A taste of Eastern medicine

Friday afternoon found the Idaho tour group in a dimly-lit classroom in Beijing's 300-year-old Tong-Ren Tang pharmacy, where they were lectured on holistic Chinese medicine.

To offer a little proof, white-coated holistic doctors filed in to give free consultations.

Setting people's wrists on yellow cushions, the Eastern practitioners felt pulses and inspected tongues, their translators prepped to pen herbal prescriptions.

"I have a problem with my eye - I had a chemical burn and can't see out of it so well," Veronica Garnsey informed her dour-faced doctor.

The translator checked in and recommended liver medication.

"The liver and eye are connected," she explained.

Downstairs in the shopping area, where there were packed shelves of herbs to fill prescriptions, Jerome Parmentier was dubious of the nearly $100 prescriptions he and his wife were handed.

"I'm not going to waste money based on a five-minute diagnosis," he said flatly.

Still, he admitted, the unlikely pulse diagnosis wasn't that far off base.

"What they said (diagnosed) was right on with what my Western doctor says," the Coeur d'Alene man said. "I think it's an option to look into. Nowadays we have to weigh all the options."

Marilee Wallace with the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce hoped the whole group felt that way.

She pointed out that roughly 30 businesses in the chamber provide Eastern medicines.

"I'm hoping that this will spark people's interest in natural remedies, because we have those resources," she said.

Nancy Vogel won't likely take advantage. Her husband, Ron, a medical practitioner - the Western kind - still puts stock in pharmaceuticals, she said, despite the holistic doctor's warning about side effects.

"I think the alternative is pretty bleak, where people die," said Vogel, who has struggled with asthma for 30 years. "We expect a quick cure, too, in our society. If I'm having an asthma episode, I want to breathe immediately."

Carol Payne of Coeur d'Alene doubted her herbal purchase after hearing what Nancy was prescribed for liver problems.

"I have high cholesterol, and I think they gave me the same prescription," she said.

Elaine and Lowell Stevens, however, had a bulging bag of herbs to beef up their livers.

"I feel healthier just holding the bag," Lowell said with a chuckle.

Elaine said they have long heard how Eastern medicine tops Western by attacking problems with prevention, instead of pills.

"Just looking at 400 years of people using this stuff, it has to work," the Coeur d'Alene woman said.

On the bus afterward, though, Kathy Quinn was still passing out Advil for headache sufferers.

"Well, we don't have any herbs on us now," she said.