Emerald Mist Stick

The companion to 翠霞散, named for the same verdigris, and the form the 疳瘻 doctrine itself prescribes: 瘡口絍翠霞散或翠霞錠子絍之外貼膏藥. Where the powder is dipped and pushed in, this is moulded into a stick the thickness of a stalk of ephedra, measured against the depth of the tract, and left in under a plaster. The indication names what it is for with unusual precision: 內有死肉, dead flesh inside. That is slough at the base of a chronic sinus, and the thing to do about it is remove it — the chapter says as much at 疳瘻, where any sore with 宿膿朽骨停蓄其間, retained pus or dead bone lodged in it, is held to stay a fistula for that reason. A stick of escharotic left in the tract is a chemical attempt at debridement. **Contains arsenic trioxide, which is lethal by ingestion and absorbed through a wound surface, together with calomel, a mercury salt, and verdigris, a copper salt — the three left inside a tract under an occlusive plaster, which is the arrangement most likely to drive them into the circulation. Arsenical escharotics killed patients in exactly this use. This must not be prepared.** Debridement of a sloughy sinus is done sharply or enzymatically, after imaging to find where the tract goes. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.