BEIJING - It was crisis time at the traditional Chinese medicine shop. The city was gripped by fear of SARS and the Yong An Tang Pharmacy had run out of wu gen, imperiling the health and mental well being of hundreds of customers.

"I'll call and order more immediately," the harried deputy manager told his two exhausted pharmacists before hustling downstairs to his telephone from the musty odors of the second-floor lab.

"We were here until 2 a.m. last night," one of the white-jacketed pharmacists confided Thursday as she used a hand scale to measure out tiny mounds of black, brown and tan roots and herbs for a recipe to prevent SARS. This order of several dozen portions for a local business would be the last batch of the morning because now there was no more wu gen, a yellow wild grass from China's northwest.

Concern about severe acute respiratory syndrome, which has much of Asia in a high state of anxiety, mounted slowly in Beijing because the government has underplayed the threat posed by the flu-like, sometimes-deadly disease.

But then came Wednesday's newspapers, with helpful articles by several doctors of Chinese medicine. Eight dried herbs, they said, boiled for 25 minutes into a sipping broth and taken twice daily, would prevent the onslaught of atypical pneumonia by regulating the body's energy balance, or qi, which the Chinese view as the key to good health.

Two major Beijing newspapers published the same remedy, while some local pharmacies began recommending their own house blends, and the rush was on.

At Tong Ren Tang, the biggest and most famous Chinese medicine pharmacy, located on an old pedestrian walkway south of Tiananmen Square, a three-hour line snaked through corridors to the pick-up counter. Pharmacists had to limit sales to batches of 10 to serve everyone.

"We've never had a crowd like this before, but we've never had to deal with atypical pneumonia before," said one of several overworked security guards.

Around the world, SARS has afflicted more than 2,700 people, resulting in at least 110 deaths. The epidemic started in southern China in November and spread through Hong Kong. Officially, Beijing has reported 22 cases and 4 fatalities, but worry has increased here in the past week as the Chinese government has begun to address the threat.

The Chinese media have been eager for confirmation that traditional medicine works to prevent or cure SARS, and they asked experts at several news conferences for their views. The American doctor from the World Health Organization demurred, but Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangdong Respiratory Research Institute, was encouraging.

While there is no cure for SARS, Zong said Chinese medicine could prevent or ward off the disease.

"In the beginning, SARS develops flu-like symptoms," Zhong explained. "Traditional Chinese medicine works to alleviate heat and rid the body of toxins. This treatment should be able to shorten the time of illness."

The outbreak of SARS has reasserted the role of both traditional medicine and other folk remedies in Chinese culture.

While most urban Chinese rely on Western medicine, they also are likely to be at least familiar with the basic principles of yin and yang - the cold vs. hot properties of the universe that need to be kept in equilibrium according to Chinese medical theory.

That is why many Chinese, for example, will not drink a glass of cold water in winter. They sip plain hot water, ever mindful of the body's need to remain in temperature balance.

Chinese medicine relies on herbs, roots, grasses and animal powders - each with its own yin or yang properties - to counterbalance health problems, which also come in yin or yang. The Chinese medicinal mantra is "treat yin for yang, yang for yin." So it would be natural to use dried scorpions to treat a stroke victim. Scorpions are yin; a stroke is yang.

In Guangdong province during the height of the SARS outbreak in February, the price of vinegar shot up to $12 a bottle from 60 cents as housewives kept pots of vinegar boiling on the kitchen stove in an effort to kill SARS germs. They also drank soup bowls of ban lan gen, a southern Chinese root.

The Beijing Evening News laughed at both the vinegar and root soup stories, saying those remedies would not help. "But if you burn sandalwood and Tibetan incense," the newspaper said, "it will have more effect."

The paper also recommended keeping rooms well ventilated, being careful with pets and disinfecting elevators. But it failed to mention the first admonition of Western doctors: washing hands frequently.

In the line at Tong Ren Tang, most of the customers were middle-aged or older, but a 30-year-old man named Qin, the manager of an electrical machine company, was chatting on his cell phone while waiting to buy an allotment for his employees.

"People are worried, so the Beijing Evening News provided a therapy," he said. "I don't know for sure if it will have any effect, but most of the ingredients are meant to alleviate heat, so that should help."

From Healthy.net