Arsenic is an effective and relatively safe substance? That's very strange since it's used as a poison. That's the thing with herbal medicine, Chinese or otherwise, the matter of toxicity.

Also, there isn't a lot of research into traditional medicine. The ones I can find often have conflicting results or simply state something along the lines of "shows promise". I wish there were more reliable studies to prove or debunk the stories we always hear about people who recovered from incurable and/or terminal diseases using traditional medicine. I guess there's isn't enough money to be generated from it.

I took an interest in medicinal herbs after using ginger tea to overcome nausea, a side effect of a drug i was taking at the time. The doctor wasn't very helpful, it worked very nicely. But my programmer-mind has trouble believing the folklore-ish stories about these herbs.