Trichosanthes Root Powder for Scrofula

Nine drugs with weights stepped down in single fun — 2 don, 1 don 7 fun, 1 don 5 fun, 1 don 2 fun — which is the Gogeum Uigam's manner and gives the formula an unusually worked look. It is the chapter's leaf for the node that has already broken: honeysuckle flower and trichosanthes root lead against the heat and the pus, red peony and Korean angelica move the Blood in a chronically indurated area, pangolin scale and fritillaria are the piercing-and-opening pair this tradition reaches for when a track has to drain, and frankincense and myrrh in small amounts are the resins for pain and for bringing flesh over the ulcer. The wine-and-water decoction carries the Blood drugs. 瘰癧 is tuberculous lymphadenitis, and the presentation here — a node that has liquefied, opened and will not close, with pain — is the cold abscess and its sinus. Such a sinus can discharge for years and leaves the puckered scar that gave scrofula its old English name. It closes on antituberculous therapy and not otherwise. **Contains pangolin scale, from a CITES Appendix I species. All international trade is illegal, the demand has made the pangolin the most trafficked mammal in the world, and the scale is keratin with no pharmacological activity. It must never be sourced, and no substitute is being recommended here.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.