Formulas · Clear Heat 淸熱 · Jonghaeng (種杏)

Method of Taking Plum Blossom

Bongmaehwa-bang

한글 복매화방 · Pinyin Fu Mei Hua Fang

服梅花方

A 方 head, registered under the `-bang` tail the corpus uses for such heads. **梅花, the plum blossom, has no herb id**: `omae` 烏梅, `baengmae` 白梅 and `maeji` 梅枝 cover the smoked fruit, the salted fruit and the twig, and the flower is a different part. It is named here and listed at the foot of the file rather than folded onto one of those. The only ingredient with an id is the honey binder. The existing `maehwa-tang` 梅花湯 of the Thirst chapter is glutinous rice and mulberry root bark and is unrelated. 隂 is normalized to 陰. No entry of this name existed in the database.

Composition 構成

Bongmil Feng Mi
蜂蜜 봉밀 · Honey

—

煉蜜, refined honey, bound into pills the size of a gorgon-nut seed

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

Taking plum blossom to escape the pox
Blossom gathered in the twelfth month, shade-dried, powdered and bound with honey into pills
One pill dissolved in good wine, taken while reciting an invocation a hundred times

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Prophylaxis against the pox (服梅花可免出痘)
The recitation held to be the working part, beyond words (念太乙救苦天尊一百遍, 妙不可言)

Biomedical correlates

Attempted prophylaxis of smallpox
Ethanol administered to an infant

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

服梅花可免出痘. 十二月收梅花, 不拘多少, 陰乾爲末, 煉蜜丸如芡實大, 每一丸好酒化下, 念太乙救苦天尊一百遍, 妙不可言. 《種杏》

Translation

Taking plum blossom can let one escape the coming out of the pox. In the twelfth month gather plum blossom, any amount at all, shade-dry it and powder it, bind it with refined honey into pills the size of a gorgon-nut seed, and dissolve one pill down in good wine at a dose, reciting "Great Unity Heavenly Worthy who Rescues from Suffering" a hundred times. Its excellence is beyond words. — Jonghaeng 種杏 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Plum blossom picked in the twelfth month, when *Prunus mume* flowers in the cold before its leaves, shade-dried and powdered, rolled with honey into pills the size of a gorgon-nut seed. Any quantity will do, 不拘多少, which tells you the quantity was not thought to be where the action lay. The prescription says plainly where it is: one pill is dissolved in good wine and taken while the name of 太乙救苦天尊, the Great Unity Heavenly Worthy who Rescues from Suffering, is recited a hundred times, and it is the whole procedure, recitation included, that the text calls 妙不可言, excellent beyond words. The honest description is that this is a Daoist invocation with a vehicle, and it belongs with 1.84's 禳法 rather than with the formulas around it. It should be read straight and not dressed up: the physician who recorded the fifteen-day staging of smallpox recorded this too, and did not experience the two as different kinds of knowledge. It made no difference to whether a child got the pox or how severely. **The wine is the hazard and it must not be given.** 好酒化下 — a pill dissolved in good wine and put into a child. Ethanol in an infant causes hypoglycaemia and central nervous system depression at amounts an adult would not notice: the liver cannot yet clear it and the glycogen reserve that protects against the resulting low blood sugar is small, so a small child can convulse or lose consciousness from a quantity measured in millilitres. There is no safe amount for an infant. **The leaf gives no dose by weight here** — one pill, and however much wine it takes to dissolve it. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.