Medicine
Remedies and poisons in Maomao's world: from cacao and ox bezoar to wolfsbane honey and lead.
In The Apothecary Diaries, medicine (kusuri) is used to treat physical illness, though, as Maomao puts it, not 'diseases of the spirit'. Medicines include painkillers, aphrodisiacs, fever reducers and abortifacients, and taken in high doses or misused they become poisons (doku).
Quick Facts
- Japanese
- 薬 (kusuri); poison 毒 (doku)
- Legendary
- Resurrection medicine, Elixir of Immortality
Facts from the source article.
Background
Most are derived from plants, but Linese medicines can also come from insects and animals. The fan wiki's list from the early light novels includes alcohol, an aphrodisiac and antiseptic; cacao, which Maomao turns into a potent chocolate aphrodisiac; blowfish poison, concentrated in the liver; ox bezoar, one of the most valuable medicines; charcoal, which absorbs toxins; quicksilver and several plants, among them cinnamon, used to make abortifacients; honey, which becomes poisonous when made from toxic plants such as wolfsbane or azalea; rhododendron, which causes nausea and breathing trouble when burned; tobacco, which with wine induces suffocation; thornapple; lead face powder; and orpiment, which contains arsenic.
Later volumes add more: Maomao acquires medicinal ginseng in the eighth light-novel volume, and Sotei's caravan passes out opium to bandits and guides on its way to the capital. Two legendary medicines also drive the plot: the resurrection medicine and the Elixir of Immortality that Shenmei seeks.
Source
Text adapted from Medicine on The Apothecary Diaries Wiki (Fandom, CC BY-SA 3.0). Page history: contributors. Codexery summarised the page, and this entry is shared under the same licence.
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