with the shortage of food, so did we face a shortage of medical supplies. Desperate, I gave orders for the ill to be treated with traditional Koryo medicine instead. We used watermelon and beer to reduce swelling. Animals were hunted for their curative properties. Instead of surgically removing tumors—we had no anesthesia—doctors administered an extract of ginseng and mushrooms. According to tradition, such an extract enhanced a patient’s natural healing ability and changed malignant tumors into benign ones. All these procedures worked exactly as well as one might expect.
