Xian Ren Zhang

Xian Ren Zhang is the prickly pear cactus Opuntia dillenii, the flattened stem-segments (cladodes), and sometimes the fruit, being used as folk medicine especially in southern China and Taiwan. Bitter and cool, it moves Qi and invigorates the Blood, clears Heat and resolves toxicity, and stops bleeding. It is used for Heat-toxin swellings, boils, carbuncles, mumps and mastitis, for stomach and epigastric pain and gastric ulcer, for dysentery and enteritis, for cough, and topically for burns, scalds and snakebite.

The mucilaginous stem is most often pounded fresh and applied as a poultice over inflamed sores and swellings, or decocted internally. Modern folk use also extends to diabetes and hypertension. Its demulcent, cooling and astringent qualities suit Heat and Damp-Heat presentations rather than cold-deficiency patterns.

Prickly pear (Opuntia spp.) has extensive documented use among Native American peoples of the Southwest and Mexico. The Pima, Tohono O'odham, Apache, and Navajo consumed the fruits (tunas) and young pads (nopales) as food and used the mucilaginous pad pulp as a topical poultice for burns, wounds, and inflamed skin (Moerman, 1998). The Aztecs valued nopal medicinally for diabetes-like conditions and as a diuretic, a use continued in contemporary Mexican curanderismo (Hernandez, 1577).