latelenovela Chapter 830 The Pioneers of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Chapter 830 The Pioneers of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Jiang Xia's idea to reform the traditional Chinese medicine factory was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. He clearly remembered that great man had once made severe criticisms of the medical and health field.
That was also the first time he expressed strong dissatisfaction with the work of a certain department.
Hmph! Is the job of the higher-level medical authorities just for the privileged elites? The vast majority of farmers have no access to healthcare! No doctors! No medicine! They should just change the healthcare authority to one for the urban elites!
Was the language offensive? Yes, it was!
But what can be done when over 1.4 million healthcare professionals are concentrated in cities, with less than 10% scattered in rural areas? The distribution of healthcare funding is even more unequal, with rural areas receiving only 25%, the rest flowing to cities…
Jiang Xia didn't have many ambitions; he just wanted to take the lead and create some affordable traditional Chinese medicine preparations.
This is to prevent some doctors with only a primary school education from prescribing strong medicines to people in rural areas, treating them like livestock. Traditional Chinese medicine preparations are much better; although they take effect more slowly, at least they won't kill people.
Moreover, traditional Chinese medicine preparations can be taken simply by mixing them with water, which avoids the situation where some unqualified people can brew medicine and literally kill someone...
So, after Jiang Xia said he would solve the problem of funding the renovation, the factory director of the Chinese medicine factory smiled like a trumpet flower. While having the young girl Cheng Gui accompany Jiang Xia to visit the workshop's production process, he pulled Old Liu from the production department and ran towards the medicinal herb warehouse.
"Hey, factory manager, what are you doing?" Old Liu was pulled so hard he stumbled.
"Hand over your stash of valuable goods!"
"What?!" Old Liu was completely bewildered.
"Stop talking nonsense! We finally have a powerful backer, we can't let him fail us. We need to give him a good boost! Look at that young man, he looks really weak..."
"Factory manager, do you really believe what that kid said?"
The factory manager was silent for a moment: "It's rare for someone to pay attention to us, so let's just believe them for now. Anyway, we're dirt poor, we don't have much to be fooled..."
These words were heartbreaking.
Traditional Chinese medicine has indeed had a tough time these past few years...
Many people who have returned from studying abroad constantly talk about "science," while the meridians, qi and blood, yin and yang, and the five elements passed down from their ancestors—which are invisible and intangible—have become the focus of criticism. Coupled with the fact that Western medicine is fast-acting, more and more people are choosing it.
However, the thought that his traditional Chinese medicine preparations could go abroad and earn foreign exchange for the motherland made the factory director stand up a little more proud.
At the very least, while Western medicine can't treat mumps, our traditional Chinese medicine can!
……
Jiangxia and Cheng Guihuo walked through the somewhat noisy production workshop, where the air was filled with a strong medicinal fragrance, mixed with the smell of coal smoke.
Huh? How come a place with such strict hygiene controls, like a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, still smells of coal smoke?
Cheng Gui pointed to two large tanks placed side by side in the center of the workshop and introduced them with no small amount of pride: "Comrade Jiang Xia, look, this is the best equipment in our factory. It's a 500-liter purification tank, made entirely of stainless steel, and equipped with thermocouples to control the temperature, ensuring a remarkably stable extraction effect."
“Stable?” Standing beside the tank, Jiang Xia finally figured out where the coal smoke smell was coming from.
There was no steam pipe at the bottom of the canister as expected; instead, there was an earthen stove with coal burning in the burner, flames licking the bottom of the canister, and black coal ash piled up beside it.
A worker in blue overalls was vigorously stirring a wooden pole taller than a person into a jar. The muscles in his arms were taut, and his forehead was covered in sweat. When the pole was pulled out, dark brown dregs of medicine hung from the end of the pole and dripped down.
"This...this is heated by coal?" Jiang Xia couldn't help but ask, "Heating with coal fires, plus manual stirring, and you're telling me the effect is stable?"
Cheng Gui's smile froze for a moment, and he explained in a low voice, "Well... we've been exploring and improving this. But the technicians are all experienced. Look at the thermometer they're keeping track of; they record it every ten minutes. Now the deviation is controlled within 5°C, which is much better than last year."
Before thermocouples were invented, it was common to burn a pot of medicine. Now that we can see the temperature, it's much better than before…
Jiang Xia didn't say anything more and followed her to the concentration stage.
There was an old vacuum pump sitting in the corner, its casing rusted. A worker was cranking the handle on the pump, his face flushed red. With each crank, the pump made a "click" sound, as if it were about to fall apart at any moment.
“This is a vacuum pump for concentration,” Cheng Gui pointed to the pressure gauge on the pump, “but the pumping force is a bit weak, so two people have to take turns pumping it.”
Jiang Xia reached out and touched the sealing ring of the vacuum pump, his fingertip brushing against a crack: "This sealing ring is old and cracked. No matter how many times you pump, you can't maintain a vacuum! If the vacuum level is not high enough during concentration, not only will the water evaporate slowly, but you also have to raise the temperature, and some of the active ingredients will be lost... You said that the newly produced batch of granules had 15% less active ingredients, maybe this is also related."
Seeing that Cheng Gui, the living saint, was blushing, Jiang Xia realized he had been a bit too harsh. Feeling bad, he laughed and tried to smooth things over: "But it's not bad, you even have a vacuum pump. I thought you were still using big pots to boil water..."
Before he finished speaking, the eyes of the living bodhisattva Cheng Gui suddenly turned a little red.
Okay, I said the wrong thing again.
Why...
As soon as you turn the corner, a huge, open enamel pot comes into view. The pot is placed on another stove, and the medicinal liquid inside is bubbling violently, steaming everywhere. Workers are constantly stirring it with large wooden ladles to prevent the liquid from boiling over.
"So, you boiled it first and then vacuum-sealed it?"
"Yes, this is more efficient..."
That's nonsense, it's not that good...
“It’s really faster. Boil off half the water before extracting, and it can save an hour.” Zhang Chenggui’s voice was a little low. “Last year, when we didn’t have pumps, we relied entirely on boiling in large pots. It would take a whole day to get one batch of extract.”
Uh, okay, I made another mistake. Now that I calculate it, it is indeed quite high…
Our comrades, even in such harsh conditions, have found a path that suits them. Jiang Xia thinks that the workers these days are truly adorable…
Next, there was a workstation with several large wooden barrels. How to put it? Jiang Xia figured these barrels must be from a brewery or winery.
"This is the mixing process. The concentrated extract and dissolved sugar water are poured into this wooden barrel and stirred manually with a wooden stick."
"You don't even have a V-type mixer?" Jiang Xia asked incredulously.
"What is a V-type mixer?" Cheng Gui asked, looking completely bewildered.
Jiang Xia sighed and pointed to the workers' hands, saying, "How can hand-mixing possibly produce a uniform consistency? The ingredients in each packet of medicine are different; how can the efficacy be stable?"
"Look, the paste is already quite thick. At most, it's just that the syrup is not mixed evenly. The taste may be slightly different after repackaging, but the efficacy will not be compromised!" The young girl, Cheng Gui, was quite proud of the process she had designed.
Although rudimentary, she did consider the issue of the uniformity of the distribution of active ingredients.
Don't say she's wrong. In principle, after the medicine is concentrated, every drop is a saturated solution. The taste might be different, but the efficacy won't be compromised!
I won't look at the dry part; I've already seen it, and Jiang Xia doesn't want to complain about it.
However, when it came to the final screening stage, the little guy really couldn't hold on any longer.
The so-called "screening machine" was just a wooden frame stretched with wire mesh. A female worker was holding the wooden frame and shaking it vigorously. Fine powder leaked out from the holes in the wire mesh and fell to the ground. She was wearing two masks, but she still couldn't help coughing, and her shoulders were twitching.
"It takes about ten minutes to sift one pound of particles by hand, right?" Jiang Xia looked at the fine powder on the ground with great heartache. "A lot of fine powder leaked out, what a waste! And shaking it for a long time will definitely make your arms sore, and the sieving efficiency will be low."
Zhang Chenggui lowered his head, his voice even softer: "We also want to replace the equipment, but we don't have the funds... We can make do with what we have, so we haven't dared to make any demands."
"Comrade Cheng Gui, I think I understand now," Jiang Xia said thoughtfully.
“Our extraction process has a good foundation, but the subsequent concentration, mixing, granulation, and drying are all stuck in a primitive state of ‘relying on the weather’... no, it’s more like ‘relying on human labor’. The links are disconnected, and everything depends on manual handling and experience-based judgment, so the efficiency is low and the quality fluctuates greatly.”
Cheng Gui pouted, clearly annoyed: "Isn't it obvious? How can you expose my secrets like this! I haven't even taken you to the herbal medicine processing workshop yet! All the herbs there are chopped with a guillotine. Especially the processing method for bitter almonds, that's incredibly slow. But I did come up with my own method for removing oil and forming cakes; I wonder if the masters have used it yet…"
Jiang Xia's gaze swept across the entire workshop again, superimposing the standardized production process diagram on the reality before his eyes.
“Perhaps,” Jiang Xia said slowly, “we shouldn’t just be thinking about patching things up. Could we design a ‘line’ around that decent purification tank that better connects concentration, mixing, and even granulation and drying?”
For example, equipping extraction tanks with more reliable heating and stirring systems allows concentration to proceed rapidly in a closed, low-pressure environment, and mixing to be completed in tanks equipped with mechanical stirring.
Most importantly, we need to find a way to bypass the most laborious and inconsistent processes of manual granulation and disc drying, and investigate whether it's possible to turn the liquid medicine into dry granules in one step.
"One step... and it becomes dry granules? Comrade Jiang Xia, is this... is this even possible? Even the Northeast Pharmaceutical Factory uses furnaces to dry them!" Zhang Chenggui listened to this unheard-of idea and felt that this clueless kid in front of her was trying to fool her.