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PENN
and small wild mammals are shipped downriver from Canton to be dumped here on the Hong Kong waterfront along with the more conventional foods; or they bump in lorries from the land border to the city shops, and then to herbalists or the walthy restuarant clientele. 1
The parts of these creatures - their livers, eyes, brains and other organs-are osteemed as delicacies and cures for all manner of ills. Moats and soups of the carnivores and 'eagles' are believed to warm the body in the winter and bring new vigour to flagging sexual
energies - the fiercar the creature the better the result.
This is a Hong Kong Chinese physician.
Chinese Physician
There is a physiological explanation in this feeling of warmth after eating these kinds of meats. What we call the specific dynamic action of food and all kinds of food after you.eat it will produce heat, but certain types of amino acids that are
in the protein in these meats of those kinds of animals that
produce heat, the dynamic action, much more quickly and they feel this heat for a long period of time - maybe 12 hours or 16 hours - you get it, say, an hour after you cat.
So in the wintertime, when the weather is cold, people are cold and have to wear a lot of clothing. But after you eat a bowl
of say snake moat soup you do not have to wear so much clothing. I mean there is a proof it is a very very good food and very
nutritious food.
The gall the bile from the gall bladder of the snake is very good for rheumatism. Now as you know...........
(PP It really is?)
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I think that may have some effect. Because bile has a lot of cholesterol and it may contain some corticoid material inside
the bile. Now, cortisone is very effective for the treatment
of arthritis. Now that may be the reason: I'm not saying that
it is the reason.
However, about, say, eyes of the owl is good for the eyes, and I think it's too far fetched, too far fetched. I cannot accept that. But this is the belief, and all kinds of superstitions.
Hechtel
When ringing in the New Territories and suffering from gout on one occasion I was assured by one elderly gentleman that I should eat soup made of kingfisher's head. This was very, very good for any sort of complaint of the feet or legs.
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Fred Hechtel is the President of the Hong Kong Birdwatching
Society and Hong Kong contact for the International Council for Bird
Preservation.