Formulas · Purge Downward 瀉下 · Yeokro (易老)

Rhubarb Decoction

Daehwang-tang

한글 대황탕 · Pinyin Da Huang Tang

大黃湯

The Bogam prescribes a sequence: this purgative first, then Jakyak-tang to harmonize.

Composition 構成

Daehwang Da Huang
大黃 대황 · Rhubarb

40 g
Chief 君

cut up, steeped half a day in two cups of good wine, then decocted down to a cup and a half

Total 40 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts.

Received this formula from your practitioner? Amounts shown here are classical reference values — granule and prepared products differ. Always follow your prescribed dosage and directions.

Actions 效能

Treats hot dysentery with pus and blood thick and sticky
Treats inner urgency and dragging-down behind
without number day and night

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Damp heat accumulation in the intestines with tenesmus
Heat dysentery with stale accumulation

Biomedical correlates

Bacillary dysentery
Acute colitis

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治熱痢膿血稠粘, 裏急後重, 日夜無度. 大黃一兩, 剉, 好酒二盞, 浸半日, 煎至一盞半, 去渣, 分二次頓服, 以利爲度. 又服<a href='/formulas/jakyak-tang'>芍藥湯</a>以和之. 此滌蕩邪熱之劑也. 酒煎者, 欲上至頭頂, 外徹皮毛也. 《易老》

Translation

Treats hot dysentery with pus and blood thick and sticky, inner urgency and dragging-down behind, without number day and night. Rhubarb, 1 nyang, cut up and steeped half a day in two cups of good wine, then decocted down to a cup and a half; strain off the dregs and take it at a draught in two doses, until it frees the bowel. Then take Jakyak-tang to harmonize. This is a medicine that washes and sweeps away evil heat. It is decocted in wine because one wants it to rise to the crown of the head and to reach outward to the skin and hair. — Yeokro 易老 (Donguibogam · Daebyeon)

Clinical commentary 臨床

One drug, taken until the bowel opens, for a dysentery already running day and night — which sounds like a contradiction and is the chapter's most important therapeutic idea. The reasoning is that the tenesmus comes from matter stuck in the bowel, not from the bowel being too active, so clearing it is the cure and binding it would seal the heat in. The section on purging dysentery later in the chapter defends this at length. The explanation of the wine — to carry the drug up to the crown and out to the skin — is doctrine rather than pharmacology, but wine does extract rhubarb's anthraquinones well. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.