Trachea into left and right main bronchi. The trachea begins level with the sixth cervical vertebra and the carina is found at the level of the fifth thoracic vertebra (T5), opposite the sternal angle and can be positioned up to two vertebrae lower or higher, depending on breathing. The trachea is surrounded by rings of hyaline cartilage; these rings are incomplete and C-shaped. The cricoid cartilage is attached to the first tracheal ring at top of the trachea and acts as the bottom of the larynx. There are fifteen to twenty rings in total, separated by narrow intervals. These reinforce the
Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body Li Shizhen's (1597) "Bencao gangmu", the classic materia medica of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), included 35 human drugs, including organs, bodily fluids, and excreta. Crude drugs derived from the human body were commonplace in the early history of medicine. Some of these TCM human drug usages are familiar from alternative medicine, such as medicinal breast milk and urine therapy. Others are uncommon, such as the "mellified man", which was a foreign nostrum allegedly prepared from the mummy of a holy man who only ate honey during his last days and whose corpse