Korean Angelica Wine

A four-drug wine for the sore that will not heat up. The 陰疽起發法 section that precedes it describes what it is for: a head that is flat and turned inward, dark-coloured, painless, with no heat either in the body or at the site — and it names this wine first, with 排膿內補散 (that is, 十宣散) and 加味不換金正氣散 as its assistants. Pungent cinnamon bark is the chief and carries the most weight in the formula; Korean angelica moves the Blood, costus root the Qi, dahurian angelica opens toward the surface, and frankincense is stirred in at the last moment so its resin is not boiled away. Everything about the preparation is aimed at warmth reaching a cold place: wine rather than water, cinnamon in the lead, the dose split so it can be repeated. The chapter is consistent that a yin abscess is treated by raising it rather than by draining it, which is the opposite instruction from the heat-clearing half of the chapter. The modern reading is a cold or indolent abscess, including the kind seen in diabetes and in the immunosuppressed, where the absence of redness and fever is a sign of a poor response rather than of a mild infection. That is the presentation that most needs assessment rather than warming. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.