Handing down healing secrets of the past

      A wooden house on a small street in HCM City is packed with thousands of medicinal artefacts, books and fragrant herbs.
Five years ago, two friends were visiting the birth village of herbalist Hai Thuong Lan Ong, real name Le Huu Trac, pioneer of the Vietnamese traditional medicine in the 18th century.
As they approached the cemetery where Lan Ong’s family graves were located, a heavy rain began to fall.
The two men began cleaning and decorating the graves, and suddenly the downpour ceased. But as soon as their task was complete, the rain resumed as quickly as it had disappeared.
"I wonder whether God and the saints, as well as Lan Ong’s soul, helped us at that time, knowing that our hearts were sincere," recalls Le Khac Tam, a Russian-Vietnamese researcher who now lives in Viet Nam.
Tam and his friend Le Huu Hoai, also a traditional medicine researcher, had travelled to Xuong Son District in Ha Tinh Province in northern Viet Nam to conduct research and pay respect to Lan Ong’s family.
During the trip, Tam says he received a cherished gift, a slicing tool for cutting the roots of medicinal plants that had once been used in the famous herbalist’s native land.
Having traced his ancestry back 16 generations to the illustrious founder of the country’s traditional medicine field, Hoai, who was 90 years old at the time of the trip, has since retired.
Honouring the founders
It was not Tam’s first foray into the countryside to pursue research.
He and his brother Le Khac Tinh have spent 20 years traversing Viet Nam and other countries to collect books, raw materials, artifacts and interesting tales on anything related to Vietnamese traditional medicine.
Like much of Asia, Viet Nam has lost some of its traditional medicine heritage and old documents kept by herbalists are increasingly hard to find.
As the owner of the traditional medicine company FITO Pharma Corporation, Tam is dedicated to preserving artifacts as well as knowledge handed down over generations.
In 2006, he and his younger brother Tinh, who has long been fascinated in collecting old artifacts, opened a traditional medicine museum that allows guests to mix and sample their own remedies, under guidance.
The displays of the museum, the first privately owned facility in Viet Nam, include equipment and materials long used by herbalists, including 3,000 items used in traditional Vietnamese medicine dating back to the Stone Age.
Among the items is a 2,000-year-old boat-shaped mortar used to grind herbs and plants, a 2,500-year-old terracotta apothecary mortar, and wooden and stone root slicers invented more than 2,000 years ago.
Many scales used to weigh herbs and plants and small tables on which doctors wrote prescriptions are also featured.
One of the oddest pieces is a terracotta water pot shaped like a shoe, designed to boil water aboard a boat.
The museum also houses rare medical books, including some authored by Hai Thuong Lan Ong in the 18th century, and by Tue Tinh, an important founder of the country’s traditional medicine in the 14th century.
Other striking items that attract people’s interest include a large carved wooden painting honouring 100 Vietnamese popular herbalists who worked during the 12th to 20th centuries.
Another large painting made of mother-of-pearl depicts the daily life of Vietnamese in rural communities in the three major regions of the country.
Herbal cabinets throughout the museum are designed with 81 drawers believed to bring luck to herbalists.
The 18-room, 600 sq.m house, an amalgam of traditional Vietnamese styles located on a quiet street in HCM City’s District 10, also includes many items from the northern delta.
There are 17th and 18th century iron water pots and 16th and 17th century bronze water pots from Phu Tho, and apothecary mortars made of gold reportedly used by one of Viet Nam’s royal families.
In addition to being a repository of valuable artifacts, the FITO Museum of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine regularly co-operates with other museums in HCM City to host exhibitions on Viet Nam’s traditional medicine culture and other subjects.
The museum has recently worked with the Southern Women’s Museum to open an exhibition showcasing more than 200 artifacts and medicinal materials used by the Vietnamese people and herbalists.
The exhibition, which will end on May 23, honours the country’s traditional medicine culture as well as the role of women in the field, particularly during the period from the feudal regime to 1945.
Rare books written by one of the founders of the country’s traditional medicine, Hai Thuong Lan Ong, and other medical items are on display at the exhibit.