Seven Jujubes Decoction

Three ingredients, and the whole formula is one aconite root processed seven times. Blast-fried until it splits, quenched in salt water, blast-fried again, seven cycles — the repetition is detoxification, and the salt is there to drive the drug downward to the Kidney while the heat drives off what makes it lethal. Seven slices of ginger and seven jujubes are the only other things in the pot, and three to five more jujubes are eaten afterwards. The indication is unusual for this chapter in making no mention of an evil qi at all. 陰陽相勝 — yin and yang overcoming each other in turn — reads the alternation of chill and fever as the two simply failing to hold each other, on the ground of five-viscera vacuity, and the answer is to put yang back rather than to drive anything out. 不問遠近 — it does not matter whether recent or long-standing — is the claim that follows: if the problem is the patient and not the pathogen, duration is beside the point. **Contains aconite as the sole active drug, which is toxic; cardiac arrhythmia and death have followed inadequate processing. This must not be prepared.** The clinical picture — severe rigors in a depleted patient — is one where a periodic fever needs blood films or a rapid antigen test and modern antimalarial treatment. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.