Phellodendron and Soot Powder

Three dry powders in equal parts: phellodendron bark, soot scraped from the underside of the cauldron, and the ash of burnt hair. Phellodendron is bitter and drying and is this tradition's standard bark for a damp, weeping sore; the soot and the hair ash are carbon, and carbon powder on a wound does absorb exudate and dry it. **Nothing here is a poison** — no mineral, no venom, no mercury or arsenic — and the first of the two methods the leaf gives, 乾糝之, dusting it on dry, is the better instinct in the whole section: it keeps the stump dry, which is what dry cord care does today. That much is to the chapter's credit, and it is worth saying plainly so that the warnings on the leaves around it keep their meaning. The hazard is of a different kind. Soot off a cooking pot and the ash of burnt hair are not sterile, and the open umbilical wound of a newborn is the one place where that matters most — these are precisely the kind of materials through which *Clostridium tetani* spores reach a cord stump. The second method, 或油調付之, mixed with oil and applied, is worse again: oil makes the dressing occlusive and wet and holds the stump in the airless state the organism needs. For cord care and the real prevention, see the note on `heolcho-san-soa`. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.