A Chinese woman who has been collecting her fingernail clippings since childhood to sell for 150 yuan (US$21) per kg has sparked curiosity online.
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The woman from northern China’s Hebei province was selling her fingernails as an ingredient for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Called jin tui in TCM, human fingernails are said to be effective in clearing heat and toxic elements from a person’s system. They also help wounds heal.
The Chinese medical text by Tang dynasty doctor Sun Simiao (581-682), Qianjin Yaofang, or Essential Formulas Worth a Thousand in Gold for Emergencies, included human fingernails as an ingredient to treat children’s abdominal bloating.
Parents would burn their fingernails to ashes and apply them to the mother’s breast for the child to drink mixed with milk.
He Lan, a senior TCM doctor at Peking University Third Hospital, said the fingernails were still being prescribed by TCM doctors at hospitals in the 1960s.
As more ingredients were found that offered similar effects, the use of fingernails declined.
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