The Herb Cabinet 本草

三七 sān qī

Panax notoginseng · notoginseng, tienchi

Warm Sweet · Slightly bitter LiverStomach

“The battlefield root — it stops bleeding without trapping the bruise, which no other drawer manages. Soldiers carried it; so does every Chinese first-aid shelf since.” — Lao Xinglin

What the tradition says

Ginseng's cousin from Yunnan holds the pharmacy's most paradoxical talent: it stops bleeding while dispersing stasis — staunching the wound without locking the bruise in place^[1]. That made san qi the trauma herb: falls, strikes, sprains, battlefield wounds (it headlines the famous Yunnan Baiyao powder), and internal bleeding patterns^[1]. The tradition also chews it for chest pain from stasis, classically paired with dan shen.

What the research says

San qi shares the Panax saponin chemistry — over two hundred ginsenosides identified — with laboratory literature reporting hemostatic, anticoagulant, cardioprotective, and anti-inflammatory signals, an oddly two-handed profile that mirrors the traditional claim^[2]. Human trials cluster in Chinese cardiovascular practice and haven't yet crossed into rigorous international replication; filed as pharmacologically fascinating, clinically unproven.

Where to be careful

• An herb that touches clotting from both sides deserves respect: avoid alongside anticoagulants and around surgery.
• Traditionally withheld in pregnancy^[1].
• The raw/steamed forms are used differently in the tradition (raw for bleeding and stasis, steamed as a tonic) — market products often don't say which they are.

In the pharmacy

Hard, knobby little roots — "copper skin, iron bone" in the graders' jargon — from Wenshan, Yunnan, sold whole or powdered. The name means "three-seven": three years minimum in the ground, or the leaf-and-stalk count, depending which storyteller you ask^[1].

Reviewed 2026-08-26