The medicine man uses nature's TLC for his tea.

Like a relentless dinosaur from the murks of pre-history, the 1950s-era mechanized contraption stuffs and cuts small paper teabags into packs of five -- 28 packs a minute -- at Tadin Herb & Tea Co. in East Los Angeles.

Large flutes feed bulk tea into the ever-clattering machine, which, in concert with other machines nearby, is busier than ever.

"I don't want to say exactly, but we ship more than a million bags of herbal tea out every month," says Jose Gonzalez, president of Tadin, as he punches up a total on an adding machine. "Ours is a growing and steady business. No recession."

A steady business it is. Long before Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World, the people of Mexico -- Aztecs, Mayans, Toltecs and others -- exploited plants for medicinal purposes, often in tea.

Indeed, the use of plants as medicine probably pre-dates even man, according to Susan Scrimshaw, UCLA public health professor. "There is evidence that primates and other animals also use plants. Man has probably been using plants for folk remedies since before he was man."

Today, Tadin Herb & Tea Co. distributes more than 200 types of plants and herbs for use in tea, most varieties in clear, plastic envelopes, and 14 varieties in boxed teabags.

Due to federal Food and Drug Administration rules, the teas are not advertised for their possible therapeutic value, although consumers, particularly those from Mexico and Central America, often buy the tea to fight indigestion, bad nerves, insomnia, and other ailments of the day.

Hispanic grocery store chains such as Tianguis (a part of the Vons supermarket empire) and Viva Mart carry the Tadin teas, as well as about 350 individual grocers, pharmacies and botanicas, explains Gonzalez.

There is abundant evidence that many of the teas do work, due to agents which are often exploited by modern-day pharmacists, says Dr. Varro Tyler, professor of pharmacognosy at Purdue University (pharmacognosy is the study of medicinal values of natural substances).

"Chamomile (in Spanish, manzanilla) is known for its anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic properties," he says, "although other plants, such as passion flower, do not have a proven effectiveness. You have to check on a plant by plant basis."

Effective or not, the herbs arrive in bulk at Tadin's 8,000-square-foot warehouse-manufacturing plant, on Union Pacific Avenue near the Los Angeles river, in 55-gallon drums or bulky burlap sacks. Mostly the raw product is trucked north from Mexico.

In fragrant profusion, there are about 30,000 pounds of dried rose buds, chamomile, linden flowers, passion flowers, lemon grass and other plants in the Tadin warehouse. Too, protruding here and there are roots, such as sarsaparilla, manso and cocolmeca.

Today, as with the ancient Toltecs, most of what Gonzalez sells is gathered in the wild, as opposed to being cultivated. "There has been some increase in the cultivation of herbs, but it is still 80 percent from wild sources," Gonzalez says. "We have had to work over the years to develop steady suppliers."

(Scientists such as Tyler worry that many natural sources of medicine are being bulldozed out of existence, along with the ancient cultures that know how to exploit natural medicines.)

After the trucks arrive from Mexico, Tadin prepares, mixes and re-packs the herbs into teabags, which is the smallest product the company makes, or into palm-sized cellophane bags, or larger bags. The company also re-distributes to other large-scale users.

Tadin's target is the fast-growing Hispanic market in the United States, although the company exports some tea to the "zona libre," or free-trade zone, along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Assimilation of Hispanics in the United States is apparently not reducing the demand for traditional teas, says Gonzalez.

"This boiling of water, the herbs, this is passed from grandmother to mother to daughter," he avers. "It is not something that is disappearing. They will always boil water."

To be sure, Gonzalez is hot: Hispanics are North America's fastest-growing ethnic group, due to continued immigration and high birth rates. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 22.4 million Hispanics in the United States in 1991, about 9 percent of the total population.

Locally, those with Spanish surnames make up more than 40 percent of the population of Los Angeles County, equal in numbers -- about 3.6 million -- to the Anglo population.

Still, much of Tadin's success is due to a break with tradition and the employment of modern-day business techniques, avers Gonzalez. "A large part of our success is that we took it beyond the botanica stage, the brujero or voodoo stuff," he says. "We have made it into a serious business, and we sell standardized products into supermarkets, pharmacies and elsewhere. We are not selling this to the medicine men."