Formulas · Transform Phlegm 化痰 · Uihak Jeongjeon (醫學正傳)

Pinellia and Aged Millet Powder

Bansok-san

한글 반속산 · Pinyin Ban Su San

半粟散

陳粟米, aged millet, has no entry of its own; the drug is registered as 粟米 with the aged state recorded in the prep, on the model of the chapter's 陳倉米 which does have an id. The section head gives this formula for 吐瀉有寒痰, vomiting and diarrhoea with cold phlegm.

Composition 構成

Banha Ban Xia
半夏 반하 · Pinellia

8 g
Chief 君

prepared with ginger
Songmi Su Mi
粟米 속미 · Foxtail Millet

4 g
Deputy 臣

陳粟米, aged millet
Saenggang Sheng Jiang
生薑 생강 · Fresh Ginger

—
Envoy 使

ten slices

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 1 ingredient measured by count or used as a vehicle, shown as —.

Received this formula from your practitioner? Amounts shown here are classical reference values — granule and prepared products differ. Always follow your prescribed dosage and directions.

Actions 效能

Warms a cold stomach and stops the vomiting of thin fluid
Settles the retching of clear foam and watery vomit
Taken as one packet decocted with ten slices of ginger

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Vomiting of foamy saliva, or of white-green water, from stomach cold (吐涎沫白綠水胃冷)
Cold phlegm with vomiting and diarrhoea (吐瀉有寒痰)
Thin cold fluid in the stomach of a child

Biomedical correlates

Vomiting in infancy, non-bilious and bilious
Acute gastroenteritis with prominent vomiting
Gastro-oesophageal reflux of infancy

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治吐涎沫, 或白綠水者, 胃冷, 宜用此. 半夏(薑製) 二錢, 陳粟米一錢. 右作一貼, 入薑十片, 水煎服. 《正傳》

Translation

Treats the vomiting of foamy saliva, or of white-green water, from a cold stomach; this is the one to use. Pinellia (prepared with ginger) 2 don, aged millet 1 don. Make the above into one packet, add ten slices of ginger, decoct in water and take. — Jeongjeon 正傳 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Two drugs and a great deal of ginger. Pinellia processed with ginger is the tradition's standard antiemetic and ginger is its own; aged millet is food, put in to protect a stomach the pinellia would otherwise scrape. Ten slices of fresh ginger in a packet of 12 g is a heavy hand, and the whole thing amounts to a warm ginger decoction with an antiemetic in it. As prescriptions in this section go, that is a reasonable instinct: ginger has modest genuine antiemetic activity, and the processing named here is the right one. **Pinellia is toxic in the raw state and must be properly processed before use.** This leaf does that — 薑製, prepared with ginger, is written into the line — and it is the only one of the twelve leaves in this batch that names the processing of a toxic drug. Even so, **the text gives no dose by weight anywhere for the patient**, who is an infant: the packet is weighed, the child is not, and a drug given by the packet to a two-month-old and a two-year-old alike is dosed by nothing at all. 白綠水, white-green water, is the detail worth reading literally. Green vomit in a baby is bile, and bile-stained vomiting in an infant is a surgical emergency until proved otherwise — malrotation with volvulus, intestinal atresia, obstruction — not a cold stomach. It wants imaging within hours. For the ordinary case, the illness is acute gastroenteritis and the treatment is fluid; the full statement on oral rehydration is on 玉露散, the first leaf of this section, and ondansetron is what a modern clinician gives for the vomiting that prevents a child from drinking. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.