Clear Heat and Resolve the Flesh Decoction

Four drugs and nothing wasted: pueraria at three don, scutellaria and red peony at a don and a half, licorice at one. An epidemic walking abroad with headache and a fierce fever is the plainest statement of a febrile infectious illness anywhere in the chapter, and this is the plainest answer to it. It reads as Seungmagalgeun-tang with the cimicifuga and tangerine peel taken out and scutellaria put in, which turns a lifting formula into a cooling one. The Deukhyo calls it simply Haegi-tang, resolve-the-flesh decoction, and that is what it does — opens the surface a little while taking the edge off the heat, for a patient too hot to be sweated hard. Short formulas of this kind are the ones most worth keeping. There is no drug in it whose job is unclear, and nothing in it that would harm a febrile patient. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.