Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Herbal Medicine

I was lucky enough to visit a rural hospital specializing in herbal medicine with Apple. This hospital was incredibly small, only 30 beds.




The hospital has a huge garden where they grow over seventy kinds of plants. After harvesting the necessary parts of the plants, they use their own manufacturing facility to create the final product. In the manufacturing building I saw how they make tea and herbal balls used in Thai massage.

I also saw some of the employees using a large machine to squeeze the oil out of garlic. The garlic oil was then frozen, then freeze-dried to make a powder which is then put into pill form (yes, I mean the actual definition of pill form for any of you pharmacy people who know what I'm talking about).


Lots of garlic:


This hospital encourages alternative medicine such as Thai massage and acupuncture too. Here is Apple, myself, and the director of pharmacy of this hospital in the herbal pharmacy. All of the drugs behind us were grown, manufactured, packaged, and sold on the hospital grounds.

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