Formulas · External Application 外用 · Dangin Bijeon (唐人秘傳)

Secretly Transmitted Decoction to Make the Pox Sparse

Bijeonhuidu-tang

한글 비전희두탕 · Pinyin Mi Chuan Xi Dou Tang

秘傳稀痘湯

**葫蘆, the bottle gourd, has no herb id, and it is this leaf's only drug**, so the ingredient list is left empty rather than filled with a near neighbour. The nearest entries are the wrong plant or the wrong grade: `goho` 苦瓠 and `gohoyang` 苦瓠瓤 are the *bitter* bottle gourd, which is toxic, `horopa` 葫蘆巴 is fenugreek, and the alias 葫 under `daesan` is garlic. The drug is named here and listed at the foot of the file. The source label 唐人秘傳 does not occur anywhere else in the corpus and is romanised here as `Dangin Bijeon`; the nearest existing label is `Dangbang (唐方)`. 隂 is normalized to 陰. No entry of this name existed in the database.

Composition 構成

Total 0 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts.

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

A whole-body wash for a child who has not yet had the pox
Gourd vine gathered on the first dog-day of the sixth month and shade-dried until the new year
Boiled up at the fifth watch of New Year's Day, in secret, and used so that no part of the body is left unwashed

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Prophylaxis in a child who has not yet erupted (洗未出痘小孩兒)
Claimed to prevent the pox coming out thereafter (此後卽不出痘)

Biomedical correlates

Attempted prophylaxis of smallpox by bathing
Scald risk in bathing an infant

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

六月上伏日, 採葫蘆嫩蔓數十根, 陰乾. 遇正月初一日五更, 勿令人知, 將葫蘆蔓安鍋內, 燒湯一盆, 洗未出痘小孩兒, 渾身頭面上下無處不洗到方可. 此後卽不出痘. 《唐人秘傳》

Translation

On the first dog-day of the sixth month gather several tens of young bottle-gourd vines and shade-dry them. When the fifth watch of the first day of the first month comes, letting nobody know of it, put the gourd vines in the pot and boil up a basinful of decoction; wash a small child who has not yet had the pox, the whole body, head and face, upper and lower, and it will only answer if no place is left unwashed. After this the pox will not come out. — Dangin Bijeon 唐人秘傳 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

The twin of 滌穢免痘湯 three leaves above: the same ritual calendar, the same secrecy, the same reasoning, a different gourd. Young bottle-gourd vines, several tens of them, are cut on the first 伏 day of the sixth month — the hottest stretch of the year — shade-dried and kept six months; at the fifth watch of New Year's Day, before dawn and with nobody told, they go into the pot and a basin of decoction is boiled up, and a child who has not yet had the pox is washed from head to foot. The condition attached is absolute: 無處不洗到方可, it answers only if no part is missed. That insistence is the tell. A wash that works by removing something has to reach all of it, and the something is the 胎毒, the fetal toxin the section believes every child carries and must be rid of. There was nothing on the child to remove. Smallpox spread from person to person, by droplet from the lesions in the throat and from scabs in bedding and clothing, and a bath in gourd-vine water at the turn of the year had no bearing on whether the virus later reached the child. The label 唐人秘傳, a Tang man's secret transmission, is the only one of its kind in the chapter, and the secrecy in the method is of a piece with it. Like its twin it puts nothing into the child, and against the cinnabar methods beside it that is worth stating. The hazard here is only the water, and it is sharper than in the twin: that leaf at least says 待溫, wait until it is warm, while this one says only 燒湯一盆, boil up a basinful, and then sends it straight to a newborn's whole body including the face. **A small child scalds at temperatures an adult finds comfortable, and the leaf gives no temperature and no dose by weight for the child here.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.