Serious Question: Zombie Cure (TCM)

Serious question. If you were going to cure a zombie using Traditional Chinese Medicine, what would you use? And why?

What do you aim for? Cure? Reversal of the condition? Mitigation of symptoms? Or do you wish the sufferer a quick expiration? (And how is that achieved?)

Caveat: We don't know what causes the zombification, but we do know the person is dead, yet animated. Maybe infectious.

This raises a question. What is death as far as traditional Chinese medicine is concerned? And what is "life" as opposed say to animation?

Hmmm...

Put the zombie in an oral English class at a chinese university. It will show no absolutely signs of 'animation' and be dead for all intents and purposes.

That seems more a storage solution than a cure.

I was hoping for some more scientific determination. For instance, a zombie is dead but animated, thus it is right to ask what animates the corpse that isn't life? The corpse could be possessed, but possession isn't plague-like in the way zombies are. If widespread corpse animation is occurring, and is not accompanied by, for instance, corpses returning home to discuss details of the afterlife with family members, then something is both driving spirits out of the afterlife and also sickening them. These wouldn't be regular, healthy spirits. Worse for the so-called possession hypothesis, why would a bite from one possessed corpse render an otherwise healthy person both dead and subsequently possessed? Possessed by what? No, I think, scientifically, we must assume a zombie plague is not a misidentified ghost parade, but some wild unbalancing of yin and yang. We should look into the possibility of either qi being drained or qi levels being hugely overboosted. Or, somehow, both. What could mimic a draining of qi, and thus a lethargy and general groaning aspect, and at the same time an overabundance of qi, and this the ability to roam about even while decaying? It' a puzzler.

TCM relies on things like internal heat, internal cold, internal dampness (wish I was kidding on that last one, but I'm not).  TCM also relies on "the worse it tastes and/or smells, the more effective it is".

So, applying my vast knowledge of TCM (fully summed up in the paragraph above, I'd say that post-morten animation is caused by far above average internal heat (this is supported by at least some on screen portrayals of those who are bitten suffering a high fever before turning, not that internal heat is always measurable via a thermometer).

So, what you are looking for is something to combat extreme internal heat.  It should also be so foul smelling/tasting that it could make a goat vomit at 50 meters.

  It should also be so foul smelling/tasting that it could make a goat vomit at 50 meters.

It could even be fifty meters worth of goat vomit.

Yep.  And the "cure" which can return a zombie to a fully dead state would be so powerful that it could easily kill living people too.  Think of it like poison gas in WWI - a very effective weapon, but only at long range and only if the wind doesn't turn against you.  So, in a war on zombies using this, sometimes the defenders can accidentally kill themselves and everyone in the place they tried to defend.  The only consolation is that live people killed this way wouldn't turn into zombies.

I suppose the application of a great amount of goat vomit to some shambling former acquaintance/stranger/family member is potentially easier on the survivor than attempting to run a chopstick through former loved ones' heads, but the solution might not scale too well if one has any concerns about cruelty to animals. I mean, if the goat were bulimic, maybe its distress could serve the greater good, but should it?

But there's the other question: is a kill cure the only cure? What about reversal?

I speculate zombification is an excess of yin. The condition is clearly negative. It is however not passive. Nor is it obviously female. So something else is at work alongside the yin.

I like your excess of yin theory.

Perhaps we could put the zombified Chinese in oral English classes as a sort of medical ward. We would need to have the regular students wear identifying badges or something since they would be indistinguishable from the zombies after the first few minutes of class.

My proposed cure would include two parts, a traditional TCM element and a brutally abrupt, western behavioral modification regime.

For the TCM component, we require the zombies to consume a combination of road tar, roof pitch, and ear wax cooked in a clay pot three times a day.

For the western component, we make the zombies wait in long, orderly queues.

Cured!

 

Goat vomit isn't part of the treatment.  The treatment is so vile that the smell of it from 50 meters away will make a goat vomit.  Unfortunately, goat vomit itself lacks the TCM required strength of stench needed to deal with the excess internal heat driving the zombies.

I'm firmly in the No Cure camp.  Zombies are potentially tameable, but the magic cure to make everyone better is a far worse cheat on a No Win Scenario than reprogramming the computers before taking the Kobiyashi Maru exam.

On the other hand, the shredded remnants of those who thought they cured their "savable" zombie friends can be a source of amusement.

It is known to all that taste has a relationship to the effect of the herb when ingested, and that TCM recognises five tastes: sweet for tonic effects; sour for the liver and fluid recollection; bitter for the heart and cleansing; acrid for the lungs, qi, and evaporation of excess fluids;and salty for the kidneys, dissolving masses, removing moisture and phlegm, and softening hardness.

If we understand zombism to be whole system failure, then all taste are perhaps required. But zombism, while creating the impression of lethargy and decay, actually features as its main symptom a grossly inappropriate animation (and if western canon is to be believed, an unhealthy fascination with brains). Their qi flow is pretty messed up. So, acrid is our best bet? The acrid taste is associated with burning or numbing of the tongue.

Ma la dofu. This will cure your zombie.

There may be some room to consider slightly more aggressive acupuncture therapies too.

There may be some room to consider slightly more aggressive acupuncture therapies too.

Yeah.  A 1/2" metal rod pushed through the brain seems to do the trick in most cases. 

Of course, that's not as much fun as TCM smoke grenades which can in-animate both zombies as well as anything normally alive.  "We saved the town from the zombie horde, but then the wind shifted, killing half our battalion and all the local residents."

If, as modern research would tend to suggest, puncturing the brain will deflate the zombie, we should notice that the brain, as an extension of the marrow which belongs to the kidney system, is nourished by those same herbs as nourish the kidney. And, as it would happen, the mind can be agitated as a result of heat, wind, or uprushing qi and, very surprisingly, yang. Or, to put it in words that make sense, the zombie brain is hot, windy, and overfull with qi. And, as I am crushed to discover, yang.

I believe we can accommodate this new information. I posit the previously held view that zombism is the result of an excess of yin is in fact still true! Whether this excess of yin is a true excess or merely the absence of yang is yet to be determined, but clearly we can describe at least in part how it occurs: THE YANG EXITS THE BODY PROPER AND COLLECTS IN THE BRAIN, CARRIED THERE BY THE UPRUSHING QI! Pesky qi. Pesky, pesky qi.

We may further discover an interesting causal relationship. As is known to all, a zombie bite will create another zombie, while an attack on the brain will kill, be the brain that a zombie or that of the living, and whether the attack is performed by another zombie or by an acupuncturist. As is plain for all to see, and this can be a medical maxim now, qi flees the site of a bite. And it will collect in the brain, or burst.

The zombie fascination with brains is quite clearly natural. They seek either to replenish their qi or rebalance their yin. It couldn't be more obvious.

One quick question.  Are we working on a novel, or are we seeding the internet with information to make TCM believers have trouble sleeping at night?