Money Grass

A young husband and wife were passing their days in loving bliss.

Then one day the husband suddenly felt a sharp pain at the side of his stomach. It was immensely painful.

A few days later he died. Full of sorrow, the wife didn't know what had killed her husband.

A doctor cut open the area where the husband had been in pain and discovered a small stone in the gall bladder.

"This stone took my husband's life from me. I hate it!"

Thereafter, the wife put the stone in a pouch that she wore everyday around her neck.

One fall after going up the mountain to mow, she came back down carrying a bundle of hay.

How strange! The stone had dissolved to half its original size.

Before long a doctor heard of this incident.

"Within the grass that you cut that day must be a herb that dissolves stones," he said.

The next day, she brought the doctor up the mountain, but all of the grass had already been cut.

The next fall, after the wife carried the cut grass down the mountain, the stone remained hard--no more of it dissolved.

Another year went by, and when she brought the hay down from the mountain, they divided the grass into its different types, testing each one to see if it could dissolve stones.

Finally they found it. With this grass, gall bladder stones had a cure. It has saved many ill people.

Because the leaves are round like coins, the doctor named it money grass.

Later people started calling money grass hua-shih-tan, which means pill that dissolves stone.