Formulas · Clear Heat 淸熱 · Uihak Immun (醫學入門) · Seui Deukhyobang (世醫得效方)

Method of Giving Cinnabar to Thin the Pox

Bokjusa-beop

한글 복주사법 · Pinyin Fu Zhu Sha Fa

服朱砂法

A 法 rather than a prescription, and it is registered under the `-beop` tail that the corpus uses for such heads — 醋墨法 `chukmuk-beop`, 水漬法 `suji-beop`, 罨臍法 `eomje-beop`, 白花蛇酒法 `baekhwasaju-beop`, 夾骨法 `hyeopgol-beop`. The 一法 at the end is the Deukhyo's second, simpler version of the same method and is kept in this entry rather than stood up separately, since the transcription gives it no leaf of its own. The one other occurrence of 服朱砂 in the database is inside 左龍丸 (只服朱砂丸) and is unrelated. No entry of this name existed.

Composition 構成

Jusa Zhu Sha
朱砂 주사 · Cinnabar (toxic)

2 g
Chief 君

水飛, water-levigated, bright and fine as rice; 5 fun divided into three doses · mercuric sulfide, toxic
Bongmil Feng Mi
蜂蜜 봉밀 · Honey

—

煉蜜, refined honey, to mix

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

Given by mouth to a well child, before or during the pox, to make it come sparsely
Claimed to raise a sunken black pock and disperse a pox abscess
Water-levigated, mixed with refined honey and washed down in warm water, the amount judged by the child's size

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Prophylaxis against the pox, given whether the pox has erupted or not (不拘痘出未出)
Dense eruption to be thinned, sparse eruption to be abolished (密者可稀, 稀者可無)
Black sinking to be raised, pox abscess to be dispersed (黑陷者可起, 痘癰者可消)

Biomedical correlates

Attempted prophylaxis of smallpox
Mercury (mercuric sulfide) administered orally to a healthy child
Haemorrhagic smallpox and secondary infection of the pocks, as the claimed indications

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

如米細光明朱砂水飛爲末, 每五分作三次, 煉蜜調, 量兒大小加減, 溫水送下. 不拘痘出未出, 首尾可服. 密者可稀, 稀者可無, 黑陷者可起, 痘癰者可消. 但性微寒, 不可多服. 《入門》 ○一法, 蜜少許調朱砂末一字用. 《得效》

Translation

Take bright clear cinnabar as fine as rice grains, water-levigate it and powder it; 5 fun made up as three doses, stirred into refined honey, the amount increased or reduced according to the child's size, and washed down with warm water. It may be taken whether the pox has come out or not, from the beginning of the illness to the end. A dense eruption can be made sparse, a sparse one can be abolished; a black sunken pock can be raised, and a pox abscess can be dispersed. But its nature is slightly cold and it must not be taken in quantity. 《入門》 ○Another method: stir a powder of cinnabar into a little honey and use 1 ja. — Deukhyo 得效 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Cinnabar, water-levigated to a fine bright powder, stirred into honey and given to a child in three doses out of a 5 fun weight — about two thirds of a gram at a time — the quantity adjusted by eye to the child's size. The Deukhyo's shorter version drops the weighing altogether: a pinch of cinnabar powder in a little honey, 一字, the amount that sits on the face of a coin. The claims are set out in four parallel clauses, and they are claims about the eruption's density and depth: dense made sparse, sparse abolished, a black sunken pock raised, a pox abscess dispersed. Those four clauses are a claim to control precisely the thing that actually decided whether a child with smallpox lived. Prognosis turned on how densely the pocks stood — discrete eruptions killed roughly one in ten, confluent ones more than six in ten — and on whether there was bleeding into the skin, which is what 黑陷 describes. The physician was grading by the right variable. Nothing in cinnabar altered it, in either direction, and the section's whole premise — that the pox is a fetal toxin already in the child which can be drawn out early and thinly — is wrong about the cause. Variola is a virus caught from another person. **And note what is not here: there is no variolation in this book** — no inoculation of a well child with scab or pustular matter from a mild case, the one pre-vaccination practice that did reduce mortality and which Chinese physicians had developed by at least the sixteenth century. It reached Korea in the eighteenth. A reader who comes to 1.60 expecting the ancestor of vaccination will not find it. **This must not be prepared, and this is the sharpest instance of it in the chapter.** Cinnabar is mercuric sulfide. What the method describes is giving a mercury compound by mouth, in repeated doses, to a child who is **not ill at all** — the section is 稀痘方, methods to make the pox come sparsely, and its patients are well children. Mercury injures a developing nervous system irreversibly at doses that leave an adult unharmed: an infant has roughly 250 ml of blood, an immature blood–brain barrier and kidneys that clear poorly, and the damage does not reverse when the exposure stops. **The leaf gives no dose by weight for the child here** — 量兒大小加減, increase or reduce by the child's size — so the exposure is unmeasured by design, and the Deukhyo's 一字 is not a weight at all. The text's own closing hedge, 但性微寒, 不可多服, reads as a warning about cold in the stomach; the hazard it was reaching for was not that. The full statement of what cinnabar is and does to a child is written out on `jinsa-go-soa`. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.