Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

xiāng xū, ‘one helps the other.’ means the mutual enhancement of
similar effects of different drugs when administered together.
This is also called ‘mutual reinforcement’.
xiāng shĭ, ‘one endows the other.’ means the mutual
enhancement of different actions of different drugs when
administered together. This is also termed ‘assistance’.
xiāng wèi, ‘one fears the other.’ the reduction of undesired effects
of a drug by another drug with which it is administered. This is
also called ‘restraint’, e.g. mercury restrains arsenic.
xiāng shā, ‘one kills the other.’ the elimination of undesired effects
of a drug through another drug with which it is administered.
This is also called ‘neutralization’.
xiāng wù, ‘one hates the other.’ means the mutual reduction of
desired effects of different drugs when administered together.
This is also called ’counteraction’.
xiāng fān, ‘one clashes with the other.’ means producing
undesired new effects through simultaneous administration of
different drugs that are not produced when the drugs are
administered individually. This is also called ‘incompatibility’,
e.g. Radix Veratri nigri incompatible with Radix Ginseng,
Codopsis pilosulae, Scrophulariae, Salviae miltiorrhizae,
Paeoniae alba and also Herba asari.
dān xíng, ‘one goes alone.’ means administering a single drug
without being influenced by other drugs administered
simultaneously (Unschuld, 1998; Liu Yanchi, 1988).
While its attributed author is Shen Nong, no one knows for sure who
wrote it. The book lists a total of 365 Chinese medicines from which
252 were of plant origin, 67 from animals, and 46 from minerals.
Each medicine was divided into one of three categories. The
superior category included 120 medicines. The second category
included average medicines of which 120 were listed. The third
category included 125 inferior medicines that were considered to be
toxic with side effects It is difficult to follow the names of the herbals
as they all seem to have several alternative names that look and/or
sound alike, but may have additional words in the title and the
English translations vary considerably. In the Pharmacopoeia of the
People’s Republic of China dated 2000 Hyoscyamus niger
(henbane) is labelled ‘very toxic’ and Papaver somniferum (opium)
as ‘toxic’ (Zhu, 2002).