After Yura and I were finished with the names and contemporary definitions of the qualities of plants, we got busy with "The Canon." That also proved to be difficult. I won’t tire readers with all the details. I would only like to point out that Eastern medicine considers the curative effect and properties of herbs considering their natural qualities. They are determined by two out of four qualities: dryness or moistness and heat or cold. On top of that, each of the qualities of a plant has different degrees. For example, chamomile is hot in the third degree and dry in the second. Over 800 herbs and minerals were described in "The Canon," and not only their properties but also their impact on different organs. It’s not difficult to imagine how closely it was necessary to read and reread the lines of "The Canon" while seeking out the properties of each of the herbs.
You may call me a queer bird as Yura did when I put the herbs in plastic jars and attached cheerful colorful stickers, as well as a drawing showing each herb. I arranged them alphabetically on the shelves. “What’s so funny about it?” I was indignant. “Look how beautiful they are.”
Though Yura had always liked to make fun of his cousin, he himself took a very active part in it all. Our pharmacy wasn’t just a storage place, and my cousin and I weren’t just keepers of supplies. We were pharmacists. After sorting out the herbs, it was necessary to prepare 150 herb combinations according to Mukhitdin’s prescriptions for his New York patients as soon as possible. We had to buy everything necessary – a centrifuge, an apparatus for grinding dry fruits and seeds, a big mortar, a scale, measuring spoons… It’s hard to enumerate everything.
We got down to business right after the doctor’s departure. We spent all our days off and early mornings on working days in our pharmacy. It was brightly lit by a floor lamp and other portable lamps. On the washer, which served as a table, there were notes and empty little packages in front of me. I would read the relevant note, write a patient’s name on a package, get the necessary herbs off the shelf and hand a jar to my cousin…”Strawflower, corn silk, sage, senna, saffron.”
It was a challenge to find the needed herb fast enough out of 150 of them while keeping in mind the names of the other ones we needed to find after that… Soon, my memory began to learn them, and my hand would reach toward the place where a required jar stood. Yura hardly managed to keep up with me – now he needed to chip pieces off of a fruit with a tweezers, next to grind a combination of herbs in the centrifuge and put it in one of the small packages I had prepared, and, God forbid, not to add a wrong amount. That was what I supervised.
“Less saffron, just one pinch.”
“I know that,” Yura would mumble.
It felt as if we were at a conveyer belt, and we were as tired as factory workers. After making ten combinations of herbs we would be exhausted. We sweated, and there was ringing in our ears from the clatter of the mortar and the centrifuge. Our hands and faces were covered with dust from the herbs. The spicy smell of herbs, at first so pleasant, would fill our throats and lungs, and we would begin to choke. Yura was sneezing so hard from the dust and smells that he had to put on a mask, and that was with the door to the street open! But the patients needed their medications. The patients were sick so we couldn’t afford to rest. We prepared 20 to 25 combinations every day.
Of course, we got tired but the work in our “pharmacy” gave us more and more satisfaction and knowledge every passing day. After all, we consulted "The Canon" and checked the doctor’s notes all the time. The desire to give up everything, to go to school, to become Eastern physicians and to deal only in herbal treatment was growing and growing.
Yura had wanted to become the doctor’s pupil long ago when he, an 18-year-old youth who had inhaled toxic fumes at the Institute's lab, was healed by Mukhitdin.
“I couldn’t make up my mind,” Yura sighed. “Pulse diagnosticians weren't recognized as physicians in the Soviet Union. Besides, I wasn’t ready to drop out of the Institute.”
This time there was no reason not to be ready for it – he had been laid off. They were cutting back staff everywhere, and Yura had lost his job as a computer programmer. He had been trying to find a job without success for a few months. He was gloomy and anxious. One day he came running to me, merry and smiling, his eyes sparkling. “Valera, I’ve signed up for the school of Eastern physicians!”
Just look at him! That was a bold step, a change of fate… I looked at Yura with respect and even envy. “That’s my man!”
“Valera, how about you? Let’s study together.”
That would certainly be good. It would be wonderful, but what about my business with David? It had just begun functioning. It was 2000, and we had been able to afford to buy a new house for our company.
I rushed to David to seek his advice. I told him that I would work at The Summit during the day and take classes in the evening. David threw up his hands.
“Do you want to sit in two chairs? No, you’ll have to leave the company, though I won’t be able to cope with it alone.”
Yura didn’t approve of my intention either. “Have you looked at the curriculum? Just the practical studies are hundreds of hours. No, Valera, you need to choose between them.”
I was plagued by it for a long time, but my sense of responsibility prevailed. How could I abandon my partner and friend? A week or two during the doctor’s visits when Yura and I were busy with him was a different thing. Even then I felt uncomfortable seeing how overburdened David was.
I never entered that school. But I was determined to study on my own. I did not peruse "The Canon" as before. I studied it comprehensively, and I found time for that because I wanted to do it.
…I wake up. It’s still dark outside, but I know without looking at the clock that it’s close to 4:00. I’ve been getting up at that hour for many months. I can see a thick book on the bedside table in the reflection of the electronic clock. It’s "The Canon of Medical Science." I stretch out my hand and run my fingers slowly over its rough cover. This touch helps rid me of my remaining drowsiness. Carefully, so as not to wake Svetlana, I get out of bed, and in half an hour, after washing and dressing, I am sitting with the book in my hands in the recording center. I’ve read somewhere that written materials are remembered better when recorded and listened to. That has helped me a lot. In the morning, I record "The Canon" on a disk, and in the afternoon while I'm driving, I turn on the player and listen. I drive a lot every day, not less than an hour.
I made two dozen disks. I treasured them and made copies – one for Yura who had also begun to study "The Canon," the second one to keep as a reserve in case something happened to the ones we were using. I dreamed of recording all six volumes of "The Canon," and of course people would hear about my recording, the only one in the world. They would call and write requesting a copy… In a word, I had always been a dreamer and I remained one.
…Making myself comfortable on a low chair, I turned on some quiet piano music, picked up a microphone and began to read. “The influence of the Changes in the Quality of the Atmosphere… A hot atmosphere disperses the breath and has a relaxing effect. A moderate degree of heat induces redness by drawing blood to the surface of the body. A great degree of heat results in a yellow color because it breaks down (the components of) the blood which has been drawn to the cutaneous vessels. It also evokes sweating, diminishes the amount of urine, impairs the digestion and induces thirst."