alone (52.15.11 desiccant tung oil is "miraculously effective" for calf sores, 1973: 233). second, uncertain or nonspecific therapeutic benefits include five human drugs (e.g., 52.6.14 powdered left-hand fingernails and rush pith form a sticky mass applied to the canthus for removing foreign bodies in the eye, three (5%) ancillary ingredients (52.6.11 pack and roast a silkworm cocoon with a man's fingernail trimmings and a boy's hair for ulcerated hemorrhoids, and three combinations of them (52.15.7 human milk and copper coins cooked in a copper vessel for trachoma could form copper sulfate, which has a mild antibacterial effect for eye infections. the authors conclude that less than 8% of all these disorders could have been "positively cured by known pharmacological effects of the remedies cited", and raise the question of psychosomatic or social effects of human drugs in folk medicine. ritual aspects having demonstrated that the effectiveness of most bencao gangmu human drug prescriptions was not attributable to pharmacognosy, cooper & sivin examined whether the symbolic aspects of magic and ritual in chinese folk medicine could explain why pharmacopoeias continue to list human drugs. within their sample of 8 human drugs, prescriptions mention two dozen symbolic ritual procedures. sympathetic magic, for example, could explain using blood to treat blood loss (52.17.3 above) and attempting to treat bone damage with bone (52.27.1). li shizhen quotes the (9th century) miscellaneous morsels from youyang. the book youyang zaju: once a military man in jingzhou had an injured tibia. doctor zhang qizheng treated him with a kind of medicinal wine, which was taken orally. a small segment of broken bone in the wounded tibia was taken out and a kind of medicinal ointment was applied externally. the injury was cured. the patient kept the small piece of bone from his tibia under his bed. but two years later there was a recurrence. doctor zhang said that the bone from the tibia was cold now. he searched for the bone and found it under the man's bed. he washed the bone with hot water, wrapped it in silk fabric, and kept in a good place. after that the pain was gone. this shows the interrelationship between the bone left under the bed and the pain. how can we say a withered bone has no sense? people should be aware of this. prescription 52.27.4 specifies using a dead child's bone: "to treat bone fractures: bone of infant, calcined, and muskmelon seed, stir-fried. grind the above ingredients into powder, and take the powder by mouth with good wine. it stops the pain right away." demonic possession and demonic medicine are ancient chinese beliefs. for example, the bencao gangmu (52.28) says "bregma; skull bone" is good for treating several tuberculosis-like diseases that are supposedly caused by evil spirits. the (sometimes synonymous) names of these sicknesses are difficult to translate, as shown by the following renderings by cooper & sivin, luo, and zhang & unschuld: chuánshī 傳尸 "cadaver vector disease", "consumptive and infectious disease", "corpse transmission" shīzhù 尸疰 "cadaver fixation disease", "consumptive and infectious disease", "corpse attachment-illness" gǔzhēng 骨蒸 "bone-steaming disease", "consumptive disease with general debility", "bone steaming" guǐzhù 鬼疰 , "consumptive disease of unknown cause", "demon attachment-illness" li shizhen quotes chen cangqi's explanation that when a piece of skull is cleaned, simmered in a young boy's urine, and then buried in a pit, "this will infuse the drug with a soul". li also quotes yang shiying that the shizhu disease "is caused by a ghost that hides within a person's body and does not come out. so the disease is a prolonged one. when treated with human skull top, the ghost's soul will be dispelled from the person's body and the syndrome may subside." cooper & sivin note that the guzheng "bone-steaming disease" or chuanshi "cadaver vector disease", "passes from one member of a family to another, sapping their strength and killing them in turn. the name comes from the patient's feeling of feverishness ("steaming") in the marrow of his bones. the syndrome as described in classic medical works corresponds on the whole to that of pulmonary tuberculosis." however, they also say that whether this demon disease really meant pulmonary tuberculosis or some other debilitating infectious disease is really not pertinent "because bone would be ineffective in the treatment of any infectious process." prescription 52.28.1 tianlingaisan "powder of human skull top", which is said to be "good for killing worms in a consumptive disease", mentions seeing a chuanshi. first, take "one piece of human skull top two fingers wide, simmer the drug with tanxiang/sandalwood, then stir-fry with su/butter. then chant incantations." fifteen herbal ingredients are added with the skull bone into a decoction, which will cause the patient to defecate "worms of strange shapes". cooper & sivin translate the chant that luo omits, "this incantation is recited seven times in one breath: "divine father thunder, sage mother lightning, if you meet a cadaver vector you must control it. quickly, quickly, as ordered by the law." this same prescription also mentions daoistic ritual purification, "before the drug is processed, one who prepares the drug should abstain from meat and wine and should stay in a clean, quiet room far away from the patient, so that he cannot smell it. when the drug is prepared, keep away chickens, dogs, cats and other animals, as well as sons in mourning and women. the room should be kept clear of all ugly and dirty things." prescription 52.28.2 is for treating guzheng "bone-steaming disease": "to treat consumptive disease with general debility and hectic fever due to yin deficiency: stir-fry a piece of human skull the size of a comb until it turns yellow. then simmer it in five sheng of water until two sheng are left. drink the decoction in three drafts. this is a drug that will cure the patient very effectively." two other cases of human-drug treatments for demonic medicine are sānshī 三尸 "three corpses; demonic spirits believed to live in the human body and hasten death" and gǔdú 蠱毒 gu poisoning; a poison produced by venomous insects; cast a black magic spirit possession over someone". the first bencao gangmu prescription for human nails is not from chinese medical texts but from daoist rituals for expelling what cooper & sivin describe as the "three corpse-worms 三尸, the chief of the "inner gods" who are to the individual microcosm what the celestial bureaucracy is to the cosmos." prescription 52.6.1, the 斬三尸法 "method of beheading the three corpses", involves supernaturally cutting the nails in accordance with the traditional 60-day sexagenary cycle in the chinese calendar and chinese astrology. to kill sanshi. the book taishang xuanke: cut fingernails on gengchen days and cut toenails on jiawu days. burn the nails into ash on the 16th day of the seventh month of the year. take the ash by mouth with water. in this way all the sanshi and the nine worms will turn into ash. it is also said that on the days of jiayin , sanshi will invade the hands. trim the fingernails on those days. sanshi will invade the feet on the days of jiawu so trim the toenails on those days. luo footnotes that daoists believe sanshi to be "a kind of spirit haunting a patient. it may also be manifested as subcutaneous nodes appearing on three portions of the body cavity." gudu-poisoning diseases are supposedly treatable with four human drugs: dandruff, teeth, feces, and placenta. for instance (52.29.6) "to treat gudu (disease caused by noxious agents produced by various parasites), no matter whether caused by a herb, a snake, or a dung beetle: it seems as if such things enter into the throat, causing terrible pain and making the patient feel as if he is dying. wash a ziheche/placenta hominis/dried human placenta and cut it into slices. dry the slices in the sun and grind them into powder. wash down one qianbi of the powder each time with boiled water." modern medicine present day chinese doctors and herbalists continue to prescribe human drugs, despite their lack of proven efficacy. cooper & sivin note that a modern tcm pharmacognosy handbook lists 634 medicinal substances, including 5 from humans: placenta, fingernails, ashed hair, urine, and urine sediment. four centuries after li shizhen considered the bioethical and biomedical dilemmas of using human drugs, 20th-century technological and medical advances have raised new related questions of organ transplants, transplantation medicine, organ trade, tissue banks, human cloning, and the commodification of human body parts.