Chapter 75: Inner Canon _1


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    The incident of the Chen Family from West Vige stealing children came to a temporary end.


    However, the people of East Vige started to look even more unfavorably at those from West Vige, even a small sign of friendliness was rare.


    A few women were more dramatic, when people weren’t looking, they pried out theundry stones near old Chen Laoshuan’s house on the west bank of Chuanhe River, expressing their dissatisfaction and contempt.


    West Vige had be a nest of child thieves, all of them were troublemakers! They didn’t deserve to wash clothes or rinse rice in the same river as the people of East Vige!


    Meanwhile, the Jiang Family worked day and night to remove all the cotton seeds, and the three Jiang brothers began to pluck the cotton with their longbows.


    Surprisingly, this method worked quite well, the plucked cotton was softer and easier to turn into cotton coats and quilts.


    Therefore, Madame Jiang and her mother-inw, Madam Jiang Liu, were busy making new cotton clothes for the family, using delicate ramie fabric. The ramie fabric had been dyed and the colors were very attractive.


    In the past, poor people couldn’t afford dyed fabric and mostly just made clothes out of white ramie fabric.


    Now that the Jiang family had money, they could afford to dress everyone in clothes with color and patterns.


    They also made a dozen or so quilts, ensuring that everyone had warm, fluffy, cotton pads on their beds. It was almost like being treated like an aristocratic family.


    After plucking the cotton, Jiang Sang and his two brothers went to North Mountain to dig out the kudzu roots that had been untouched for four years.


    The roots had grown bigger than a man’s thigh, easily breaking with a hit, they contained a good amount of starch.


    They scraped off the skin, cleaned the roots, cut them into small pieces, and crushed them in a stone mortar.


    They then soaked these kudzu root fragments in water to draw out the starch, leading to a white sediment the next day.


    Once dried, the kudzu powder was easy to store. During leisure time, a little could be dissolved in water, cooked, and served with syrup for a better taste.


    Though an ancient peasant food, it wasn’tmon because the kudzu root takes three to four years to grow before it can be dug up for its starch. Moreover, most roots yielded very low starch content, making the process time-consuming and inefficient.


    However, the kudzu vines could be harvested annually. Like retting hemp, it required aplicated process of peeling and beating.


    The woven kudzu fabric was a favorite summer garment material, it was cool and didn’t cling to the body.


    For aristocratic families, fine kudzu fabric was a holy grail for cooling-off in summers.


    Once the weavers sold their kudzu fabric to the cloth stores, it was often immediately bought by customers.


    Yingbao watched her father and others crushing the kudzu roots, soaking and filtering the starch, and found it very interesting.


    The process was simr to making tofu, with only one less step of boiling the brine.


    ording to Shennong’s ssic of Materia Medica, kudzu is sweet in vor and neutral in nature, it quenches thirst, treats fever, vomiting, various pain and raises yin energy, counteracting all kinds of poisons.


    But ording to Lady Wen, kudzu is cold in nature and shouldn’t be consumed by people with weak spleens and stomachs, as well as pregnant women and young children.


    Mentioning Lady Wen, Yingbao thought of Mr. Wen.


    It had been a long time since Yingbao had seen Mr. Wen, which made Lady Wen quite unhappy recently.


    With her being responsible for teaching two sses of students, she organized Yingbao and Wen Shu’s ss schedules to be in the mornings, assigned homework for them toplete at home in the afternoon, so she could teach the ss with Huzi and the others.


    However, Lady Wen still purchased Yingbao’s premium golden and Xue’er fungi.


    For five kilograms of golden ears, Yingbao received over sixty taels of silver.


    With the previous silver ingots, she was indeed a little millionaire now.


    Her parents also made a lot this time, most likely over a hundred taels.


    Dani and Erni each made more than seven taels of silver, they were overjoyed and urged their eldest cousin to take them shopping in the market.


    Yingbao didn’t have much to buy, so she didn’t go to make a fuss at the market. Instead, she devoted herself to studying medical ssics at home.


    The medical ssics, also known as books of prescriptions, are divided into four parts: ssics, pulse diagnosis, prescriptions, and medicine.


    The schr says: “Master the ways of the ssics, navigate the arts of pulse, understand the workings of prescriptions, recognize the nature of herbs; have all of these four, and you’ll have all the skills needed.”


    It implies that mastering these four skills: “ssics”, “pulse”, “prescriptions” and “herbs” would qualify someone to be a doctor.


    The term “ssics” here epasses the “Inner Canon”, the “Difficult Canon” , the five viscera, acupunctures, gynecology and pediatrics, surgery, health preservation, medicinal recipes, herbal texts, food Canons, and so forth, into 23 categories.


    Yingbao has only learned the Inner Canon so far; bing a doctor is still far from reach.


    The Inner Canon, also known as “The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon,” includes


    “in Questions” and “Spirit Pivot.”


    “in Questions” is mainly a dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and his teachers, which discusses the deductions of the human body and its organs, as well as the rtionships between heaven and man; some of it is abstract. “Spirit Pivot” is a work on acupuncture, emphasizing the practice of meridians and acupuncture.


    Yingbao has finished studying in Questions, and is currently learning human acupoints and acupuncture techniques from Madame Wen.


    However, Madame Wen did not stress the importance of mastering acupuncture, but urged her to have some understanding of it.


    Because acupuncture cannot really cure diseases, it can only alleviate some symptoms.


    Simr to how shamans perform bloodletting to cure people, it’s just another medical method.


    Next, Yingbao will start to learn the Difficult Canon.


    The “Difficult Canon”, also known as “Eighty-one Difficult Questions,” focuses on basic theories, while also analyzing various rted diseases.


    The content includes meridians, viscera, Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, diseases, circadian rhythm, conduit acupoints, acupuncture, etc., covering normal human physiology, anatomy, diseases, diagnosis, and treatment.


    Studying medicine strains the mind; many things require rote memorization, causing Yingbao immeasurable anguish.


    During her spare time, she would call her two younger brothers to recite texts for her.


    The two twin boys were very smart and had already learned to recite the Three Character ssic and Hundred Families Surnames.


    Therefore, Yingbao also started teaching them to recognize and write characters.


    And encouraged them that whoever learned ten characters first each day, she would take them out to ride a deer and visit the piglets Wen Hengyin was raising.


    So, the twins became diligent andpeted with each other to learn more and faster.


    “Look at what you’re scribbling, every character takes up a whole page, where else can you write?”


    Not teaching leads to ignorance, but teaching results in shock.


    When Yingbao saw their scrawling handwriting, she almost fainted out of exasperation.


    The characters were not only skewed but also written outrageouslyrge.


    If not for fearing to dampen her brothers’ enthusiasm for learning, she would like to smack their little ws with a ruler.


    Oh well, for the sake of enjoying the benefits when her brothers be officials in the future, she will just have to endure it.


    As the days went by, the weather became colder and colder.


    The people of the Jiang Family were huddled up at home, enjoying the winter. They even bought a sheep to ughter and everyone gathered around the fire to roast and heat the mutton.


    However, the good times did notst long before the vige official was knocking on the gong door-to-door, announcing themencement of river work, which was essentially providingbour service.


    This work was not within the vige, but rather ording to the direction of the county magistrate, it was allocated to other ces.


    This might take up to ten or twenty days, or even a month. During this period, if you fell ill or were hungry, no one would take care of you, because the county government did not provide for thebourers’ meals, nor did they care about where thebourers lived.


    So Chunniang quickly prepared bedding and dry food for her husband, along with a rain-hat and raincoat, and even sewed a small tent with sheepskin for him.


    In case it rained or snowed, her husband and the two brothers would have a ce to take shelter.


    Their family could pay forbour, but the vige official said that forrge families like theirs, even if they paid forbourers, at least one of the brothers would have to go serve. Otherwise, it would be difficult to ount forter on.


    In other words, they could buy two quotas at most, but one must go work.


    The three Jiang brothers discussed and decided that they all might as well go. It was not easy for one person to be out there alone, in case something happened, no one would know about it..