Emerald Mist Powder

Talc as the bulk, verdigris for colour and bite, and then two mercury salts and two aromatics in traces. 翠霞, kingfisher-green mist, is the verdigris: the same naming habit as the 精義's 碧霞錠子, where 碧霞, azure mist, is also copper. The powder is not dusted but packed — 蘸絍瘡口上 — on a plug pushed into the mouth of the tract, with a plaster over the top. That is the chapter's standard answer to a sinus: keep the mouth open and let the escharotic work at the bottom rather than letting the skin heal over a cavity. The principle is right. A fistula that skins over while the tract is still there simply fills and bursts again. **Contains calomel and sublimed calomel, two mercury salts, packed directly into an open tract, and verdigris, a copper salt. Mercury is absorbed from a wound surface and this chapter records the result at 天疱瘡 — 或誤服水銀輕粉而成風堆腫爛流膿出汁 — swelling, breakdown and discharge from the mercury itself. It also contains musk, a CITES-protected material. This must not be prepared.** Packing a tract to keep it open is still part of surgical management; it is done with a sterile wick or a seton, after the tract has been imaged and its origin dealt with. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.