Formulas · Calm the Spirit 安神 · Jikso (直小)

Preserve Life Elixir

Bosaeng-dan

한글 보생단 · Pinyin Bao Sheng Dan

保生丹

The transcription prints 蚕 for 殭蠶; 蠶 is printed here, following herbs.yaml's form for baekgangjam and the project's variant table. The mint decoction is the vehicle and is not listed as an ingredient.

Composition 構成

Jusa Zhu Sha
朱砂 주사 · Cinnabar (toxic)

8 g
Chief 君

朱砂, mercuric sulfide · toxic
Jeongal Quan Xie
全蠍 전갈 · Scorpion (toxic)

8 g
Chief 君

lightly stir-fried (微炒) · toxic
Cheonma Tian Ma
天麻 천마 · Gastrodia

8 g
Deputy 臣
Baekbuja Bai Fu Zi
白附子 백부자 · Typhonium Rhizome

8 g
Deputy 臣

blast-fried (炮) · toxic
Baekgangjam Bai Jiang Can
白殭蠶 백강잠 · Silkworm

8 g
Deputy 臣

白殭蠶, stir-fried (炒)
Uhwang Niu Huang
牛黃 우황 · Cattle Gallstone

4 g
Deputy 臣

牛黃, ox gallstone
Geongang Gan Jiang
乾薑 건강 · Dried Ginger

4 g
Assistant 佐

blast-fried (炮)
Sahyang She Xiang
麝香 사향 · Musk (prohibited)

4 g
Assistant 佐

麝香, musk · CITES Appendix I
Bongmil Feng Mi
蜂蜜 봉밀 · Honey

—
Envoy 使

蜜, for binding; hemp-seed-sized pills

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

Treats chronic fright wind
Made into honey pills the size of a hemp seed and given three pills in a mint decoction

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Chronic fright wind with cold and twitching

Biomedical correlates

Convulsion in a depleted infant

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治慢驚風. 朱砂ㆍ天麻ㆍ白附子(炮)ㆍ白殭蠶(炒)ㆍ全蝎(微炒) 各二錢, 乾薑(炮)ㆍ牛黃ㆍ麝香各一錢. 右爲末, 蜜丸麻子大, 薄荷湯下三丸. 《直小》

Translation

Treats chronic fright wind. Cinnabar, gastrodia, typhonium (blast-fried), silkworm (stir-fried) and scorpion (lightly stir-fried) 2 don each; dry ginger (blast-fried), ox gallstone and musk 1 don each. Powder them, make honey pills the size of a hemp seed, and give three pills down with a mint decoction. — Jikso 直小 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Eight drugs, and five of them are on the warning list. The whole weight is about 4.4 grams of powder, divided into hemp-seed pills of which the child gets three — so a dose is a few milligrams of a mixture one quarter of which is mercury sulfide. That is the arithmetic worth stating plainly, because it is the arithmetic of the whole section. **Contains cinnabar, which is mercuric sulfide. The patient is a child, and the text gives no dose by weight anywhere.** Mercury injures a developing nervous system irreversibly, at exposures that leave an adult unharmed. **It contains scorpion, a neurotoxic animal venom that cannot be dosed accurately in dried material, and ox gallstone and musk, neither of which has any established paediatric dose.** Musk is CITES Appendix I, and the demand this tradition created is why the musk deer are endangered. **The 白附子 of the leaf is identified in herbs.yaml as typhonium, but the material sold under that name in Korea has often been 關白附, Aconitum coreanum — a true aconite, with almost no margin between an effect and a fatal arrhythmia in a child.** This must not be prepared. What the child in front of this prescription needed is set out at sinhyo-san-soa. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.