Method for Treating Heart Fistula

The strangest leaf in the section, and the only one that opens by admitting ignorance: 此病醫書少載, 人多不知 — the medical books barely record this disease and most people do not know it. What 丹心 describes is exact and does not need interpretation. A hole in the front of the chest, constantly running blood-tinged fluid. Three drugs in equal parts, bound with jujube flesh: deer velvet antler, roasted aconite, and the bloom of salt. There is no attempt at the sore itself. Velvet antler and aconite are the two warming supplements of the materia medica, and the reasoning is that a tract on the chest that discharges without healing is a failure of yang rather than a lodged toxin — the same reading that produced 溫經丸 a few leaves earlier for the 陷脉 fistula. **Contains aconite, which is toxic and must be properly processed; and deer velvet antler, a protected-animal material. This must not be prepared.** The description names something serious. A chronically discharging sinus in the anterior chest wall is most often chronic osteomyelitis of the sternum or a rib, or a tuberculous cold abscess that has tracked out through the chest wall, or an empyema draining through the skin — empyema necessitatis — and in an older patient an ulcerating tumour must be excluded. Every one of those needs imaging, a tissue diagnosis and drainage within days. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.