Honestly, I'm as skeptical as the next person, Mimi, but they really did work where all else had failed. Lots of western medicine cures are derived from similar ingredients as are in chinese medicine, and poultices are used in western medicine, too, so it's not really magic :-)

I also get really, really bad poison oak, and the only thing I've found to get rid of it is an oral chinese medicine product (alright, steriods work too, but I avoid them because they make me crazier than I already am. And doctors don't really understand why steroids work, either!).