1. There was once a young pig keeper called Ma Po. One day he went off into the hills to chop brush with some friends.
2. One of the boys cut his leg on a branch and kept bleeding.
3. "What should we do?" the other boy said.
4. "Don't cry," Ma Po said. "Press the wound and I'll be back in a minute. ..."
5. Soon enough, Ma Po came back with a brown type of mushroom, commonly called a puffball.
6. He pressed the puffball on the wound and wrapped it with a bandage.
7. Then he carried the boy home.
8. Three days later, the boy took off the bandage and found that the wound was free of pus and gradually getting better.
9. Two days after that, it had completely healed.
10. "You're so young. How did you find out that puffballs can stop bleeding?" Ma Po was asked. "Who taught you?"
11. "Well...
12. "I found out when I cut myself with a sickle once.
13. "I was stuck in the wilderness and didn't know what to do.
14. "I happened to grab a puffball next fo me and hold it on the wound.
15. "To my surprise, in four or five days the wound had completely healed. From then on, I looked for a puffball whenever I got hurt."
16. Ma Po's words spread quickly. People with injuries came to see him or headed off into the wilds to look for puffballs.
17. The puffballs were called ma-po after the boy's name and have been an important ingredient in Chinese medicine ever since.
Puffballs (Lasiosphaera seu Calvatia)
Appearance: Puffballs are white when young, brown when mature.They are lightweight and cottony in texture and contain numerous spores.
Properties: Acrid, mild-natured, nontoxic. Specially good for stopping bleeding, removing heat from the lungs and curingcoughing.
Effectiveness: Applied externally, heals lesions. Taken internallym, relieves sore throat and coughing.
(To be used by prescription only)
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