White Snake Powder

The purgative of the scrofula section, built on a viper and a drastic downward drug. 黑丑 as 頭末, the first and strongest powder sieved from the crushed seed, is the engine; the viper flesh and the rhinoceros horn are the chapter's wind-and-toxin pair; and calomel is stirred into each dose at the last moment. The timing is part of the prescription — taken at the fifth watch, before dawn, so that it works by mid-morning, and what comes away in the stool is read as 病根, the root of the disease itself. A second dose ten days later, then Saseong-san to repair the damage. 瘰癧 is tuberculous lymphadenitis, a chain of caseating nodes in the neck that softens, breaks down and drains for months or years. Nothing in this formula reaches the mycobacterium. The foul matter passed at the 巳 hour is the purge working on the gut, not the disease leaving the neck, and the sinus goes on draining. **Contains calomel (輕粉), a mercury compound, taken internally; the chapter elsewhere records mercury poisoning as a complication of its own treatments. It also contains 黑丑 as a drastic purgative, snake flesh, and rhinoceros horn, which is from a CITES-listed species whose trade is prohibited. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.