It is the time to eat crab in the golden autumn, when the chrysanthemum is fragrant and the crab is fat and the meat is full of cream. In recent years, with the branding and commercialization of crab culture, crab eating in the golden autumn has become popular in China and has spread all over the north and south of the country. The crab is so tasty that there is a saying that “a plate of crab is a top dish”, and in “Dream of the Red Chamber”, Lin Daiyu once wrote a poem saying: “The cheeks are sealed with tender jade, and the shells are full of red fat. The crab can not be eaten more than one, the motherland medicine thought that crab is cold, clear blood heat, more food can hurt the spleen and stomach of the Yang, resulting in abdominal pain, diarrhea, stomach cold, vomiting and other uncomfortable symptoms. This is especially true for people with a cold spleen and stomach, who have a poor appetite for long periods of time, like a hot diet, and are prone to bloating and diarrhea, so eating more crab is more likely to add to the discomfort. In order to resist the coldness of the crab, people often use ginger and crab cooked together, or ginger mixed with vinegar for dipping when eating crab, or eating crab with drinking yellow wine; in order to drive away the fishy smell of crab, some people often put the cooked crab and chrysanthemum on the same plate. As Xue Baochai said in “Dream of the Red Chamber”, “wine is not enough to beat the fishy, but also use chrysanthemum, the nature of the cold must be ginger. All of these reflect the wisdom of our people’s health, but ginger is pungent and can affect the original fragrance of crab meat in excess; yellow wine is after all wine, which may not be suitable for women, children or many people outside of Jiangnan; and they are only to ease the coldness of crab, and lack good treatment for the discomfort that occurs after eating crab. So, is there any remedy that can relieve the crab’s coldness without destroying its fragrance, and can also cure the many discomfort symptoms after eating crab? Yes, that is – perilla leaves. Perilla leaf is the leaf of the herb Perilla, family Labiatae, which is pungent, warm in nature, and belongs to the spleen and lung meridians. The Compendium of the Materia Medica contains the following words: “Promotes the flow of qi and relaxes the middle, clears phlegm and lungs, harmonizes blood, warms the middle, relieves pain, fixes asthma, and calms the fetus”. The Medicinal Materia Medica: “The leaves are eaten raw as a soup to kill all fish and crab poison.” Perilla leaves are aromatic and can be cooked with crab to dispel the fishy smell of crab and warm the coldness of crab meat, as well as make the crab diffuse with the unique aroma of perilla leaves without affecting the taste of the crab itself. You can use perilla decoction or tea to drink when you have stomach cold, stomach pain, bloating, diarrhea and other uncomfortable symptoms after overeating crab. Modern medicine has confirmed that perilla has a good antibacterial effect on E. coli. The use of shiso leaves to restrain the coldness of fish and crab is widely used in Japanese cuisine. In order to reduce the coldness of raw fish or crab meat in Japanese cuisine, shiso leaves are often used as an ingredient while cooking, and shiso leaves are rolled around the fish and crab meat to make sushi. Shiso leaves have also been used for a long time to treat stomach discomfort caused by eating crab. During the Tang Dynasty, a famous doctor named Wu and his disciple were eating at a restaurant on the Chongyang Festival when they met several wealthy gentry who were competing to eat crabs, and he went up to discourage them on the grounds that they were cold and should not be eaten in excess. Dr. Wu then asked his disciple to go to the back of the mountain to pick perilla leaves and come back to make a decoction for backup. In the evening, the boss came to Dr. Wu in a hurry, saying that some of the gentlemen were rolling on the ground with stomach pains, some were suffering from abdominal pains, and some were nauseous and vomiting, and asked Dr. Wu to go and save their lives. Dr. Wu said, “I have prepared for this. He sent the shopkeeper to take the decocted perilla leaf soup to the sons, and they all said they were very comfortable and their symptoms disappeared soon after drinking it.