This custom is actually "taking poison"! Stop it now!

Audit expert: Wang Guoyi

Postdoctoral fellow in Nutrition and Food Safety, China Agricultural University

Around the Dragon Boat Festival, the weather is hot, and various insects and snakes are very active, often harming crops and humans, so there is a saying: "Dragon Boat Festival, the weather is hot; the five poisonous animals wake up, and there is no peace."

Therefore, in ancient times, the Dragon Boat Festival, in addition to commemorating Qu Yuan, also reminded people to be careful and guard against snakes, insects, rats and ants.

Therefore, the ancients had the custom of drinking realgar wine during the Dragon Boat Festival, the purpose of which was to kill bacteria, repel insects and pray for peace.

Source: pixabay

Moreover, in the folk legend "The Legend of the White Snake", there is a classic plot in which the White Snake reveals her true form after drinking realgar wine by mistake. The legendary plot is combined with the custom of drinking realgar wine on Dragon Boat Festival, which makes people more impressed by the combination of Dragon Boat Festival and drinking realgar wine.

What is realgar?

Realgar wine, as the name suggests, is wine with realgar added. So what exactly is realgar?

Realgar , also known as cockscomb stone, is a mineral containing arsenic sulfide with a chemical formula of α-As4S4, often coexisting with orpiment (As2S3). In ancient times, realgar was used as a traditional Chinese medicine. The Compendium of Materia Medica records that realgar is pungent and toxic, and has the effects of detoxifying snake and insect venom, drying dampness, killing insects, and curing diseases.

The Chinese medicine realgar comes from minerals, so it is a mineral medicine. The use of minerals as medicine, especially minerals containing heavy metals, is one of the characteristics of Chinese herbal compound. For example, the common cinnabar contains the heavy metal mercury. Realgar is widely used in Chinese herbal prescriptions, including Angong Niuhuang Pills, Niuhuang Jiedu Pills and other well-known classic prescriptions.

As a mineral medicine, realgar contains a small amount of heavy metal salts and elemental arsenic. We now know that minerals containing heavy metals are basically poisonous, so realgar itself is also poisonous . It "fights poison with poison", so it has the effect of killing bacteria and detoxifying.

Realgar crystals

Source: Wikipedia/Robert M. Lavinsky

In traditional folk customs, the ancients were quite cautious about using poisonous realgar wine. During the Dragon Boat Festival, adults only drank a very small amount of realgar wine prepared according to traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions, while children would dip chopsticks in the wine and touch their foreheads. Most of the wine was sprinkled in front of and behind the house to disinfect and sterilize, "avoid the five poisons" (one theory is that they are snakes, scorpions, centipedes, geckos, and spiders), and pray for safety.

In modern times, realgar is still used in clinical medicine, but it is rarely used alone. It is often used in combination with drugs to achieve the purpose of increasing efficacy and reducing toxicity. It has been made clear that realgar is effective in the treatment of various types of leukemia and tumors.

However, although realgar has definite effects and is widely used in traditional Chinese medicines, its toxic side effects are also obvious: when arsenic accumulates in the body, it can cause damage to the liver, blood, nervous system and other systems. Therefore, how to balance the medicinal properties and safety of realgar is still a research focus of modern clinical medicine.

In fact, nowadays realgar is mainly used as an industrial raw material. Because its main ingredient is arsenic disulfide, modern industry uses realgar to extract the highly toxic substance arsenic (arsenic trioxide). In addition, as an orange-yellow solid mineral, it is also widely used in the manufacture of pigments. Because it contains a variety of sulfides, it is also a raw material for the industrial manufacture of fireworks, glass, etc.

Should we drink realgar wine during the Dragon Boat Festival?

First of all, from the perspective of practicability, it is quite troublesome to drink realgar wine in modern society.

On the one hand, because the toxicity of realgar has always been controversial, according to regulations, pharmacies are no longer allowed to sell realgar at will; of course, realgar is a traditional Chinese medicine and can be purchased with a prescription, but it is not feasible for individuals to buy realgar to make realgar wine using the traditional method.

On the other hand, although some businesses sell realgar wine, the product introductions have stated that it cannot be drunk and can only be used externally. A common usage scenario is to sprinkle some realgar wine around before fishing in the wild to prevent snakes, insects, rats, ants, etc. However, experiments have shown that snakes and insects actually avoid alcohol because of the pungent smell, not because of the realgar in it, so you can just spray alcohol and there is no need to buy realgar wine specifically.

Shaoxing rice wine can be used to prepare realgar wine

Source: Wikipedia/udono

Secondly, from the perspective of folk customs, there is no need to continue the tradition of drinking realgar wine to "avoid the five poisons" because the risks of drinking realgar wine are too high.

Our current living environment is very different from that of ancient times. We no longer need to use the ancient method of drinking or sprinkling realgar wine to prevent and control the "five poisons". For insect repellent, a bottle of floral water is a better choice.

Since the Dragon Boat Festival became the first Chinese festival to be included in the World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009, people have attached more and more importance to the Dragon Boat Festival, and various folk celebrations have become more and more abundant. Dragon boat racing, eating rice dumplings, hanging sachets, etc. are all healthy and beautiful ways. Therefore, the custom of drinking realgar wine, which poses a certain threat to health, can be appropriately adjusted. For example, it can be changed to sprinkling realgar wine in front of and behind the house instead of requiring drinking it.

Source: pexels

People's emphasis on traditional festivals is indispensable to cultural inheritance, but as to whether the custom of drinking realgar wine should be passed down during the Dragon Boat Festival, modern people should first have a deep and comprehensive understanding of traditional culture, and then find a way that is suitable for modern society and conducive to cultural inheritance. Only by treating our traditional festivals and culture scientifically and dialectically will they become more dazzling and brilliant.