The Meaning of Plants (7)

杏林春暖：apricot grove blossom in spring: In ancient time a very good medicine doctor 董奉lived by a mountain. He cured many people but he didn’t want them pay money. What he wanted was planting five apricot trees for seriously-ill patient and planting one apricot tree for normal patient. After few years, he got one hundred thousand apricot trees for a grove. Then he raised many animals among them. He had a store for the apricot and a notice board said that if you want exchange apricot with grain, you may do it by yourself.

But there are someone taking more apricot then his grain crookedly. In this case some wild animal such as tiger will roar at that guy. The guy will be scared and run away, some of his apricot will fall on ground, when he arrived home, and he will find what left would be exactly what he deserved. If someone dared to steal the apricot, a tiger will bite him to die. His family member will know what he did and send back what he have stolen, then the doctor will make his life back again.

All the grain he got from the apricot was relieved for the poor and needy. Later, this doctor turned to be a god. And these four characters杏林春暖 turned to be a pronoun of Chinese medicine.

橘井泉香：the fountain of well and orange taste good: an ancient person named 苏耽 had got a position to be god in heaven. When he left home he told his mother: “Mother, next year, there will be a pandemic, the orange tree and the well in our yard can cure it. If someone is ill, let him drink a litre water of the well and eat one leaf of the orange tree, it will be cured. ”

Next year everything happened according what he have said.

These two stories always make an antithetical couplet for the clinic room of a Chinese herb medicine doctor to show their medical ethics.