Uses Of Tiger

In Traditional Chinese Medicine
Tiger parts are used in traditional Asian medicines. Many people in Asia believe that tiger parts have medicinal properties. There is no scientific corroboration to these beliefs, which include:

• The tail of the tiger is sometimes ground and mixed with soap to create an ointment for use in treating skin cancer. The bones found from the tip of the tiger’s tail are said to ward off evil spirits.
• Crushed tiger bones added to wine serves as a Taiwanese general tonic.
• Tiger’s skin is said to cure a fever caused by ghosts. In order to use it effectively, the user must sit on the tiger’s skin, but beware. If too much time is spent on the tiger’s skin, the legend says the user will become a tiger.
• Adding honey to the gallstones and applying the combination to the hands and feet is said to effectively treat abscesses.
• Burnt tiger hair can allegedly drive away centipedes.
• Mixing the brain of a tiger with oil and rubbing the mixture on your body is an alleged cure for both laziness and acne.
• Rolling the eyeballs into pills is an alleged remedy for convulsions.
• If whiskers are kept as a charm, legend says one will be protected against bullets and have increased courage.
• One will allegedly possess courage and shall be protected from sudden fright if you wear a tiger’s claw as a piece of jewellery or carry one in your pocket.
• Alleged strength, cunning, and courage can be obtained by consuming a tiger’s heart.
• Floating ribs of a tiger are considered a good luck talisman.
• The tiger’s penis is said to be an aphrodisiac.
• Small bones in a tiger’s feet tied to a child’s wrists are said to be a sure cure for convulsions.

In Literature and Popular Culture

The word tiger is borrowed from Greek tigris, itself borrowed from Persian. American English Tigress first recorded 1611. Tiger's-eyes "yellowish-brown quartz" is recorded from 1891.

The tiger has certainly managed to appeal to man's imagination. Both Rudyard Kipling in The Jungle Books and William Blake in his Songs of Experience depict him as a ferocious, fearful animal. In The Jungle Books, the tiger Shere Khan is the biggest and most dangerous enemy of Mowgli, the uncrowned king of the jungle. Even in the Bill Watterson comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes the tiger sometimes escapes his role of cuddly animal. At the other end of the scale there is Tigger, the tiger from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, who is always happy and never induces fear. In the award winning A Tiger for Malgudi, a Yogi befriends a tiger. Rajah, a pet of the characters Aladdin and Jasmine of Disney's animated feature film Aladdin, is uncharacteristically dog-like in its behavior, but even more oddly Tony The Tiger is renowned for his Frosted Flakes and may be the only cat, real or fictional, who thrives on a vegetarian diet.

A stylized tiger cub was a mascot of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games of Seoul with the name "Hodori", and the tiger is one the most chosen animals to be a mascot for sports teams, e.g. Major League Baseball team Detroit Tigers.

Humble Oil, a division of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Jersey Standard), used a stylized tiger to promote gasoline and the slogan "Put a Tiger in your Tank". Jersey Standard adopted the use of a real tiger in its advertising when it took the Exxon name company-wide in 1972, and the brand kept the tiger mascot as a part of ExxonMobil when they merged in 1999.

Most recently, Yann Martel won the Man Booker Prize in 2002 with his novel Life Of Pi about an Indian boy castaway on the Pacific Ocean with a Royal Bengal Tiger.

In the Chinese novel Water Margin, tigers appeared numerous times as attacking travellers. In the Wu Song story he became famous when slaying a tiger with his barehands who had been terrorizing the local towns nearly a decade. In reality, wild tigers, being dwellers of the jungle, have rarely been found in larger human cities in China, where the idea of a tiger on the street can act as a symbol of paranoia or unfounded fear, giving rise to such idioms as three men make a tiger. The Tiger belongs to one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac