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Poor cattle, they suffer for / from their gallstones in more ways than one.  If you want to know why, read the previous Language Log posts on bezoars, for which see "Selected readings" below.

For linguists, one of the most interesting things about the Chinese term for "bezoar", niúhuáng 牛黃 ("cow yellow"), is that it is among the earliest attestable borrowings into Sinitic from Sanskrit, viz., gorocanā गोरोचना ("bright yellow orpiment prepared from the bile of cattle; yellow patch for the head of a cow; bezoar") — already in pre-Buddhist times.

Because they are so expensive and sought after by believers in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), bezoars are back in the news again:

Cattle Gallstones, Worth Twice as Much as Gold, Drive a Global Smuggling Frenzy
A prized ingredient in China’s $60 billion traditional medicine industry, gallstones have become the must-have item among underground traders and armed robbers in Brazil

By Samantha Pearson, Wall Street Journal (Jan. 19, 2025)

A Brazilian pasture holds a potential fortune on the hoof.

No matter what you call them — calculus bovis is the scientific term — its hard to ignore cattle gallstones aka bezoars, despite their unglamorous names.

One of the most prized ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine, cattle gallstones have become so valuable that traders are willing to pay as much as $5,800 an ounce—twice the price of gold—for the nuggets of hardened bile.

Herbalists use them to treat strokes as they grapple with a surge in hypertension, obesity and other conditions familiar in the affluent West. Such maladies are now widespread in China after a half-century of rapid development and the changing diets that have come with it. Surging demand for gallstones has sparked a global treasure hunt across the world’s top beef-producing regions, places as far apart as Texas and Australia, and especially here on the savannah of Brazil, the world’s largest cattle exporter.

When they first encounter the mad scramble for cattle gallstones, law enforcement officials in Brazil and elsewhere who have to deal with the massive crime swirling around these nondescript, xanthous stones think they are a joke, which they are anything but.

Increasingly focused on hypertension and heart disease concentrated among China’s aging population, Chinese traditional medicine is now a $60 billion-a-year industry, according to the World Health Organization. China’s government and state media have encouraged its use as a source of national pride, especially during the recent Covid-19 pandemic, when Chinese scientists scrambled to develop vaccines and test more conventional treatments.

Beijing has also promoted traditional medicine overseas to complement its worldwide infrastructure push, building traditional health clinics in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Mauritius to encourage locals to adopt it. Last month the government announced plans to train some 1,300 health workers to be sent out to countries involved in China’s globe-spanning Belt and Road port and transport initiative.

Conservationists blame traditional Chinese medicine for an alarming rise in wildlife trafficking. Governments have struggled to contain the trade in rare animal parts, from rhinoceros horns to pangolin scales and tigers’ penises. While the harvesting of cattle gallstones itself raises few concerns among conservationists, the substance is often packaged with parts from endangered species. For instance, a pill used to treat strokes is made from a combination of gallstones and rhino horns.

The article goes on for many more paragraphs, detailing the staggering scope and nature of the rampant crime surrounding the bezoar industry, the extraction, production, and distribution of the medicinal powder, the physiology and pharmacology of its function, and so forth.

Brazilian gallstone traders pay between $1,700 and $4,000 an ounce for a gallstone, which means a single gallstone can be worth more than all the meat on a cow.

The incredible stories about how the rapidly expanding bezoar trade is carried out in East Asia, with Hong Kong the focal entry point, are breathtaking and mind boggling.  No wonder bezoars took on such a mythical / magical status as panaceas and universal antidotes in the Harry Potter series — and in actual human history.

Selected readings

• "Recycled bezoar" (11/20/24)
• "Bezoar" (8/2/21)
• "From Basilisks to Bezoars: The Surprising History of Harry Potter's Magical World",  The New York Academy of Medicine
• ZHU Qingzhi, "Some Linguistic Evidence for Early Cultural Exchange Between China and India", Sino-Platonic Papers, 66 (March, 1995), 1-7 (pdf)

[h.t. Mark Metcalf]

January 20, 2025 @ 11:14 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and animals, Language and economics, Language and medicine

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