Five-Finger Solution: Alternative Doc Says Its All In The Hand

http://www.queenstribune.com/feature/Five-FingerSolutionAlterna.html

By CHARLES ERICKSON
Jong Seo Lim, a chain-smoking acupuncturist and herbal-medicine man in Woodside, speaks in a whisper.As Dr. Lim explained recently, with hushed tones and hand gestures and wearing blue surgical scrubs, he lost his voice in 2001 – after he poured cold water over his head while in a bathtub.That was the year before he opened Samson Herb and the Ko Ryo Sooji Therapy Center, his dual businesses at 56-16 Woodside Ave. The little storefront serves as an acupuncture treatment center, pharmaceutical plant and possibly as his living quarters. Years Of ExperienceLim, who said he came to the United States from Korea in 1977, isn’t very good with time. He pulled his checkbook from the drawer of a desk in the front room and tried to use its entries to fix the establishment’s opening date. He finally turned around and consulted one of the framed certificates hung on a wall. It put the opening as having occurred in April 2002.Other papers displayed in the front of his office proclaim him a master of Oriental medicine, a diplomat in acupuncture, a 1973 graduate of the Koryo-Sooji-Chim Research Institute. Another certificate, dated 1980, is all in Korean and shows a photo of the proprietor, looking much younger, as he appeared 26 years ago.Before his vocal problems, Dr. Lim probably spoke in heavily accented English. However, he understands the Anglo tongue well and conveyed information to a questioner by nodding to affirm that certain statements and details repeated back to him were correct.The only employee here, Lim practices mainly hand acupuncture but learned both this and the full-body style in Korea.Herbal SolutionsIf his probing fails to restore their health, the doctor makes his patients herbal remedies.Held on shelves throughout the store are the various herbs that are used in the manufacture of more than 500 different natural medicines. They come in large plastic bags that make crackling sounds whenever they are handled.A recent herbal inventory included paeoniae radix, forsythiae fructus, mori folium, angelicae gigantis radix, achyranthis radix and radix ginseng. Many of the bags carried the markings of a Woodside importing company.Lim opened the freezer portion of a white refrigerator that is kept in front. It would not look out of place in a modern kitchen.He removed two wedge-shaped objects, both frozen inside clear plastic. Except for their coloring – one was mostly brown, the other was mostly black – they resembled a summertime treat of the kind sold at corner markets.“I made it. I packed it,” he said of the medicines, kept frozen to preserve their healing abilities.

Samson Herb and the Ko Ryo Sooji Therapy Center operate along a mostly residential section of Woodside Ave. PHOTOS BY CHARLES ERICKSON
The Magical Mystery TourLeading an impromptu tour of the facility, Lim showed off some secrets of where and how he practices his medicine. Two curtained acupuncture rooms, one for women and one for men, are in the small hallway that separates the front and rear of the store.An Asian woman, looking weak and pale and being fed a yellowish herbal remedy by a female relative, was slumped in the women’s chamber. The smell was like that of steamed bamboo and stale tobacco smoke.Seeing a camera, her husband, a smiling man in a white dress shirt, offered her as the subject of a photograph. But this seemed like a further indignity for the suffering woman.Lim began making herbal medicines atop a wooden desk. Illumination is from a lamp with no shade. He measures quantities with a post office scale, and chops or mulches herbs with a pair of kitchen blenders. One is an old Osterizer, the other is newer and has Korean script on its control pad.The mash is then placed in cotton bags and walked to a complicated device positioned against the far wall. It is constructed mostly of stainless steel, and the wheel crank used to tighten shut one of the cylinders gives the cooker the appearance of a fixture on a naval warship.Also in back are a small bathroom and, unseen, perhaps a place where the medicine man sleeps. Lim’s comprehension of English seemed to wane when asked about where he makes his home.He slowly walked out to the front of the store. The Key To Everything“Hand is important,” Lim said as a visitor joined him again in the lobby. He was standing next to a wall poster that showed a skinless human in side profile from the head to the hips.The Latin alphabet was absent from the chart, but the imagery was clear. Various organs were shown in expanded size – eyes, heart, lungs, intestines, bladder and others – and lines were drawn from them to the illustrated front and backsides of a hand.And then, using his right hand, the same hand he uses to hold his Marlboro Ultra Light 100s, Lim tapped the poster and repeated, “Hand is important.”