Herbal Legends: Tu Si Zi 菟絲子 (Chinese Dodder Seeds)

Once upon a time there was a rich landlord, who was obsessed with hares and rabbits. He raised all kinds of different breeds and they were cared for by his farm hand. Whenever the farm hand was alone at home, he was warned by the landlord: “Pay attention! If something happens to a rabbit, I will deduct it from your wages.” But one day a mishap occurred; a long and heavy wooden plank fell on the back of a rabbit. The animal was so badly hurt, that it could not hop no more. The farm hand, who feared the punishment of the landlord, tried to conceal the misfortune. “There is such a large numbers of rabbits, that the lord will not even notice that one is missing.” Therefore he placed the animal in the bean garden. After a few days the landlord realized that one rabbit was gone, and he asked the farm hand about its whereabouts. The farm hand had no choice, but to fetch the injured animal from the bean garden.

When they arrived in the bean garden, he could not believe his eyes. The rabbit, which a few days ago, could hardly move, hopped around lively, to the point that he struggled to catch him again. In the evening the farm hand told this incidence to his father, who suffered from loin pains almost being bed-ridden. The pain was inflicted by the landlord who had beaten him with a stick for a minor matter. When the father heard of this miraculous cure of the rabbit, he thought to himself, that the rabbit may have eaten a herb for healing bone fractures. And he reckoned if he could he find out, what the rabbit had eaten, he could heal his suffering with this herb. That is why he asked his son to get to the bottom of the issue. When the landlord had gone out again, the farm hand viciously hit a rabbit on the back, so that he was lying as limp on the ground as the other rabbit. He released him in the bean garden and observed him. The rabbit was so severely injured that he could only extend his neck, to eat some seeds of a vine, which overgrew the soy beans. The next day the rabbit already was able to move a bit more and continued chewing on the seeds.

A few days later he could leap around as if nothing had happened. Thereafter the farm hand collected those seeds and them for his father. The father spoke: “If those seeds can regenerate the spine of a rabbit, maybe they could also be of help to my beaten-up back.” And indeed the back pain gradually improved. Two months later he could work in the fields again. Shortly afterwards the young man stopped working as farm hand for the landlord and collected the seeds instead to make pills out of them. Through this he could help many people who suffered from lower back pain. Since those pills could heal the loin pain of rabbits, they were called “Rabbit-Thread- Seeds”.

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