Different drugs have different processing purposes; When processing a specific drug, it usually has several purposes. Generally speaking, the purpose of processing can be roughly summarized as the following five aspects:
① Reduce or eliminate the toxic and side effects of drugs to ensure drug safety;
(2) enhancing the drug action and improving the clinical curative effect;
(3) Change the performance or curative effect of drugs to better meet the needs of diseases.
(4) Changing some characteristics of drugs, which is convenient for storage and preparation.
⑤ Remove impurities and non-medicinal parts, make the medicinal materials pure, and ensure the accurate quality and dosage of the medicinal materials.
⑥ Deodorization and seasoning are convenient for taking.
Modern processing methods have greatly developed and improved on the basis of ancient processing experience. According to the current practical application, they can be divided into five types: curing, water processing, fire processing, hydrothermal processing and other processing methods.
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Pure treatment
Dust, impurities and non-medicinal parts are removed by picking, winnowing, sieving, scraping and brushing, so that the medicine is clean and pure.
Crushing treatment
The drugs are crushed by tamping, grinding, tamping and filing to meet the requirements of preparations and other processing methods.
Cutting treatment
The medicine is cut into certain specifications by chopping, which is convenient for drying, storage, other treatment and weighing when dispensing. According to the nature of medicinal materials and medical needs, there are many specifications for slicing.
river system
A method of treating drugs with water or other liquid excipients. The purpose of water preparation is mainly to clean and soften medicinal materials for cutting and adjusting their properties. Commonly used are washing, showering, soaking, bleaching, soaking, moistening, water flying and so on. The main contents are as follows:
Wash the medicinal materials with clear water, wash them quickly, remove floating debris and sinking dirt, and take them out in time to dry for later use. Except for a few flowers, leaves, fruits and meat that are easily soluble or difficult to dry, most of them need to be washed.
For medicinal materials that are not suitable for soaking, spray with a small amount of water to make them clean and soften.
Soak the hard medicinal materials in water for a period of time to soften them under the principle of ensuring the efficacy.
Moisturizing is also called boredom or depression. According to the hardness of medicinal materials, the processing temperature and tools, various methods such as spraying, washing, soaking, drying, soaking, covering, moistening, dew moistening, bag moistening, re-moistening and double moistening are adopted. It is used to make clear water or other liquid auxiliary materials enter slowly, soften the medicinal materials on the premise of no or little loss of drug effect, and facilitate the cutting of decoction pieces.
A method of soaking drugs in wide water or long running water for a period of time and repeatedly changing water to remove fishy smell, salt and toxic components.
Water flying method is a method to separate ultrafine powder medicinal materials by using the sedimentation characteristics of drugs in water. The purpose of water jet is to make the powder prepared by this method fine and reduce the scattering loss of powder in grinding. Water flying is often used to crush minerals and shellfish. Such as flying cinnabar, flying calamine and flying realgar.
fire extinguisher system
A method of treating drugs by heating with fire. This method is the most widely used processing method, and the commonly used fire processing methods are frying, roasting, roasting, stewing and roasting. Its main contents are as follows:
There are different methods of frying, such as frying yellow, frying coke and frying charcoal. In addition to frying, solid adjuvants such as soil, bran and rice can be added to reduce the irritation of drugs and enhance the curative effect, such as Atractylodes rhizome fried with soil, Fructus Aurantii fried with bran and Mylabris fried with rice. The method of frying with sand, talcum powder and clam powder is customarily called scalding. When heated evenly, the medicine is crisp, and the effective components are easy to be decocted or taken, such as fried pangolin with sand and fried donkey-hide gelatin with clam powder.
Roasting is a processing method in which medicinal materials and liquid auxiliary materials are mixed and fried until the auxiliary materials gradually penetrate into the medicinal materials. Roasting can change the medicinal properties, enhance the curative effect or reduce the side effects.
The difference between frying method and baking method
Calcined medicinal materials are directly or indirectly calcined with strong fire, which makes the texture crisp and easy to crush, and gives full play to the curative effect. Calcination methods are different from open calcination (direct calcination) and closed calcination or stewing calcination (indirect calcination).
The method of wrapping medicinal materials with wet flour and paper, heating with hot ash, or heating with toilet paper and decoction pieces separately is called stewing. Cooking classification
The method of heating and drying medicinal materials with small fire is called roasting.
Water-fire system
Common water-fire systems include steaming, boiling, boiling and quenching.
Decocting is a method of heating with water or liquid auxiliary materials and drugs. Such as vinegar boiled Daphne genkwa and wine boiled Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi.
Steaming is a method of heating drugs with steam or water. No accessories, called steaming; Adding auxiliary materials is called auxiliary material steaming. The heating time depends on the purpose of processing.
Spoon is a method of putting medicine into boiling water for a short time and then taking it out immediately. It is often used for peeling seed medicine and drying fleshy medicine. For example, almonds and peach kernels should be peeled; Portulaca oleracea and asparagus are easy to dry and store.
Quenching is a method of quickly putting drugs into cold water or liquid excipients to make them brittle after burning red. After quenching, it is not only easy to be crushed, but also the auxiliary materials are absorbed by it, which can exert the expected curative effect. Such as vinegar quenching native copper, turtle shell and coptis root boiling juice quenching calamine.
In addition to the above four categories, this category also summarizes some special methods. Commonly used are frosting, fermentation and germination.
Frost is the product obtained by squeezing the seed medicinal materials to remove oil or recrystallizing the mineral medicinal materials. The corresponding treatment method is called frosting. The former is like croton cream, and the latter is like watermelon frost.
Fermentation is a method of mixing medicinal materials with auxiliary materials, placing them at a certain humidity and temperature, making them foam and moldy by mold, changing the medicinal properties of the original drugs and producing new drugs, which is called fermentation. For example, Divine Comedy and Douchi.
Germination: after soaking the seed medicinal materials with germination ability in water, they are often kept at a certain humidity and temperature to germinate and sprout, which is called germination. Such as rice sprouts, malt, soybean rolls, etc.