She Tui (Snake Skin Slough)

Chinese Herb Actions

Chinese Herb Dosage

• What is the typical dosage of She Tui?

  Our record gives 2–3 g in decoction and 0.3–0.6 g as powder (Chen & Chen), with Bensky giving 1.5–3 g in decoction. That is a very small range by the standards of the materia medica, and it is an order of magnitude below the whole-snake medicinals — a reflection of what the material is: a thin keratin sheath rather than a body.

  • Decoction — 2–3 g (Chen & Chen); 1.5–3 g (Bensky). The two published ranges agree closely.
  • Powder — 0.3–0.6 g taken directly (Chen & Chen). The powder is not diluted by extraction, so it is dosed at roughly a fifth of the decoction amount and is never substituted gram-for-gram.
  • For comparison within the snake group — Wu Shao She is recorded at 5–10 g in decoction and Bai Hua She at 3–10 g. She Tui is the smallest dose of the three by a wide margin.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (the recorded ranges for She Tui, attributed as held on file to Chen & Chen and Bensky, and the recorded ranges for Wu Shao She and Bai Hua She). Reference only — not a prescription.

Chinese Herb Contraindications & Cautions

• Are there cautions for She Tui?

  She Tui is contraindicated in pregnancy — that is the single caution our record holds, and there is no recorded toxicity to sit alongside it. For a wind-dispelling animal medicinal that is a notably clean profile, and it is consistent with the very small doses used.

  • Pregnancy — contraindicated, per our record.
  • Animal-derived (dietary and ethical reference note) — a shed snake skin. Not suitable for vegetarians or vegans, and the animal origin should be disclosed to anyone who asks about ingredient sourcing.
  • Pattern caution — the general caution for wind-dispelling herbs applies: they are drying and dispersing, so blood deficiency, yin deficiency and blood dryness are the settings in which they are used cautiously or not at all. Best used under a qualified practitioner.
  • Identity of the material (quality reference note) — because the drug is defined by what it is rather than by a single species, and because chopped animal material is difficult to inspect, batch identity rests on the supplier. Both morphological and molecular methods for identifying sheds exist (see notes), which is exactly why they were developed.
  • Sourcing and legality — international trade in snake-derived material is regulated and reported, and legal status varies by country and by species. Anyone importing or dispensing outside China should check current local regulations.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (recorded pregnancy contraindication and the recorded “none noted” toxicity, as held on file); category cautions per published materia medica consensus, cross-referenced against multiple online sources; trade regulation per PMID 42278059, PMC 13255723, DOI 10.3390/ani16111624; identification methods per PMID 31966237, PMC 6517710, DOI 10.6620/ZS.2017.56-38 and PMID 33739020, PMC 7973747, DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-85803-4. Neutral reference disclosures, not usage instructions.

Chinese Herb Toxicity & Overdose

• Is She Tui toxic?

  No. Our record states “none noted,” and there is a straightforward physical reason for that: a shed skin contains no venom. Venom is produced in glands in the head of a venomous snake and delivered by its fangs; the slough is the outer keratin layer of the body wall, cast off intact. Even where the source animal is a venomous species, the shed skin is not a venom-bearing material — which is one reason this medicinal sits so far from Bai Hua She, the only snake medicinal on this site that our records classify as toxic.

  Analytical work outside medicine confirms what the material is: shed snake skin has been characterised and used as a keratin-containing natural biomass composite in a materials-science study of metal-ion adsorption. That is not a pharmacology paper, and we cite it only for the compositional point.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (recorded toxicity “none noted” for She Tui, and the toxic classification held for Bai Hua She, as held on file); PMID 39880249, DOI 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.140388 (shed snake skin characterised as a keratin-containing natural material). Reference note, not a safety guarantee and not a dosing instruction.

Herb-Drug Interactions

• Does She Tui interact with medications?

  No herb–drug interaction is documented for She Tui, and no pharmacokinetic study of it could be found in the published literature. There is also no venom-protein literature to raise an anticoagulation flag from, because a shed skin carries no venom. Absence of documented interactions is not the same as proof of safety — it reflects how little this material has been studied at all — and the pregnancy contraindication above takes priority over any interaction question. (Precautionary; flagged for practitioner confirmation.)

Western / Biomedical Research

Chinese Herb Clinical Studies & Research

Provided as research context — a summary of published biomedical study, not a therapeutic or medical claim.

• Is there modern research on She Tui (Exuvia Serpentis)?

  Almost none, and we would rather say so than pad the page. There are no controlled clinical trials of She Tui, no pharmacological studies of the decocted material that we could verify, and no pharmacokinetic work. The small literature that touches it at all is about what the material is and how to identify it, not about whether it works.

  • Documented ethnomedical use — a 2024 survey of animal-derived medicines used by the Gelao community in northern Guizhou records snake slough, described plainly as the shed skin of snakes, among the medicines in current traditional use, alongside cicada slough and the black-striped snake that yields Wu Shao She. The authors characterise the community’s animal medicines as drawn mainly from insects and domestic-animal derivatives that are not strictly protected. This is documentation of practice, not evidence of effect.
  • Identification of sheds — the most substantial relevant study collected 1,260 shed skins from 53 snake species and built the first identification guide for them, finding that most species could be told apart by eye or from a scanned image using retained pattern and scale morphology, with ontogenetic and intraspecific variation noted. Molecular quality control for mixed animal-derived crude drugs, using massively parallel sequencing of mitochondrial 12S rRNA, 16S rRNA and cytochrome oxidase I, has been demonstrated on moult products among other materials.
  • Material composition — shed snake skin has been investigated in materials science as a keratin-containing natural biomass composite for adsorbing metal ions from solution. It confirms the keratin composition and nothing else of medical relevance.
  • Ecology of sheds — work on shed skins incorporated into bird nests documents that sloughs persist and are encountered in the environment after moulting, which is the factual basis for the collection point made in the notes above.
  • Trade context — an analysis of official international trade data on China’s snake trade from 1975 to 2023 provides the regulatory background for snake-derived materials generally.

  Honest summary: She Tui is a traditional medicinal with essentially no modern evidence base. Its interest for a reader is historical, comparative and practical — what it is, how it differs from the whole-snake medicinals, and why that difference matters — rather than pharmacological.

  Sources: PMID 38429640, PMC 10908119, DOI 10.1186/s13002-024-00669-w (documented use of snake slough in Chinese ethnomedicine); PMID 31966237, PMC 6517710, DOI 10.6620/ZS.2017.56-38 (species identification of 1,260 shed skins); PMID 33739020, PMC 7973747, DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-85803-4 (massively parallel sequencing of mixed animal crude drugs); PMID 39880249, DOI 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.140388 (keratin-containing natural material); PMID 37106900, PMC 10135076, DOI 10.3390/ani13081337 (shed skins in bird nests); PMID 42278059, PMC 13255723, DOI 10.3390/ani16111624 (China’s snake trade). Research context, not a therapeutic claim.

Chinese Herb Notes

• Does using She Tui harm snakes?

  No — and this is the genuinely useful distinction on this page. She Tui is the skin a snake sheds and abandons; the animal walks away from it. Snakes moult periodically throughout life as a normal part of growth, and the discarded skin persists in the environment afterwards — it is common enough that it is found and reused by other animals, with a body of ecological research on shed skins incorporated into bird nests. Collecting a slough therefore does not require killing, injuring or confining anything. That is not true of Bai Hua She or Wu Shao She, both of which are whole snakes, killed, gutted and dried.

  The honest qualifications, so this is not overstated:

  • It is still an animal product. Not suitable for vegetarians or vegans, and the origin should be disclosed to anyone asking about ingredient sourcing — especially since it can appear in a patent formula under a Latin name.
  • Commercially, sloughs may be collected from farmed or captive snakes rather than gathered in the wild, so “no animal was killed” is a statement about the material itself, not a guarantee about any particular supply chain. We make no claim about the welfare conditions behind any commercial product.
  • Trade in snake material is regulated. An analysis of official international trade data found China’s legal snake trade exceeded 11.7 million whole-organism equivalents between 1975 and 2023, driven by medicinal and culinary demand, with both wild-sourced and captive-bred supply chains and misreported species in the official data. Anyone importing or dispensing snake-derived material outside China should check current local regulations for the species concerned.

  Which snake does She Tui come from, and can it be identified?

  Our record gives the pharmaceutical Latin as Exuvia Serpentis — “snake slough” without a species, which reflects the reality that the drug is not tied to a single animal. The reassuring finding is that shed skins are not anonymous: a study that examined 1,260 shed skins from 53 snake species developed the first identification guide for them, showing that sheds of almost all species could be identified to species by eye or from a scanned image when most of the shed was collected, using the pattern retained on the skin and the morphology of the scales. Molecular methods extend this — massively parallel sequencing of mitochondrial genes has been used to work out which animal species are present in mixed animal-derived crude drugs, including chopped moult products, as a quality-control tool.

  Which “she” herbs are actually snakes?

  Only three medicinals held on this site are snake-derived: She Tui, Bai Hua She and Wu Shao She. The syllable she does different work in the other names, and the resulting collisions are a well-known source of error.

  • She Tui (this page) — the shed skin. Sweet, salty, neutral; Liver channel; skin, childhood convulsions and the eyes; the smallest dose of the group; no toxicity recorded.
  • Wu Shao She — a whole non-venomous snake; sweet, salty, neutral; Liver and Spleen; the milder, larger-dose option for chronic painful obstruction.
  • Bai Hua She — a whole venomous snake; sweet, salty, warm and toxic on its own record; Liver and Spleen; reserved for chronic, obstinate cases under professional supervision.
  • Bai Hua She She Cao — “white-flowered snake-tongue grass,” the whole herb of Hedyotis / Oldenlandia diffusa; bitter, sweet, cold; a heat-clearing, toxin-resolving plant. One syllable pair away from a dried venomous snake.
  • She Gan — Belamcanda rhizome, a bitter cold Lung herb for sore throat. A plant.
  • She Chuang Zi — Cnidium fruit, a warm seed used externally. A plant.
  • She Xiang — deer musk, an aromatic orifice-opening substance. Animal, but not a snake.

  How does She Tui compare with Chan Tui?

  They are the two “cast-off covering” medicinals, and the tradition uses them along similar lines. Chan Tui (Periostracum Cicadae) is the shed exoskeleton of the cicada Cryptotympana atrata — sweet, salty and slightly cold on our record, entering the Lung and Liver channels, used for wind-heat, itchy rashes, hoarseness, red eyes and childhood convulsions. She Tui is sweet, salty and neutral, Liver channel only. Both are moult products, both are dosed small, both go to skin, eyes and childhood wind, and our record pairs them explicitly for eye disorders. Neither requires killing the animal it came from — which makes this pair unusual among animal medicinals.

  Formula context: our own formula records do not currently link She Tui to any formula, and it is not linked to any herb combination in our records, so none is named here.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (the herb records for She Tui, Bai Hua She, Wu Shao She, Chan Tui, Bai Hua She She Cao, She Gan, She Chuang Zi and She Xiang — identity, nature, flavour, channels, dosage and toxicity — and the absence of any formula link, as held on file); PMID 31966237, PMC 6517710, DOI 10.6620/ZS.2017.56-38 (identification of 1,260 shed skins from 53 species by pattern and scale morphology); PMID 37106900, PMC 10135076, DOI 10.3390/ani13081337 (shed skins persisting in the environment and used in bird nests); PMID 33739020, PMC 7973747, DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-85803-4 (species estimation in mixed animal crude drugs by massively parallel sequencing); PMID 42278059, PMC 13255723, DOI 10.3390/ani16111624 (scale and risks of China’s snake trade); PMID 37836550, PMC 10574283, DOI 10.3390/nu15194266 (Cryptotympana atrata as the source of the cicada moult medicinal). Disambiguation note, not treatment advice.