Why did a 1,600‑year‑old instruction to “press out the juice” save millions of lives?
Malaria, an ancient killer. Over thousands of years, it has claimed hundreds of millions of lives.
In the 1960s, malaria raged across many parts of the world, posing a serious threat to human health. China launched an emergency research project codenamed "523" with a single goal: to find a new antimalarial drug.
Tu Youyou, a 39-year-old pharmacologist, joined the project.
Her team combed through more than 2,000 traditional prescriptions, screened over 640 herbs, and compiled a Handbook of Antimalarial Single Prescriptions. But experiment after experiment ended in disappointment.
Then one day, she came across the Emergency Formulas to Keep Up Your Sleeve, written by Ge Hong of the Eastern Jin dynasty – a book more than 1,000 years older than the Compendium of Materia Medica.
One sentence suddenly jumped out at her:
"Take a bunch of qinghao (sweet wormwood), soak it in two sheng of water, press out the juice, and have the patient drink it all."
Notice: not boiling, but "press out the juice."
A flash of insight struck Tu Youyou: Could high heat be destroying the active ingredient in the herb?
She immediately switched to a low-temperature extraction using ether – no heat, just cold extraction. The result was thrilling: the extract showed 100% inhibition of the malaria parasite.
After repeated validation, in 1972, artemisinin was born.
In 2015, at the age of 85, Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – the first Nobel science laureate from mainland China.
She said: "Artemisinin is a gift from traditional Chinese medicine to the world."
Artemisinin is no isolated case. Arsenic trioxide (from an ancient TCM mineral drug) has been used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia – the first TCM‑derived injectable drug approved by the FDA. Berberine (from a Chinese herb) was found to improve diabetes. Ephedrine became a core ingredient of modern asthma medicines…
The treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine is far from exhausted.
👉 Last: One herb, a five‑thousand‑year journey – the past and future of Chinese medicine.
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