Ginseng
Panax ginseng (Chinese renshen), popularly known as ginseng, is China's best-known medicinal product and has been highly sought after both in China and abroad. The swollen root is used (usually the whole root) after careful cleaning, drying, and wrapping in paper. Also used are medicinal extracts made primarily with alcohol and, primarily to suit Western tastes for medicinal teas, ginseng powders. Ginseng belongs to the Araliaceae family and is one of a number of related plants used primarily for their effects on the brain and nervous system. In China, ginseng is most prized because of perceived benefits to the urogenital systems of aging males, whose sexual problems were a major focus in traditional Chinese medicine.
The natural range of ginseng is comparatively limited. In China it grows principally in the lush forests of Manchuria. It is also cultivated to replace and expand root sources in areas where wild ginseng has died out. By the nineteenth century, interest in ginseng as a cure-all had also grown in the West, and the remotest parts of Manchuria were soon penetrated from end to end by ginseng hunters. They advanced far into Siberia as Manchurian resources were depleted, and by the late nineteenth century, China was even importing ginseng from the United States and Canada, a trade that still continues to a limited extent, although both of these countries are now net importers of ginseng, mostly from South Korea.
Further Reading
Perry, Lily M., and Judith Metzger. (1980) Medicinal Plants of East and Southeast Asia: Attributed Properties and Uses. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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