Medicinal plants have always been considered as being beneficial for leading a healthy life. Therapeutic properties of medical plants are very useful in healing various diseases and the advantage of these medicinal plants is being 100% natural. Nowadays people are being bombarded with thousand of unhealthy products, the level of sensibility in front of diseases is very high and that's why the use of medicinal plants can represent the best solution. ?

Chinese Herbalogy (zhōngyào xué), is the common name for the subject of Chinese material. It includes the basic theory of Chinese material "prepared drug in slices" (simplified Chinese: yǐnpiàn) and traditional Chinese patent medicines and simple preparations' source, collection and preparation, performance, efficacy, and clinical applications.

Ginger is consumed in China as food and as medicine, is also the medicine based on traditional Chinese medicine theory. It includes Chinese crude medicine, prepared drug in slices of Chinese material, traditional Chinese patent medicines and simple preparations, etc.
Herbalogy is one of the more important modalities utilized in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Each herbal medicine prescription is a cocktail of many herbs tailored to the individual patient. One batch of herbs is typically decocted twice over the course of one hour. The practitioner usually designs a remedy using one or two main ingredients that target the illness. Then the practitioner adds many other ingredients to adjust the formula to the patient's yin/yang conditions. Sometimes, ingredients are needed to cancel out toxicity or side-effects of the main ingredients. Some herbs require the use of other ingredients as catalyst or else the brew is ineffective. The latter steps require great experience and knowledge, and make the difference between a good Chinese herbal doctor and an amateur. Unlike western medications, the balance and interaction of all the ingredients are considered more important than the effect of individual ingredients. A key to success in TCM is the treatment of each patient as an individual.

Chinese herbalogy often incorporates ingredients from all parts of plants, such as the leaf, stem, flower, root, and also ingredients from animals and minerals. The use of parts of endangered species (such as seahorses, rhinoceros horns, and tiger bones) has created controversy and resulted in a black market of poachers who hunt restricted animals. Many herbal manufacturers have discontinued the use of any parts from endangered animals.

Another difference between Chinese herbalogy and other traditional medical systems is its considerable use of marine products.
Chinese herbs are prepared in a number of ways. Raw herbs can be boiled and taken as a tea or decoction. Prepared Chinese herbs are sold as pills, tablets and capsules. Another preparation method is the extract form or tinctures in which small doses are taken from a dropper. In one type of preparation herbs are applied via a plaster, usually for pain.

A Chinese herb shop in Vancouver, Canada Chinese physicians used several different methods to classify traditional Chinese herbs:
The Four Natures (traditional Chinese: sìqì)
The Five Tastes (Chinese: wǔwèi)
The meridians ( traditional Chinese: jīngluò)
The earlier (Han through Tang eras) Ben Cao (Materia Medicae) began with a three-level categorization:

Low level -- drastic acting, toxic substances;
Middle level -- medicinal physiological effects;
High level -- health and spirit enhancement
During the neo-Confucian Song-Jin-Yuan era (10th to 12th Centuries), the theoretical framework from acupuncture theory (which was rooted in Confucian Han theory) was formally applied to herbal categorization (which was earlier more the domain of Daoism natural science). In particular, alignment with the Five Phases (Wu Xing) and the 12 channels (meridian) theory came to be used after this period.

This pertains to the degree of yin and yang, namely cold (extreme yin), cool, warm and hot (extreme yang). The patient's internal balance of yin and yang is taken into account when the herbs are selected. For example, medicinal herbs of "hot", yang nature are used when the person is suffering from internal cold that requires to be purged, or when the patient has a general cold constituency. Sometimes an ingredient is added to offset the extreme effect of one herb.

The five tastes are pungent, sweet, sour, bitter and salty, and each taste has a different set of functions and characteristics. For example, pungent herbs are used to generate sweat and to direct and vitalize qi and the blood. Sweet-tasting herbs often notify or harmonize bodily systems. Some sweet-tasting herbs also exhibit a bland taste, which helps drain dampness through dieresis. Sour taste most often is astringent or consolidates, while bitter taste dispels heat, which purges the bowels and get rid of dampness by drying them out. Salty tastes soften hard masses as well as purge and open the bowels.

The meridians refer to which organs the herb acts upon. For example, menthol is pungent, cool and is linked with the lungs and the liver. Since the lungs is the organ which protects the body from invasion from cold and influenza, menthol can help purge coldness in the lungs and invading heat toxins caused by hot "wind."