SARS in New York

IT'S heavy lifting talking to Grace Wong Ho. “Write that down!” she snaps, as she describes a special herbal formula for preventing SARS. “This is a famous formula,” she says. “It's a classical formula.” (For the record, it's roots of astragalus, Saposhnikovia divaricata and atracylodes.)  

Ho's dander is up these days about severe acute respiratory syndrome. When the herbalist saw people in Chinatown wearing surgical masks last month from fear of the disease, they felt her wrath. “I tell them not to put it on. You put it on, they think you have SARS and they are against you.”