Zheng named one, Zhou Liru repeated each one.
After teaching her the names of today’s new herbs and testing her from the beginning several times, Zhou Liru surprisingly remembered most of them.
Shopkeeper Zheng couldn’t help but glance at Manbao, then Zhou Liru, stroking his beard, praising, "Not bad, not bad, truly part of the family, very bright."
Manbao restrained herself, unable to hold back, "Isn’t it just teaching her to recognize names for herbs, without remembering properties and uses?"
Shopkeeper Zheng nearly pulled out his beard, saying: "Food should be eaten bite by bite, journeys should be taken step by step; how can you ask someone to remember so much at once?"