Thursday, July 12, 2018
Lions eat rhino poachers and the world cheers.
There seems to be a common perception that rhino horn is powdered and taken as an aphrodisiac but when I was in China I discovered a different purpose. When I went to an info session about Chinese medicine we were told that there were three means of external medicine - acupuncture, cupping and scraping. The scraping is done with a piece of rhino horn. The photo shows cups and packets of acupuncture needles and the dark object at the bottom of the photo is the piece of rhino horn. The Chinese doctor did not speak much English so I could not find out why the scraping had to be done with rhino horn, instead of something like bamboo. Also I don't know how many practitioners of Chinese medicine there are in China, but if they all have rhino horn in their kit, the demand would be staggering.
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Lauren Kelly will be in London on 29th September and leaves on 10th October. She is looking for ideas. Let's help her out.
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1. Travel is cheaper and easier than when you were young. 2. You either have no kids or they are grown up, unless you are one ...
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There seems to be a common perception that rhino horn is powdered and taken as an aphrodisiac but when I was in China I discovered a differe...
That sounds like an interesting tour to do.
ReplyDeleteSo many centuries of knowledge that we don't tap into in western society!
Maybe it is believed using the horn as a scraper itself offers a mefical benifit?
Yes there must be a strong belief about the benefit. I wonder how that started. How did rhino horn get to China in the first place and catch on in such a big way? By the way I was the guinea pig used for demonstrating these practices and if the technology did not defeat me, I would post a photo.
ReplyDeleteBy the way I don't in any way condone this use of rhino horn. I should have made that clear.
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