I am studying Chinese herbal medicine, which involves a massive amount of memorization. I am required to remember about 400 single herbs, each one has a list of properties and functions that I need to recall. Some of the herbs are very similar to each other. Then I have to memorize about 200 formulas, which involves knowing the action of the formula, the diagnosis that it treats, and the list of symptoms I am likely to see. And again, some of the formulas (many of which I must know all the single herb ingredients) are very very similar in function. I have used memory palaces to some extent, and had moderate success, but I am having trouble. There is so much to remember for each formula and each single herb. You would think that things like memorizing symptoms would be easy, because I can make some pretty memorable pictures. But a single symptom, or groups of symptoms, may be present in 50 formulas. And I start getting confused when I have a similar image or group of images repeating in multiple places. I am really stuck. All the names of the herbs of formulas are also in Chinese…which just complicates things more. Any thoughts?
Here is what I would do.
First, learn the formulae and the symptoms per formula. So focus on the formula.
Then - reversed - learn the formulae per symptom. So focus on the symptoms.
There is not much one can do about getting confused except becoming intimately familiar with the stuff you learn.
I suppose it’s the “how” that I was wondering about. I could make a specific image for each symptom, and then group them together in a place. I would probably end up with several hundred “symptom” images. I suppose you are saying the way to not get confused by repeating images is to keep working with the memory palace until I remember, and ok…that makes sense. Perhaps, I should have asked more specifically if people have techniques to not get confused by an image that keeps repeating in different rooms in your palace. Is there another method that might be better than a memory palace?
This is great. Chinese Herbal Medicine is somehow effective and it is natural too. I also want to learn how to make a chinese herbal medicine. Thank you for sharing this.
You could try putting the herbs that act in similar ways in the same memory palaces(all the anxiolytics are in one memory palace, all the libido boosters in another…)
Depending how many different types of symptoms there are, you could try grouping common pairs of symptoms together into a single image(like we do with numbers, we group 0-9 and 0-9 together into a single image of 00-99). Repeating images in different memory palaces are usually not a big problem. The problem might be having to store too much information into a single image, or into a single ‘story’. You might wanna check out gavinos massive memory palace system, use mini-palaces for the herbs that have a ton of information on them.