Secretly Transmitted Beard-Blackening Method

Pattern-based

• White beard and hair

Biomedical correlates

• Hair greying — cosmetic dyeing

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

五倍子不拘多少, 槌碎去灰, 入砂鍋內炒, 烟盡爲度. 以靑布巾打濕扭乾, 布裹脚踏成餠爲末, 每用一錢半. ○烏黑霜(卽炒黃好細麪) 四兩, 當歸尾 一兩, 爲末, 白芨末一兩. 三味攪勻, 每用一分半. ○紅銅末不拘多少, 火內燒極紅, 投入水碗中, 取出再燒再投, 取水內自然之末, 用水淘淨. 醋煮數沸至乾, 隨炒黑色, 每用一分半. ○明白礬(末) 一分半, 靑鹽 一分二釐, 沒石子 二釐半, 訶子肉 二釐半, 二味俱用麪包, 入砂鍋內, 將桑炭同拌, 炒至焦乾. 右爲末, 用濃茶調勻, 以酒盞盛貯, 用鐵杓注水, 煮如糊. 先將皂角水洗淨鬚髮, 然後塗藥, 包裹一夜, 次早洗去, 以胡桃油塗之令潤. 《醫鑑》

Translation

Chinese gall, any amount: crush and remove the ash, dry-fry in an earthenware pot until the smoke stops. Dampen a blue cloth and wring it out, wrap the gall in the cloth and tread it into a cake with the foot, then powder — use 1.5 don each time. Black frost (that is, good fine wheat flour roasted yellow) 4 nyang and angelica tails 1 nyang, powdered, with white bletilla powder 1 nyang: mix the three evenly and use 1.5 pun each time. Red copper, any amount: heat in fire until glowing red, drop into a bowl of water, take out, reheat and drop again; collect the powder that forms of itself in the water and rinse it clean. Boil in vinegar to several bubblings until dry, then fry to a black colour — use 1.5 pun each time. Powdered clear alum 1.5 pun, blue salt 1.2 ri, Aleppo gall 2.5 ri, chebula flesh 2.5 ri (the last two wrapped in flour, put in an earthenware pot, stirred together with mulberry charcoal and fried until scorched dry). Powder all the above, mix evenly with strong tea, hold in a wine cup, pour water with an iron ladle and boil to a paste. First wash the beard and hair clean with gleditsia water, then apply the medicine and wrap for a night; wash it off the next morning and apply walnut oil to restore lustre. — Uigam 醫鑑 (Donguibogam · Mobal)