According to historical records, China has a long history of using incense, which can be traced back to before the Spring and Autumn Period. In the Han Dynasty, incense and clothes became popular, and various techniques for blending spices appeared. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, it was completely integrated into people's daily life. Not only do all kinds of religious ceremonies have to burn incense, but people also use a lot of spices in their daily lives, and develop blending (blending natural spices), incense, incense evaluation and incense fighting into elegant art.
history
Incense is not only used for ritual and fumigation, but also has medicinal value. Its medicinal origin is very early, and it was recorded in the Han Dynasty that incense was used to purify the air and eliminate the plague.
In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there is a record that "the Yue people smoked it with moxa". Smoke stoves were popular in Han dynasty, which were used for health and epidemic prevention. At that time, Bai Liu of the Western Han Dynasty wrote an article "Smoke Furnace Ming", which reflected this trend. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, there were Chinese patent medicines specially used for smoking prevention and treatment of diseases. In the Qing Dynasty, Zhao Xuemin and Wu Shangxian wrote "Biography of Elegance" and "Treatise on Foreign Medicine" respectively. During the epidemic seasons of infectious diseases such as Dragon Boat Festival and Double Ninth Festival, traditional Chinese medicine fumigation, moxibustion and other methods were used to eliminate the epidemic and prevent the epidemic of plague, which saved many lives and accumulated rich experience in previous epidemics in ancient Chinese history.
The outbreak of atypical pneumonia in the spring of 2003 belongs to the category of plague or plague in traditional Chinese medicine according to the onset season and clinical characteristics. Some experts have suggested using fumigation of mugwort leaves to prevent and control the epidemic. There are 365 kinds of drugs recorded in Shennong Herbal Classic, of which 252 kinds are related to spice plants or spices.
1997, 158 species were listed in the national pharmacopoeia. Li Shizhen recorded in detail the uses of various incense in Compendium of Materia Medica, such as: "Cyperus rotundus, decoction and bath rubella, which can cure wind-cold rheumatism"; "The combination of frankincense, benzoin and camphor wood can cure death"; "Burning agarwood, honey incense, sandalwood, Dalbergia odorifera, Styrax, benzoin, camphor, Gleditsia sinensis, etc. Together, we can stop the plague. "