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Gypsum (石膏): mining, crushing, and distinguishing a mineral medicine

Gypsum is known as shí gāo in Chinese medicine. This field note centres on where the material lives or grows, how it is collected, and what processing changes before it reaches professional practice.

Season 2, episode 8 excerpt: Gypsum · The Tale of Chinese Medicine Official Channel

Where it lives and how it grows

Gypsum does not grow. It forms as a mineral deposit through geological processes involving water and calcium-rich sediments, often over very long periods.

Harvest

The material is quarried rather than picked. Medical use requires a suitable mineral source, removal of surrounding rock, and testing for identity and contaminants.

Processing

Raw medicinal gypsum is cleaned and crushed. Calcining changes its water content and physical properties, so raw Shi Gao and calcined gypsum are not interchangeable.

Traditional uses and symptom patterns

Shi Gao appears in traditional formulas for intense heat patterns involving high fever, thirst, sweating, or irritability. High fever and altered consciousness require urgent medical evaluation.

What the evidence can and cannot say

The reviewed sources support source identity, material distinction, and the cultivation or processing account. They do not establish that this material is an effective treatment for a reader's symptoms; clinical recommendations, products, formulas, and doses remain outside this article.

Safety and interactions

Construction-grade plaster is not medicinal gypsum. Identity, particle contamination, kidney function, and the rest of a formula matter; self-treatment of fever with mineral powder is unsafe.

Sources

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