MERVEILLES2 STACK002 + Duplication

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Another wonder: ginseng (insam in Korean). Father du Halde surprises me with this one:
"The Gin Seng of Tsoe toen resembles a man: it is purple and rather flat." It's the most
precious vegetable in the world. (In the Chinese apothecaries, levites with lunar skulls
bustle like so many Bruce Willises around delicate hanging scales tracing figures in the air,
to deliver you ten grams of the salutary mandrake for the price of a hundred grams of gold.)
It was the Chinese aphrodisiac: rich mandarins outfitted caravans to seek this root of
deathlessness. They died of it. Raised to the rank of divinities by their exploits, they were
called back by the jealous (or curious gods. The eighteenth century, which took an interest
in such things, gave a great reputation to ginseng. Looking for flying men, I found it
mentioned in Richard Owen Cambridge's Scribleriad:*that restorative the tartar boasts..."

Jesuit chastity and Marxist austerity agree to underscore other medical properties of ginseng.
It heals. This must be understood in the absolute: it is not one of those vulgar medicines that
Only treat a single illness, or a hundred--as ridiculously specialized as the prostitutes of
Pompeii. With ginseng, the verb to heal must be used like the verb to rain.

Father du Falde consents nonetheless to get into detail, but the detail soon covers the whole
and overflows it: "It maintains the girth; it fixes the animal spirits in place; it stops the
palpitations caused by sudden fright." It even cures that sickness the Portuguese call
pesadelo (those afflicted by this illness imagine in their sleep that someone is lying
next to them "). It is good for sleep (when one is "troubled by dreams and phantoms").
good for dog bite ('and troubles of the spleene") and finally, last, not least, it can help
"when the entrails come out the sides."