Formulas · Purge Downward 瀉下 · Hagan (河間)

Ward Off Evil Elixir

Byeoksa-dan

한글 벽사단 · Pinyin Bi Xie Dan

辟邪丹

Composition 構成

Bisang Pi Shuang
砒礵 비상 · Arsenic Trioxide

2 g
Chief 君

ground separately · arsenic, toxic
Jusa Zhu Sha
朱砂 주사 · Cinnabar (toxic)

8 g
Deputy 臣

mercury, toxic
Hwangdan Huang Dan
黃丹 황단 · Red Lead (toxic)

4 g
Deputy 臣

lead, toxic
Nokdu Lu Dou
菉豆 녹두 · Mung Bean

—
Assistant 佐

49 grains
Heukdu Hei Dou
黑豆 흑두 · Black Soybean

—
Assistant 佐

49 male grains
Dojicho Tao Zhi Shao
桃枝梢 도지초 · Peach Twig Tip

—
Envoy 使

7 twigs from the southeast side, ground for juice at the time of taking

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 3 ingredients 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

Drives off the evil held responsible for demon malaria
Cuts short the paroxysm before it rises

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Miasmic malaria (嵐瘴) contracted in mountain mists
Demon malaria (鬼瘧) with paroxysms at a fixed hour
Malaria answering no ordinary medicine

Biomedical correlates

Malaria
Relapsing febrile illness with periodic chills and fever

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治嵐瘴鬼瘧. 菉豆ㆍ雄黑豆各四十九粒, 信砒半錢(另硏), 黃丹一錢, 朱砂二錢. 右爲末, 滴水和勻, 分作三十粒. 每一粒, 取東南桃枝七枚, 硏汁和井華水, 早晨日出時, 面東呑之. 虛人愼用. 《河間》

Translation

Treats miasmic and demon malaria. Mung bean and male black soybean, 49 grains each; arsenic 5 fun, ground separately; red lead 1 don; cinnabar 2 don. Powder the above, mix evenly with water dripped in, and divide into thirty pellets. For each pellet take seven peach twigs from the southeast side, grind them for their juice, mix it with dawn-drawn well water, and swallow the pellet at sunrise in the early morning facing east. Use with caution in the depleted. — Hagan 河間 (Donguibogam · Haehak)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Three mineral poisons and two beans, dosed as a single pellet at sunrise. The arsenic is the drug; the red lead and cinnabar add nothing the arsenic does not already do, and the beans are there to bulk out thirty pellets from five don of material and to soften what the arsenic does to the stomach. Everything else in the leaf is ritual — twigs from the southeast side of the tree, water drawn at first light, the face turned east as the sun comes up. The ritual is not decoration in the chapter's own terms. Demon malaria is a paroxysm that arrives on the hour, and a medicine taken on the hour, facing the quarter the sun rises in, is doing in the patient's world what quinine timing does in ours. 虛人愼用 — use with caution in the depleted — is the leaf's own admission that it knows the pellet is dangerous. **Contains arsenic, red lead and cinnabar — arsenic trioxide, lead tetroxide and mercuric sulfide. All three are cumulative poisons with no safe dose and this must not be prepared or taken under any circumstances.** It is recorded for textual completeness only. Malaria requires modern antimalarial treatment. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.